Human puppets at the crossroads : a multilayered puppet adaptation of Katherine Mansfield's classic short story The Daughters of the Late Colonel

Roč.29,č.1(2026)
Puppetry with(out) Classics

Abstrakt
Katherine Mansfield's The Daughters of the Late Colonel, one of her most powerful classic stories, follows two sisters struggling in the aftermath of their father's death. Although at first it seems they have finally gained freedom from his oppressive influence, it soon becomes clear that breaking free from ingrained patterns is difficult, if not impossible. This paper discusses the original ways Bábkové divadlo na Rázcestí (the Puppet Theatre at the Crossroads), Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, adapted and introduced this story to new audiences. It first examines how Mansfield's writing aligns with symbolic/non-realist art and masks. Then, it presents a case study on how the theatre company bridged the one-hundred-year time gap and the geographical and cultural distance between early 20th-century Anglophone modernism and 21st-century young Slavic and global mindsets. By connecting moments from the original text to the unique puppet performance, the paper demonstrates Mansfield's ongoing appeal across cultures and eras.

Klíčová slova:
Katherine Mansfield; modernism; puppet theatre; material performance; adaptation; Theatre at the Crossroads

Stránky:
71–87
Reference

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