ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

insistence on a kind of semi-realism that may have deepened the connection between live
minstrelsy and the puppet stage. His father’s work with the Virginia Minstrels, and
Deaves’s probable proximity to it and other live companies, would provide the young
artist with an essence of minstrelsy that was less divided from the work of actual
production companies. These co-presences could have embedded the eidos of blackface
puppetry with a greater insistence that marionettes reflect the actual appearance of
minstrel players than was evident in D’Arc’s waxworks.
Likewise, his introduction of the new cakewalk, with its counter-hegemonic
parody and closer relationship to African American performance, and Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, with its, albeit obsolete and sentimentalized, more positive images of African
American characters, may have challenged the English-born adaptations of minstrelsy
represented in Bullock’s production. These co-presences would expand the eidos of
blackface puppetry to include references to at least imagined black culture and positive
blackface characterization. While the D’Arc/Bullock program made loose brush strokes
toward the pro-African American efforts of Stephen Foster’s music, Deaves made this
secondary essence central to his puppetry. While D’Arc/Bullock exclusively mimicked
minstrelsy, Deaves mimicked both minstrel shows, and alternative blackface and
imagined authentic representation.
The next step in the journey of the Royal Marionettes involves the work of Daniel
Meader. This puppeteer’s extant work demonstrates a synthesis of many of the co-
presences in a new, less exaggerated essence of minstrelsy. Meader’s work predicts the
future efforts of puppeteers to more effectively approximate imagined authentic portraits
of African American life.
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