Puppetry as Cultural Exchange in Indigenous Communities

Sandy McKendrick is an independent Perth-based performer, designer, puppeteer and artistic director of community arts projects. She has undertaken projects in Zambia, South Africa, Tanzania and East Timor and in numerous parts of northern Australia. Her own company, Sandpiper Productions, has created several productions, most recently a work-in-progress showing of “Turtle and the Trade Winds,” which explores the tales of northwest coastal communities of Australia which are linked by their culture to the seafearers and fishermen of Indonesia. Here, a conversation between McKendrick and Geoffrey Milne about the eight projects undertaken in Australia and its territories–some in remote communities and some closer to the city of Perth–is presented. McKendrick discusses her own mostly large-scale, hybrid work, under the rubric “puppetry as a cultural exchange.”