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.
