Professor Cavallo wins the 2026 Nancy Staub Award
Professor Cavallo's essay “The Resilience of Sicilian Puppet Theater: Present and Future” published in Athenaeum Review 11 (spring 2025): 87-99 https://athenaeumreview.org/essay/the-resilience-of-sicilian-puppet-theater/ has been awarded a Nancy Staub Award for excellence in writing on the art of puppetry. The award was announced on March 22, 2026, as part of UNIMA-USA’s World Puppetry Day program.
Reviewers comments:
-This was an excellent survey of the performance adaptations made necessary by both the tastes of contemporary audiences and the Covid period. Prof. Cavallo has always combined her background as a literary scholar and her extensive field research into living performance traditions, so the refreshing vitality of the article was not a surprise. It provides the reader with a very clear understanding of contemporary Opera dei Pupi in Sicily - who performs, what they perform, and where they perform, and why they perform. And once again, by providing links to online content for those of us who have not seen performances with our own eyes, she has provided a real service by embracing the possibilities of multimodal scholarship
-This is a timely article and also documents on recent developments in Sicilian puppet theatre. Just as she has previously researched the way that the form evolved in New York, she here gives us insight into the current situation documenting the era and all its complexity. How does a traditional form survive and thrive—and evolve, with specificity and context? . . . The subject and individuals [concerned are] profiled well.
-Cavallo captures in a way no other writing on Sicily’s Opera dei Pupi has the current state of the traditional form and how its practitioners (particularly in Palermo and Catania, but also throughout Sicily) are adapting the theater to contemporary times, while maintaining and preserving its traditions. . . I was nearly weeping out of gratitude for scholarly writing that at last gives us a detailed overview of this unique theater today. Furthermore, is appending the material on her website . . .to reflect developments. . . . This is an article that, in my opinion, every researcher in the field AND puppeteer should read.
-I love writing that brings to life a rich tradition. And this is an exceptionally well written article with its inspiring coverage. Cavallo shares her more recent research on Sicily’s Opera dei Pupi and how it fares today. The reader learns current and interesting facts about the practice, the challenges and the successes in preserving and innovating within the tradition. So much so, I can’t help but make notes and copy down sections of Cavallo’s article. . . . It is a joy to learn that, in spite of all of the distractions and rather mindless “entertainment” gadgetry overwhelming our world today, Opera dei Pupi is alive and well.
As an organization founded in 1966, UNIMA-USA is the United States Center of Union Internationale de la Marionnette, the oldest international theatre organization in the world, founded in 1929. The award is named in honor of Nancy Lohman Staub, who has fostered understanding of world puppetry though her contributions to the museum collection at the Center for Puppetry Arts Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, leadership in UNIMA-International, and extensive writing on puppetry.