Since creating my storytelling performance with papercut images for Kleist’s "The Earthquake in Chile" in 2016, my work has increasingly moved in this direction: live, highly gestural storytelling performed in interaction with a sequence of two-dimensional papercut images, illuminated from behind. The work brings together elements of storytelling, graphic novels and comics, and full-scene shadow puppetry. I am currently performing "The Vulture", based on Kafka’s Der Geier, and developing two further pieces to create an evening of three stories: another text by Kafka and a story by Jorge Luis Borges.

 

Alongside my performance work, I am awaiting the Kleist Museum’s response to my submitted article on Kleist’s "On the Marionette Theatre". The article offers an original investigation of the work’s relationship to science and puppetry. I am also writing for journals specializing in Puppet Theater and in the intersection of art and science.

 

I continue to research what neurobiology and cognitive science can teach us about the generation and use of co-speech gestures. This research informs the development of a training workshop for actors, puppeteers, and storytellers, exploring gesture as an embodied and expressive component of performance.