Purim Piggle Puppets at Nottingham Trent University

I gave my first performance of Purim Piggle Puppets yesterday (14 September 2012) in Nottingham as part of an AHRC-sponsored network event,  Object Theatre: Methodology and Pedagogy. This same event featured also workshops, performances and talks by a number of leading practitioners, and I was able to receive detailed feedback in a discussion which followed. Reactions were quite positive on the whole: one participant said it was the most moving performance he had seen in some time.

One of the more poignant moments of the performance for some was a bit of exploratory play with a pen. 

It was suggested I work further on the things/objects of daily life, including my knapsack, and that I also get a handkerchief. (The room was cold and my nose was running and I had to dab it a number of times with a tissue.) This was interesting to me as my father always carried a hankie, in part because he was subject to regular nosebleeds. One of the reasons I don't carry one is that I always felt it odd that he would carry around in his pocket a soiled piece of cloth. 

There was also some suggestion that I play more with the emotional scale of the performance. Something not so easy for me as a non-actor, but an interesting challenge. 

The performance was documented on video and photographs and it is likely there will be excerpts of it available on the web in the coming months.

First rehearsal

I gave a rehearsal of Purim Piggle Puppets today to my test audience, my daughter Hannah (aged 13). I kept the theatrical gestures to  minimal, and my voice was intentionally flat.

Hannah said it was more interesting than a talk she had just given on The Handmaid's Tale at school, but also less expressive, more of a lecture than a performance.

A bit that I have worked out involving a pen I think is particularly effective in bringing about participation, and the one puppet in the show got a laugh, and there were occasional nods of recognition.

It is hard to say where to go with it from here. More objects? More participation? Less talk?

This blog concerns a project in development, a performance piece with the working title Purim Piggle Puppets. I aim to present this in autumn 2012. It will be part lecture, part participatory performance, part object performance, and will deal with the origins of theatricality. There will be autobiographical elements. Play. Readings from psychoanalytic texts. And, oh yes, a Purim play by my father Dr. Donald J. Cohen (1940-2001) and a puppet of him too. All stereotypes about children of psychiatrists are absolutely true.


I have begun compiling materials and making outlines. I have ordered a used copy of the paperback edition of English psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott's The Piggle and a folding table of the sort used by Stuart Sherman in his object theatre performances from amazon. A puppet of my father that once 'lived' in his study and has been with my sister Rachel for some years is being posted to me. Also copies of my father's Purim plays. (I have one from 1997 that I copied off my father's computer's hard drive already.) 


I am now in discussion with colleagues at Loughborough University and Oxford University about possible performances, and considering where else I might perform. 


I've launched this blog.


I am out of the gate.