ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

lackface. Though he produced a vestige more like a human being, that vestige took the
racially characteristic features of its source and exaggerated them. The burden of
minstresly persisted even in performances that twenty-first-century scholars, such as John
Bell, might hesitate to associate with the tradition of blackface.
Between 1872 and 1939, dozens of artists produced their particular frontalities,
revealing a variety of essences for puppetry and imagined black life. Sometimes, these
seemingly disparate essences coalesced in their blackface puppet shows. David Lano’s
blackface-puppet essence synthesized his professional obligation to “clever tricks” with
his apperceptions of African American culture. Together, these twin co-presences
produced a marionette that was crudely carved, but with startlingly exoticized hair,
carrying a fascinating, faux-tribal mallet. He selected John Payne Collier’s Punch and
Judy, a text that reinforced the seemingly African identity of the “Negro.” When the
Royal Marionette companies devised a seemingly American clown, Lano produced an
exotic alternative that integrated the Shallaballa of Punch shows with the marionette
minstrel of the late nineteenth century.
In other cases, the atomized character of puppetry led to contradictory essences on
the same stage. Forman Brown’s use of stereotyped blackface dialogue likely conflicted
with the relatively realistic figures produced by the Yale Puppeteers. In Brown’s case,
the atomized character of puppetry would have worked to the advantage of his texts. All
three of his plays featuring blackface characters, Mister Noah, My Man Friday, and
Uncle Tom’s Hebb’n, shared anti-racist themes. The audible verbal stereotypes,
relatively realistic puppets, and antiracist challenges articulated by those puppets would
have made evident three co-presences: the essence of dialogue from minstrelsy tradition,
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