The Puppet Moves, Imagination Follows
	On the Road with Oberlin’s Watson Fellows		"Puppetry opens within us a way to play with the world, using and combining the objects of our existence," says Aya Kanai of New York City. "It explores realms we do not have commerce with in daily life; we are enveloped in a fantastical world, suspending our disbelief, and ultimately giving ourselves a chance to think differently about the world around us. I believe that puppetry is a medium with potential for powerful communication and storytelling. I hope to explore my own path within it." Thanks to the Watson Fellowship, Kanai, a double major in visual arts and religion with a minor in East Asian studies, will do her exploring in three countries where puppetry is a vibrant art form: Japan, the Czech Republic, and Poland. In each country, she will work for experimental puppet theaters that she says are "testing and expanding the definition of puppetry as a medium--theaters that take an alternative approach to narrative and design." In Japan, home to more than 100 professional puppet companies, Kanai will work for one that performs experimental and traditional works called Youki-Za. "Puppetry is part of the Czech Republic's traditional popular culture," says Kanai. While in that country she will work for Theatre Drak. In Poland, she will work with Fundacja Wierszalin, located in the town of Bialystok, near the borders of Poland and Belarus. "It is an intersection for Catholic, Russian Orthodox, and Jewish cultures, as well as a significant center of traditional Polish folk culture and custom," says Kanai. She expects that her academic background in the arts and theology will serve her well in this environment, and with the troupe. "Their work is grounded in this cultural crossroads," she says. "It draws upon traditional imagery, music and customs to explore the many influences on the borderline between the east and west." Travel and study in Italy the summer preceding her junior year resonates in her consciousness; a marionette performance at the Spoleto Music Festival there kindled her interest in puppetry, as did the friendships she made--particularly with a Vietnamese-American shopkeeper who crafted all the puppets displayed in his store. During her junior year she developed a private reading in puppetry with Nanette Yannuzzi-Macias, associate professor of art. "I learned a great deal about disciplined, self-directed work from designing and executing this puppetry private reading," says Kanai. Her interest in the form galvanized, she spent the following summer interning with a nonprofit puppet theater in Portland, Oregon. While there, Kanai experienced all aspects of American puppet theater--creative, practical, sculptural, and theatrical. It is also where she learned this fundamental fact: That although "the puppet is the central tool of a performance, it is only through its movement that the experience of the imagination can occur."
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