Presence: the touch of the puppet

Using the ideal of the puppet as model and foil, this article looks at ideas about presence, play, animation, and belief. Puppetry's role as a vital, theatrical form has deep roots in universal, cultural experience, and the notion of an inhering spirit that acts for and through image, idol, toy, or fetish is perhaps the central thread running through all attempts to represent and simulate animate life. Through a discussion of the phenomenology of the puppet--the source of its sensory, aesthetic, and metaphysical power--questions are raised about the projection of desire and purpose onto other transitional things, real and imagined.