Marissa Fenley
is a Harper Schmidt Collegiate Assistant Professor in Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago. She is also a dramaturg, puppeteer, and interdisciplinary artist.
Marissa’s current book project, Puppet Theory: Dramaturgies of Personhood begins from the simple observation that most puppetry practices deploy techniques to make objects appear convincingly person-like. She argues that anthropomorphic puppet theater consistently materializes the minimum requirements to believable seem like a person and offers a study of the materialist backstories of four puppetry practices—ventriloquism, marionetting, protest puppetry, Muppetry—in order to bring into view the ways that puppetry’s mechanics produce dramaturgies of personhood that are specifically minimal, unburdened and simplified.