Colette Searls is Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), MD, USA. She is an award-winning puppetry artist and stage director and her teaching focuses on acting, directing, and puppetry.
Colette Searls is an Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), USA, where she teaches acting, directing, and puppetry. She is an award-winning puppetry artist and has received grants from the Jim Henson Foundation and Puppeteers of America for her original works in object theatre.
- An in-depth exploration of how performing objects function in a leading film and TV franchise.
- Written for an interdisciplinary range of students across the performing arts as well as film, TV, media and popular culture studies.
- The first book to introduce the theoretical framework of distance, distillation, duality to puppet studies, as well as being the first to explore the Star Wars franchise in the context of its central puppets and masks.
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A Galaxy of Things explores the ways in which all puppets, masks, makeup-prosthetic figures are "material characters," and uses Star Wars creatures, droids, and helmeted-characters to illustrate what makes the good ones not only compelling, but meaningful.
The book begins with author Colette Searls´ Star Wars thing aesthetic, described through a release-order overview of what creatures, droids, and masked humans have brought to 45+ years of live-action Star Wars. Building on theories from the burgeoning field of puppetry and material performance, it defines these "material characters" as a group and describes three specific powers that they share—distance, distillation, and duality—using characters like C-3PO and Jabba the Hutt to exemplify how all three work to generate meaning. An in-depth exploration of the original Empire Strikes Back Yoda and "Baby" Yoda (Grogu) reveals how these two puppets use those powers to transform their human companions: Luke Skywalker, and then Din Djarin. Searls provides an in-depth analysis of Darth Vader´s mask trajectory across three trilogies (1977–2019), revealing its contribution as a "performing thing." Finally, the book presents problematic uses of material character powers by critiquing droids in service, and the historical use of racial stereotypes in figures like Jar Jar Binks, before offering a hopeful analysis of how early 2020s live-action Star Wars began centering the non-, semi-, and concealed human in redemptive ways.
This is an accessible exploration for students and scholars of theatre, film, media studies, and popular culture who want to better understand puppets, masks, and makeup-prosthetic characters. Its terms and concepts will be useful to scholarly explorations of non-, semi-, and concealed human portrayals for a range of other fields, including posthumanism, object-oriented ontology, ethnic studies, and material culture.
A Galaxy of Things explores the ways in which all puppets, masks, makeup-prosthetic figures are "material characters," using iconic Star Wars characters like Yoda and R2-D2 to illustrate what makes them so compelling.
As an epic franchise, Star Wars has been defined by creatures, droids, and masked figures since the original 1977 movie. Author Colette Searls, a theatre director and expert in puppetry studies, uncovers how non-humans like Chewbacca, semi-humans like Darth Maul, and even concealed humans like Boba Fett tell meaningful stories that conventional human characters cannot. Searls defines three powers that puppets, masked figures, and other material characters wield—distance, distillation, and duality—and analyzes Star Wars´ most iconic robots and aliens to demonstrate how they work across nearly a half-century of live-action films. Yoda and "Baby Yoda"—two of popular culture´s greatest puppets—use these qualities to transform their human companions. Similarly, Darth Vader´s mask functions as a performing object driving mystery and suspense across three film trilogies. The power of material characters has also been wielded in problematic ways, such as stereotypes in the representation of service droids and controversial creatures like Jar Jar Binks. Bringing readers forward into the first Star Wars live-action streaming series, the book also explores how the early 2020s stories centered material characters in particularly meaningful, often redemptive ways.
A Galaxy of Things is an accessible guide to puppets, masks, and other material characters for students and scholars of theatre, film, puppetry, and popular culture studies. It also offers useful perspectives on non-human representation for researchers in object-oriented ontology, posthumanism, ethnic studies, and material culture.
1. The Things in the Galaxy 2. Distance, Distillation, and Duality 3. Powerful, Puppetry is: How two Yodas make meaning 4. I Find Your Lack of Face Disturbing: The mask performance of Darth Vader (and friends) 5. Climbing Out of the Sarlacc Pitt: The problematic side of material character powers
A Galaxy of Things explores the ways in which all puppets, masks, and makeup-prosthetic figures are "material characters," and uses Star Wars creatures, droids, and helmeted-characters to illustrate what makes the good ones not only compelling, but meaningful.
Winner of the Nancy Staub Publications Award 2024!
