ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

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uneasy, for when Mephistopheles came in at the end to carry Faustus away from Hell, the big mountaineer leaped to his feet, yelled “Git back you devil!” whipped [sic] out a pistol and whang, sent a bullet at the innocent puppet. The audience went straight into a panic, scrambling for the exit. The bullet […] missed the puppet, but lodged in the shoulder of one of our Negroes helping to hang up the puppets as they came off the stage […] we bound up our man’s wound as best we could, and sent for a doctor, but we could not find a local sawbones to treat him. The white doctors would not treat a Negro. 91 In the unpublished draft, Lano dedicated a portion of text to reflecting on African Americans in theatre: At Luray we found a Negro doctor who extracted the bullet, and our man was soon well again. But none of the Negro gang could be induced to help us at the rack after that, especially if the play was Dr. Faust. While there were Negro actors in those days, I never encountered a colored man who was able to handle puppets. Perhaps none had been given the chance to do it. Only within the past two years have I heard of Negro puppet companies, which were under government sponsorship. But in puppet classes which I myself have recently taught I have found colored boys and girls who were good at manipulating, and I hope that the present generation will see good plays written and produced by Negroes. 92 In the published version, Lano omitted those reflections. The finished passage reads: At Luray we found a Negro doctor. He extracted the bullet from our man’s arm. The wound soon healed, but none of the Negro gang could be induced after that to help us at the marionette rack, especially if Doctor Faustus was playing. 93 The above quotations reveal Lano’s tendency to present himself as an advocate for African American artists. While this most telling reflection did not survive the editing process, glimmers of such advocacy appear throughout the published source. At first glance, Lano’s work seems to contradict his attitude. His plays isolate 91 David Lano, A Wandering Showman, I (East Lansing, MI: Michigan University Press, 1957), 6. The incident recalls the more famous scene in Showboat, where a drunken gunman tries to defend the honor of a heroine in a play-within-a-play. 92 David Lano, A Wandering Showman, I, unpublished manuscript (ca 1957), 12. 93 David Lano, A Wandering Showman, I (East Lansing, MI: Michigan University Press, 1957), 7. 75
lackface characters for ridicule; his puppets reflect the most egregious stereotyping evident in nineteenth-century puppetry. A rudminentary response might hold that Lano’s worldview clearly distinguishes between artistic portrayals of black characters, and the actual African Americans with whom Lano lived and worked. Some of Lano’s artistic choices could be explained as an intellectual divergence between stage blackface and the reality of black life. Others can be identified merely as crude, for the audiences to which the showman often played were as satisfied by medicine shows or chair balancing, as by elaborate productions with Lano’s innovative “trick” marionettes. Yet, there is more at work in Lano’s career. The puppeteer’s approach to “Negro puppets” and “Negroes” demonstrates an attempt to exoticize other races, to set the art and culture of nonwhites apart from Euroamerican “white” culture. In this sense, Lano is a kind of folklorist, though in the most hackneyed sense of the term. During a visit to a Native American reservation, he witnessed a rod puppet show that, according to him: “handed down from […] the days when the Indian’s features were actually flatter than they are now, as were the faces of the Indian marionettes.” He was a friend of Harry Houdini. The great escape artist told him of an “Oriental sketch” where a sultan had a famous magician behead his favorite wife, then ordered him, on pain of death, to restore her to life. This sketch found its way into the puppeteer’s repertoire. Lano fancies himself a cataloguer of the exotic, of ethnic performance traditions. Thus, when contributing to blackface puppetry, he creates a fiction of “the Negro” in his tales of his encounters with them, and that translates into a radically “othered” interpretation of the blackface puppet. He chooses John Payne Collier’s text of Punch and Judy, which draws the blackface puppet back to its roots in the pre-Jim Crow African 76
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ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE
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THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF RACIALISM: BLA
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Dedication This dissertation is ded
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Table of Contents Dedication.......
