Panel Discussion: Tim Cusack and Claudia Orenstein

Claudia Orenstein is Theatre Professor at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, who has spent nearly two decades writing on contemporary and traditional puppetry in the US and Asia. Recent publications include Reading the Puppet Stage: Reflections on Dramaturgy and Performing Objects (UNIMA-USA Nancy Staub Award, 2024) and the co-edited books Puppet and Spirit: Ritual Religion and Performing Objects (in two volumes), Women and Puppetry: Critical and Historical Investigations (UNIMA-USA Nancy Staub Award, 2022, ATHE Excellence in Editing Award Short-List, 2020), and The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance. She worked as dramaturg on Tom Lee and kuruma ningyō master Nishikawa Koryū V’s Shank’s Mare, and on Stephen Earnhart’s multimedia production Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. She is a Board Member of UNIMA-USA, Associate Editor of Asian Theatre Journal, and Editor of the online, peer review journal, Puppetry International Research, published on the CUNY Academic Commons in collaboration with UNIMA-USA. She received a 2021-22 Fulbright Research Fellowship for research on ritual puppetry in Japan.

Tim Cusack was the co-founder and artistic director of Theatre Askew and an adjunct lecturer in Theatre at Hunter College. For Askew he conceived, co-adapted, co-directed and appeared as Caligula in the company’s six-part serial adaptation of I, Claudius, and directed the New York premiere of William M. Hoffman’s Cornbury: The Queen’s Governor (starring David Greenspan and Everett Quinton). He appeared onstage for Askew in Bald Diva! (Notable Performance of the Year—TheaterMania & NYTheater.com), The Tempest, i google myself, and Horseplay, or the Fickle Mistress: A Protean Picaresque in the Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa. For the Theatre Askew Youth Performance Experience (TAYPE) program, he helped devise and directed many of the original plays created by its LGBTQ+ and allied youth ensembles. He directed “The Bed” and “Camera Obscura” sections of the OBIE-winning OFFSTAGE: East and West Village Fragments for Peculiar Works Project. He was named by Next magazine as one of the most significant figures among the new generation of out gay theatre artists and is an inductee to the Indy Theater Hall of Fame. BFA NYU/TSOA. MA Hunter/CUNY.

Erin B. Mee is a scholar-director whose productions have been experienced in over 36 countries. In the United States she has directed at the Public Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, SoHo Rep, HERE, The Magic Theatre, and The Guthrie Theater. She is the Founding Artistic Director of This Is Not A Theatre Company, with whom she has conceived and directed Pool Play, A Serious Banquet, Readymade Cabaret, Ferry Play, Subway Plays, Festival de la Vie for the Avignon Festival, Versailles, Pool Play 2.0 for the International Theatre Festival of Kerala, Theatre In The Dark: Carpe Diem, Play!, Readymade Cabaret 2.0, Play…In Your Bathtub 2.0, and Tree Confessions (starring Kathleen Chalfant). She is the author of Theatre of Roots: Redirecting the Modern Indian Stage, co-editor of Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage, editor of DramaContemporary: India, and co-editor of Modern Asian Theatre and Performance 1900-2000. She has written numerous articles for TDR, Theatre Journal, Performance Research, Critical Stages, American Theatre Magazine, among others. Her born-digital Scalar article “Hearing the Music of the Hemispheres” won the ATHE-ASTR Award for Best Digital Article in 2016. She is Associate Arts Professor in the Department of Drama, Tisch, NYU. www.erinbmee.com

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The 11th La MaMa Puppet Festival Fall 2024 is made possible by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), the Cultural Office of the Spanish Embassy in Washington DC and the Cultural Office of the Consulate General of Spain in New York, the Howard Gilman Foundation, The Jim Henson Foundation, the Québec Government Office in New York, Puppet Slam Network, Radio Drama Network, The Shubert Foundation. Additional support from Cheryl Henson is gratefully acknowledged.

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