Hand Puppet Faction Walks Out of Puppetry Convention, Accuses Marionettes of 'String Privilege'

The 112th Annual Convention of the International Puppetry Association was thrown into disarray Saturday when the entire hand puppet delegation of 47 members staged a walkout during the opening plenary session, accusing the organization's leadership of 'systematic marginalization of non-stringed puppetry forms.' The walkout was precipitated by a panel titled 'Articulation Across Traditions,' which devoted 55 of its 60 minutes to string-based performance techniques, 4 minutes to rod puppetry, and 1 minute to hand puppetry, during which the moderator said, 'And of course, hand puppets exist too.' 'That is the state of this organization,' said Bartholomew Glove, president of the Hand Puppet Alliance, speaking from the hotel lobby where the delegation had regrouped. 'We are an afterthought. A footnote. A literal hand wave. We invented interactive puppetry. Punch and Judy is older than half the marionette traditions in that room. And we get one minute.' The marionette faction responded with a joint statement expressing 'deep respect for all puppetry forms' while noting that 'string puppetry involves a degree of technical complexity that warrants proportionally more discussion time.' The statement was signed by 83 marionette practitioners and delivered by a six-foot marionette that descended from the ceiling on wires in what hand puppet delegates described as 'exactly the kind of showboating we're talking about.' Mediation efforts by the shadow puppet contingent were rebuffed by both sides. 'The shadow puppeteers think they're above this because they don't have physical bodies,' said Glove. 'They're the Switzerland of puppetry. It's convenient.' The convention has rescheduled the plenary session with equal time for all traditions. The finger puppet delegation, which was not mentioned in any session, has reportedly 'accepted their invisibility with the quiet grace of a form that fits on one finger.'