ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

Chapter III: David Lano
The Essence of Blackness in the World of David Lano
Paul McPharlin’s The Puppet Theatre in America: A History and David Lano’s A
Wandering Showman, I describe the itinerant puppetry activities of the Italian-American
David Lano and his family. It is serendipitous that Lano wrote his autobiography
sometime between 1945 and 1957. Probably owing to the more racially conscious
climate of the 1950s, Lano discusses race more than any other puppeteer of the
nineteenth-century. While researchers can only speculate on the perceived essence of
theatrical blackness in the minds of D’Arc, Bullock, Deaves, or Meader, by examining
their creations, Lano addresses the subject directly. He seems to respect African
Americans, and perceives them as human beings worthy of fair treatment. At the same
time, his views are embedded with, what Husserl calls, an “apperception” of otherness.
This perceived otherness is not a necessary component of the experiences he cites in his
memoirs. Rather, it is an apperception that reconstitutes the essences of experiences after
the fact.
An entry point into Lano’s attitude toward his African American associates occurs
in a segment deleted from the published draft of his memoirs. Reflecting on his
internship with his grandparents, Lano describes an incident when a “loose cannon” in
the audience injured an African American stagehand. In both the published and
unpublished versions of A Wandering Showman, I, Lano describes an incident vaguely
similar to a scene from the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein musical Showboat.
I spotted a big mountaineer who followed the rope-dancing with attention so rapt
that I was sure he had never before seen a show […] he next watched the puppet
show. He was mesmerized. In a sense he began living out the play, as part of it.
I began to feel uneasy, and sure enough, there was good reason why I should be
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