Donald Vestal's 1930s puppet theatre production of a Gertrude Stein play, Identity , or I Am I Because My Little Dog Knows Me , marked a confluence of Midwest modernism, the resources of the Federal Theatre Project, the development of American puppet theatre as a modernist art form, and the coincidental presence of Stein, Vestal, Thornton Wilder, Bil Baird, and other artists of 1930s Chicago.

From the beginning, masks, puppets, and performing objects have been central to performance. In his introduction to this special issue of TDR, guest editor John Bell surveys the field.

The Bread and Puppet's Domestic Resurrection Circus emerged within the counterculture of the 1960s and ′70s and continued through 1998 Bell places this long-running event within the cultural ecology of Vermont and the U.S.A.

In an interview with John Bell, maskmaker Gustavo Boada discusses how the Peruvian theatre group Yuyachkani has recuperated traditional Andean performance aesthetics.