ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

pantomime of Babes in the Wood and/or Little Red Riding Hood, and “Christy” Minstrel
show, opened at St. James’s Great Hall. An opening night review in The Era provides
the first close description of minstrel puppets:
In the second part we are introduced to “the great troupe of Christy Minstrels,”
who give a wonderfully correct and laughable imitation of their neighbours who
“never perform out of London.” The Marionette Christys can sing, play the
tambourine and bones, and dance a breakdown in true Nigger fashion and their
jokes and conundrums are of the raciest description, and invariably provoke a roar
of merriment. 46
At first glance, this review reveals the marked difference between the essence of the
marionette minstrel in the nineteenth-century and the essence of the marionette minstrel
in the twenty-first century. To the Era reviewer, the marionette show was an effective
recreation of what that reviewer imagined was authentic African American performance
in minstrel shows. Though the reviewer recognizes that the marionettes are an imitation,
rather an authentic example, of minstrelsy, the same individual makes no such distinction
between the staging of minstrelsy and “true Nigger fashion.”
Furthermore, if this review is to be trusted, then it reveals how minstrel
marionette shows took full advantage of the advances in nineteenth-century puppetry at
the moment of their introduction to the field. A close study of the only extant photograph
of the marionettes (the objects themselves have been lost to history) further demonstrates
sophisticated possibilities (see figure 5).
D’Arc integrates the essences of live minstrelsy and contemporary marionette
production. He produces a blackface puppet that captures, and perhaps, accelerates the
racialized exaggerations established by minstrelsy. Simultaneously, he employs modern
marionette techniques to both compete in a demanding theatrical market, and to
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