ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

some images of minstrel players (refer to figure 1), this drawing is clearly meant to depict
actual white players in blackface, since the exaggeration does not exceed the limits of
what can be accomplished with live-actor makeup.
The connection suggests an important distinction between D’Arc and Deaves.
While D’Arc was a waxworker who might never have seen a minstrel show and based his
figures on a vague idea of blackface, Deaves was an artist whose mentor father worked
with the Virginia Minstrels. The younger Deaves was likely exposed to many similar
productions before he began making minstrel marionettes. It is probable that his version
of blackface presence was more conditioned by the circulating images of live minstrelsy
than those of D’Arc.
None of Deaves’ blackface objects continue to exist. Apart from a very crude
drawing in the Puppetry Yearbook 4 (1933), that merely shows a series of blurry objects
on a puppet stage, the sole survivor of his work is the following skeleton marionette (see
figure 9). 81 Though hardly representative of the artist’s essence of blackface puppets, or
even puppets depicting humans, its level of exaggeration is telling. This object, with its
meticulously carved chest bones and articulated fingers, suggests a genuine human
skeleton. If this marionette is any indication, Deaves may have introduced more detail,
what might be called semi-realism (since the object is still a puppet, but a more human-
like puppet), into blackface puppetry.
Deaves’ use of the cakewalk was a curious act of foresight, given that this dance
had only recently been introduced to the mainstream American stage. The dance
81 This early twentieth century journal was a publication of the Puppeteers of America, not to be
confused with the currently publishing journal under the editorship of James Fisher. Both are variously
referenced in this dissertation.
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