Maya the Uses of Illusion at the Volkenburg Puppetry Symposium on Saturday 28 January 2023
Channel: HowlRound Theatre Commons
Date: 2023-01-28

Maya:  the Uses of Illusion
Hindu cosmology regards the material world as Maya – illusion.  The soul’s journey to enlightenment is a process of awakening from the illusion that our impermanent material existence is separate from the divine consciousness.  Maya therefore also encompasses the wondrous creativity of the gods who brought forth and maintain the material world.  Western theories such as Graham Harman’s Object Oriented Ontology, similarly conclude that while humans are not the only agents in the universe, we can only enter into the reality of the material world outside our own consciousness through metaphor.  Thus Harman turns to aesthetics rather than science for new tools of knowledge creation.  Puppets, masks, and performing objects can be powerful implements in this endeavor because they function as three-dimensional metaphors that explode Cartesian dualisms such as Self and Other by enabling us to apprehend material objects as subjects in their own right.  The shows represented in this panel use performing objects to un-mask the grandiose obsessions of the human ego and make space for the enchantment of vibrant matter in our perception of reality.

Moderated by Dr. Paulette Richards with panelists Eduardo Felix (Macunaima Gourmet), Janni Younge (Hamlet), and Jonathan Meyer (as though your body were right).

The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival presents the the Ellen Van Volkenburg Puppet Symposium livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network on Saturday 21 January and Saturday 28 January 2023.

The Ellen Van Volkenburg Puppetry Symposium brings together practicing festival artists with scholars to consider the intersection of puppetry with other disciplines and ideas. Before 1912, the year the Little Theater of Chicago was founded in the historic Fine Arts Building, the term “puppeteer” did not even exist. Little Theater director Ellen Van Volkenburg needed a program credit for the actors she had trained to manipulate marionettes while speaking the text of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and she coined the word “puppeteer.” That marked the dawn of the movement that has brought us to the rich art form now practiced around the world. In Van Volkenburg’s honor, the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival presents four discussions featuring festival artists and key topics from the works presented in the Festival.

https://howlround.com/happenings/artists-and-scholars-consider-intersection-puppetry-other-disciplines-and-ideas