Uploaded November 2024 | Updated September 2026, 10 hours ago
Nick Lehane, “Breathing Life: The Mysterious Power of Puppetry”
18 November 2021, 19:00 EST
Lesley University 29 Everett St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
ZOOM
Sponsors: Mosse Lectures, Mosse Foundation, Lesley University
Moderated by Janet Steinmayer, President, Lesley University
2021 Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture: @-lesley/community-engagement/strauch-mosse-visiting-artist-lectures
The Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture Series, funded by Lesley University Chair of the Board Hans Strauch and the Mosse Foundation, brings world-renowned artists to campus.
More than a third of Lesley’s undergraduate and graduate students are engaged in the arts, whether through the university’s art and design, creative writing, community arts, or expressive therapies programs. This visiting artist lecture series serves as a catalyst for artistic and cultural inquiry. It reinforces arts integration across our schools. And best of all—it’s free and open to the public.
Theater maker Nick Lehane recently explored the "mysterious power of puppetry" in a virtual talk as part of the Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture Series. Lehane shared how the art form can connect with an audience and change their perspective. He was the second speaker in Lesley University’s 2021-22 Thought Leadership Series on 18 November 2021.
Excerpt from Lesley University story on Nick Lehane's lecture: https://lesley.edu/news/nick-lehane-unlocks-mysterious-power-of-puppetry
Nick Lehane unlocks ‘mysterious power of puppetry’
Puppets are more than wood and fabric for Nick Lehane.
“They hover at the threshold of the subject and the object, the waking and the dreaming, the conscious and the unconscious, the sacred and the profane, the religious and the secular,” said the Brooklyn-based puppeteer and theater maker.
Lehane spoke on the “mysterious power of puppetry” via Zoom on Thursday, Nov. 18, as part of the Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture Series. During his hour-long talk, he reflected on the history of puppetry and its ability to cross the “liminal space” between worlds and, in so doing, to ignite imagination and empathy.
Archeology “suggests that our earliest ancestors shared this strange impulse to animate the inanimate,” Lehane said, noting that 3,000-year-old shadow puppets have been unearthed, and the likes of Aristotle and Plato mention puppetry in their writing.
Lehane’s introduction to puppets came during his childhood, as he had an in-house enthusiast in his father, who directed children’s television and studied puppetry. Many years later while studying theater abroad, Lehane was reintroduced to the art form, this time to the “stunning delicacy” of Japan's Bunraku, which employs three puppeteers for each puppet.
Upon returning to the United States, Lehane pursued a career in puppetry and began making his own puppets and productions in the style, though not the cultural tradition, of Bunraku.
Using a rehearsal puppet given to him by his father, he demonstrated the way a simple, nondescript object can draw in the audience and communicate thoughts and feelings through three traits — breath, gaze and weight. The puppeteer showed how even the simple act of manipulating a puppet’s movements so that it appears to take in slow and then quick and then ragged breaths transforms it from a “pile of rags, a couple of dowels, a ball on a stick” into a seemingly living, breathing, thinking creature.
Nick Lehane, “Breathing Life: The Mysterious Power of Puppetry”
18 November 2021, 19:00 EST
Lesley University 29 Everett St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
ZOOM
Sponsors: Mosse Lectures, Mosse Foundation, Lesley University
Moderated by Janet Steinmayer, President, Lesley University
2021 Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture: @-lesley/community-engagement/strauch-mosse-visiting-artist-lectures
The Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture Series, funded by Lesley University Chair of the Board Hans Strauch and the Mosse Foundation, brings world-renowned artists to campus.
More than a third of Lesley’s undergraduate and graduate students are engaged in the arts, whether through the university’s art and design, creative writing, community arts, or expressive therapies programs. This visiting artist lecture series serves as a catalyst for artistic and cultural inquiry. It reinforces arts integration across our schools. And best of all—it’s free and open to the public.
Theater maker Nick Lehane recently explored the "mysterious power of puppetry" in a virtual talk as part of the Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture Series. Lehane shared how the art form can connect with an audience and change their perspective. He was the second speaker in Lesley University’s 2021-22 Thought Leadership Series on 18 November 2021.
Excerpt from Lesley University story on Nick Lehane's lecture: https://lesley.edu/news/nick-lehane-unlocks-mysterious-power-of-puppetry
Nick Lehane unlocks ‘mysterious power of puppetry’
Puppets are more than wood and fabric for Nick Lehane.
“They hover at the threshold of the subject and the object, the waking and the dreaming, the conscious and the unconscious, the sacred and the profane, the religious and the secular,” said the Brooklyn-based puppeteer and theater maker.
Lehane spoke on the “mysterious power of puppetry” via Zoom on Thursday, Nov. 18, as part of the Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture Series. During his hour-long talk, he reflected on the history of puppetry and its ability to cross the “liminal space” between worlds and, in so doing, to ignite imagination and empathy.
Archeology “suggests that our earliest ancestors shared this strange impulse to animate the inanimate,” Lehane said, noting that 3,000-year-old shadow puppets have been unearthed, and the likes of Aristotle and Plato mention puppetry in their writing.
Lehane’s introduction to puppets came during his childhood, as he had an in-house enthusiast in his father, who directed children’s television and studied puppetry. Many years later while studying theater abroad, Lehane was reintroduced to the art form, this time to the “stunning delicacy” of Japan's Bunraku, which employs three puppeteers for each puppet.
Upon returning to the United States, Lehane pursued a career in puppetry and began making his own puppets and productions in the style, though not the cultural tradition, of Bunraku.
Using a rehearsal puppet given to him by his father, he demonstrated the way a simple, nondescript object can draw in the audience and communicate thoughts and feelings through three traits — breath, gaze and weight. The puppeteer showed how even the simple act of manipulating a puppet’s movements so that it appears to take in slow and then quick and then ragged breaths transforms it from a “pile of rags, a couple of dowels, a ball on a stick” into a seemingly living, breathing, thinking creature.
