Encounters with Non/Living Beings: Puppet Artist Brad Brackenridge in <i>Process and Performance</i>

This article explores the work of puppet artist Brad Brackenridge, particularly as expressed through his show VERTEP and a 2023 exhibition at artist-run gallery Artspace, Brad Brackenridge: Performance/Process, an offshoot of Brad’s work as the gallery’s artist-in-residence in 2021. Using an analysis of a personal experience of viewing Brackenridge’s solo puppet performance VERTEP, recollections of other performances, and an investigation of the lived-experience context for Brackenridge’s creative process, it will suggest that puppetry can function as a form of radical empathy, bearing witness to and calling into question the complexities of the relationships between performer and performance objects, and performer and audience.