5/7/2023 0 Comments Warhorse puppetry![]() String marionettes predominated, and Dick Whittington and His Cat, The Tragedy of Fair Rosamond, and the tragicomedy of Maudlin the Merchant’s Daughter of Bristol would have been familiar to audiences who saw the same shows performed with puppets or human actors at Southwark Fair, Bartholomew Fair and throughout London (see Fairs). With virtually all of the 18th century puppeteers coming from Europe – and most of them only touring in America before returning home – colonial puppetry was close, if not identical, to its British counterpart. The puppets were string puppets (marionettes) and, except for the husband-and-wife by-play, probably included few other elements of the now familiar Punch and Judy show. A similar programme was performed in New York City five years later by Richard Brickell and Richard Mosely, who may have also been responsible for the Philadelphia show. ![]() The performer’s name is unknown but we do know two of the puppet characters: Mister Punch who, with his first wife Joan, had wasted little time in crossing the Atlantic in search of new audiences. It took place in Philadelphia’s Coach and Horses Inn, across the street from the State House that would later host the signatories to the Declaration of Independence. ![]() The first recorded British puppet show within the American colonies was advertised on December 30, 1742. The first record of British puppeteers is an unnamed “company of poppet strowlers” who, sometime before 1708, performed in Bridgetown, Barbados and the Leeward Islands before returning to England. Puppets took a little longer to find their foothold in the East Coast settlements, where Puritan culture shunned theatre as immoral. Throughout the 16th century the increasing Spanish colonization of the American Southwest also meant the increasing visibility of puppet performances. Puppets, being small, easily transported and capable of performance by a single entertainer, were the ideal pioneers and colonizers of the embryonic American theatrical landscape. The first European puppets seem to have been brought to North America by the Spanish in 1524, fourteen years before the first European actors. Puppets and masks provided tangible representation and control of the supernatural world. Puppetry in the New World, like puppetry in the Old, began in religious ceremonies. If the Hopi corn ceremony was not the first use of puppets in the country, it was surely similar to their first use by Native peoples throughout the East Coast, Northwest, Pacific Islands and elsewhere. The mouths of the serpents would snap at the offerings the snakes would intertwine mud-headed wrestlers would fight them in vain the chanting intensified and, finally, the spectators would throw corn meal at the serpents, which they would accept before retreating, signalling the end of the ceremony. ![]() These ceremonies, accompanied by rhythmic chanting, would begin with the appearance of six large crested serpents, some five feet (150 centimetres) in length, swaying above the corn on the floor of the kiva (a room, usually underground, reserved for religious rituals) dimly illuminated by firelight. In these ceremonies – the success of which was deemed to determine the abundance or paucity of the year’s corn harvest – the serpents were large “puppets” manipulated both by hidden operators behind a screen and by strings running along the rafters of the ritual chamber in which the ceremonies took place. The first puppets on the North American continent were part of the ceremonial rituals of Native Americans (see Native American Puppetry) such as the symbolic corn sacrifice to the snake gods performed by the Hopi tribe of the American Southwest. Immigration from Europe began in the 15th century, and with additional migration from Africa, Latin America and Asia, the United States has become one of the most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations in the world. Native Americans (including indigenous peoples of Alaska and Hawaii) are composed of numerous, distinct tribes or “nations” and ethnic groups. Additional US territories include Puerto Rico, Guam, Northern Marianas, the US Virgin Islands, and American Samoa. Commonly referred to as the United States (US) or America, the United States of America (USA) consists of 50 states and a federal district 48 of these states and Washington, DC are in central North America, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, the state of Alaska is located in the north-western part of North America, and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific (see Oceania).
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