ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

The essence of humor at the core of minstrelsy would also influence blackface
puppetry. By the 1870s, the humorous antics of T. D. Rice had given way to the standard
Interlocutor/Tambo/Bones witticisms that would condition American humor for decades.
The essence of humor was founded in such traditional exchanges as:
Bones: Mistah Interlocutor, I just happen to think.
Tambo: So dat’s wot I heared rattlin.’ 32
An aspiring puppeteer would wish to adapt the buffoonery as a signifier of the essence of
blackface performance, introducing to blackface puppetry similar witticisms, enlivening
the entertainment credit of the performance and drawing a clear line of connection to the
popular tradition of minstrelsy.
The essences of blackface puppetry, exaggerated features, nonlinear posture and
movement, and the humorous antics established by previous T. D. Rice and other
minstrel performances, contribute to an overall eidos of the blackface performer as a
clownish, more or less distorted exaggeration of African American humanity.
Within such an eidos there are many possibilities, but these possibilities were not
transformed directly into puppets, despite the convenience of sculpture for creating
whatever image the artist desires. Instead, puppeteers filtered the characteristic essences
of minstrelsy through the conventions of nineteenth-century English marionette
production.
Prior to 1872, marionettes had evolved from simpler, one or three-string models
(head only, or head and right/left arms) originating in eighteenth- century Italy (see figure
32 Quoted in: Arthur Leroy Kaser, Baker’s Minstrel Joke Book: Containing Thousands of Smiles
and Chuckles and Roars (Boston: Walter H. Baker, 1956), 1.
29