The Judy Project: A Critical and Historical Investigation of Women and Puppetry from the Eighteenth to the Twenty-First Century

The Judy Project: A Critical and Historical Investigation of Women and Puppetry from the Eighteenth to the Twenty-First Century (JPEWP) is the first transhistorical examination of the (re)presentation of gender and identity in Punch and Judy one of the most iconic English puppet traditions. Despite a growing interest in puppet theatre, scholarship does not typically delve into gender issues.

The inclusion of women as practitioners and theoreticians, and critical analyses of female figures are scarce.

My research, however, shows that women have been inserting themselves throughout its history in significant and under-examined ways.

JPEWP will focus on women practitioners as invisible or concealed labour and innovators, and ways the female puppet figure reveals and conceals dominate ideology and anxiety about the female.

This project investigates inscriptions and subversions of gender, tracing both its history and alternative, and feminist interpretations focusing on the female character Joan/Judy beginning with early Modern representations of the female figure to contemporary radical feminist re-imaginings.

To manage the expansive time frame, I will use case studies from specific culturally volatile moments situated within a trans-historical framework that will be connected through the theoretical approach and common questions.

The project will be an interdisciplinary investigation that goes beyond standard understandings of ‘text’ to offer innovative analyses of what is usually seen as archival ‘ephemera’ in order to detect the traces that remain of puppet theatre.

As violence against women and female bodies increases and in light of renewed interest in institutionalized sexism, this research investigates: how the female body is presented in a popular performance form, by whom and why.

Further, by questioning the narrative of a traditional form and its history, this work destabilizes orthodox notions of a singular male dominated history.