From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Puppet theatre and Beach Surgery
For specific marionette works, see The Harare Marionette Fragments.
For Turkish shadow-puppet cycle, see Karagöz Döngüsü: The Shadow-Puppet Recurrence.
Puppet theatre across world cultures mirrors Beach Surgery's core structure: the cyclic return, the unseen hand, the shadow's doubled life. Balinese and Javanese wayang traditions — where a dalang improvises and manipulates silhouettes through entire nights — parallel Katita's strategic authority and Leif's condition as the moved instrument. Karagöz Döngüsü: The Shadow-Puppet Recurrence (2012) stages the pair across 40 discrete scenes (*perde*); each time they touch the screen's center, a fracture and reset occur. The glitch becomes shadow-work's inevitable geometry.
The Surgical Radio Play Series (Radio Kassan, 1989) used only visible puppeteers' hands and distorted voices to evoke Leif's multiplicity. Recent durational work — The Ouagadougou Leatherwork Cycle (2024–2027) — involves community-stitched, intentionally incomplete textile marionettes moved through multi-month street processions. The incomplete puppet embodies unfinished care: instability as theology.