Work in Progress

After over 40 years as a professional puppeteer touring Israel and the world ( 16 countries, playing in 5 languages),I became increasingly interested in oral storytelling traditions in different cultures. With my background in Indonesian wayang I created a storytelling performance with papercuts for Kleist’s "The Earthquake in Chile" in 2016. Ever since, my work has increasingly moved in the direction of creating live, highly gestural storytelling where voice, body and text interact  with a sequence of changing papercut images illuminated from behind, bringing together elements of oral storytelling, graphic novels /comics, and full-scene shadow puppetry.

I am currently performing "The Vulture", based on Kafka’s Der Geier ( see Performing Now) and developing two further pieces to create an evening of three stories: another text by Kafka and one 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.

Contact: patod3@gmail.com