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House and the Brooklyn Academy of M
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Bert O’States expands on the meth
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previous related performances, are
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“blackface” as counterfeit perf
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demands of this transcendent notion
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To manage such an investigation, th
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a celebration of superiority. 20 Th
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playbill, minstrel show script, con
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Lano fancies himself an advocate of
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of the African American race, and s
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in creating the first connection be
Page 31 and 32: In order to explain the interaction
Page 33 and 34: performance. 29 Marionette minstrel
Page 35 and 36: Nonetheless, it maintains the criss
Page 37 and 38: 3), into more complex types. By the
Page 39 and 40: from the head and leg strings, can
Page 41 and 42: leased Queen’s Hall in Liverpool
Page 43 and 44: effectively capture the nonlinear p
Page 45 and 46: other puppet, is not slack and seem
Page 47 and 48: was already showing considerable ar
Page 49 and 50: The Marionettes in Performance The
Page 51 and 52: of an aged former slave who has esc
Page 53 and 54: The criminal acts and dishonesty de
Page 55 and 56: Antislavery songs in a marionette p
Page 57 and 58: e useful to compare the joke exchan
Page 59 and 60: the figure, once “folded up prepa
Page 61 and 62: eginning with a wide variety of mar
Page 63 and 64: Christy Minstrels, with their reper
Page 65 and 66: Walter E. Deaves Edwin Deaves, Walt
Page 67 and 68: some images of minstrel players (re
Page 69 and 70: Yet, one cannot easily reduce the s
Page 71 and 72: Daniel Meader Sometime after 1874,
Page 73 and 74: lackface makeup, rather than authen
Page 75 and 76: figure 12. His hair is slightly hig
Page 77 and 78: puppets for the last time, he may s
Page 79 and 80: The Meader Uncle Tom suggests the e
Page 81: Chapter III: David Lano The Essence
Page 85 and 86: doctor. Lano then depicts the black
Page 87 and 88: A colored quartet now sang. They we
Page 89 and 90: The Career of David Lano While thre
Page 91 and 92: Lano’s solo career. One of the la
Page 93 and 94: human oddities. Like many of its ki
Page 95 and 96: “continually transforms necessity
Page 97 and 98: David Lano’s Work Lano’s extant
Page 99 and 100: such as the kakunga of the Suku peo
Page 101 and 102: The clothes are a curious blend of
Page 103 and 104: the age of ten, he presented his ow
Page 105 and 106: Punch murdering the Servant. Lano c
Page 107 and 108: form by introducing sentimental mus
Page 109 and 110: creation on the basis of active mot
Page 111 and 112: divided between the “Sambo” and
Page 113 and 114: Though they share in the appercepti
Page 115 and 116: mild embarrassment on his use of Ji
Page 117 and 118: “The marionette can be anything o
Page 119 and 120: he [can] find them.” 147 Calthrop
Page 121 and 122: of the Moor, who is, though still m
Page 123 and 124: slanted and sharp, the nostrils are
Page 125 and 126: perhaps the beginning puppeteer, wh
Page 127 and 128: taken it from playwright Tsou Ku Ch
Page 129 and 130: figure, who dismisses his complaint
Page 131 and 132: Thus, the structure of the play pre
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Chapter V: The Majors The major pup
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Bedchamber.” 165 Sarg described:
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Critics and fellow puppeteers prais
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Sarg and Blackface Though Sarg neve
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“Skin me, Brer Fox,” sez Brer R
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possibilities of puppetry led him t
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was common with the so-called “To
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present his particular imaginations
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herself in need of independent econ
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The Essence of Puppetry for Sue Has
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the head to the right and left, to
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art,” and “a descendent of the
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puppeteers to avoid complicated and
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delicate verisimilitude for blackfa
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Remo Bufano: The Local Emcees the E
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Club’s stage (ca 1932) began with
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world culture, including a Medieval
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impressive aspects of elaborate, la
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capture the great variety of black
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tangled a Prime Minister marionette
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program continued with a pair of ne
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no good messin’ aroun’ wid whit
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By inaugurating the action with thi
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lackface stereotypes, but also mark
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Brown’s puppetry work is enigmati
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(Marionette Minstrel Show), and Bru
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and personality for her/his creatio
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Paris’s semiotic choices introduc
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characters were common to the varie
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However, the essential realism of t
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A ninth grade Art Club in Oshkosh,
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the Royal Marionettes, with some re
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slips away with his clothes. The ti
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the same moment, Mumbo commented on
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Munger also introduced a range of a
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minstrelsy. They would also permit
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yo all arrested.” 249 In the same
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exclamation; “Oh, my lan’! Now
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Tom. Simon Legree was a puppet base
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event led to a full season of produ
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comic context of their puppet plays
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epresentations of blacks would cont
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impressive, and touted his enterpri
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clearly believes that some other pu
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of the play to connect with African
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its length (see figure 52). Finally
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O’Neill’s take on Henri Christo
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audiences, then goes on to suggest
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Chesse’s reading of Brutus was th
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meticulous artistic strokes then, c
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Many of the lost objects may have b
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sketches would be well-served by th
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The FTP production of Little Black
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transmitted to, and circulated with
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Conclusion: Phenomenology, Authenti
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the essence of less grotesque black
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used them in plays where puppets ce
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minstrelsy-derived Topsy, as genuin
Page 249 and 250:
productions featuring blackface cha
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_. Race and Ethnic Relations. 3 rd
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Durham, Weldon B. ed. American Thea
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Hill, Errol. Shakespeare in Sable:
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Mahar, William J. Behind the Burnt
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Powell, Herbert Preston. The World'
Page 261 and 262:
Spurling, Laurie. Phenomenology and
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