Puppeteer and mixed-media artist Emily Schubert showcased an 18th-century form of storytelling known as ‘crankies’ to a small, intimate crowd of local creatives earlier this month.
Crankies, formally known as scrolled or moving panoramas, provide the visual narration to a story or song. Crankies are long, visual scrolls, loaded onto two spools, which are ‘cranked’, giving the art form its name, and displayed through a viewing window.
The scrolls have been used across the world for hundreds of years as a powerful medium for visual artists and storytellers.
Schubert used the first crankie she ever made in 2015 to perform a backlit, hand-cranked scroll of illustrated images to tell the story ‘Heartsplinters’.
“It is a story about what happens when the heart of the world grows too full to contain itself and bursts into a million pieces scattered across its lands,” Schubert told the Cayman Compass.
“It was a dream that came to me as a series of images much as you see it in the crankie performance.”
‘Gateway drug to puppetry’
Regarding the art form, Schubert said, there is a huge revival happening right now around the world. After her visit, Cayman is now among the places participating in the craft’s resurgence.
“I call it like the ‘gateway drug’ to puppetry because it is a puppet-adjacent art form. It’s under the umbrella and it’s really easy for visual artists that normally work two dimensionally to move into a three-dimensional space because it has all these performative elements,” she said.
“We are very open to thinking outside of the traditional box when it comes to the art form, and I’ve seen people do a lot of different kinds of things, so it’s very exciting to bring an ancient art form into the new age.”
Schubert’s love for crankies began ten years ago. She had a friend that was making them at the time and it inspired her.
“I had this dream, and I woke up and I was like, I know what I’m going to make a crankie about. I decided I was no longer afraid of power tools, and I went into my dad’s wood shop and made my own crankie box and it took me about a month to cut it out and complete the story,” she said.
Her love of crankies has led her to create and participate in puppet theatre festivals and workshops in Europe, Indonesia and the United States, including at the Letni Letna Festival in 2014 in Prague, with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 2022, and the New Orleans Giant Puppet Festival in 2022-2023. She is also the curator and organiser of the Baltimore Crankie Festival and has hosted many a ‘puppet slam’, including her self-produced ‘Experimental Puppet Happenings’ in 2022-2023.
For Schubert, what she likes most about working in the world of crankies is the art form’s capacity to connect humans through time and space.
“It is an ancient form of storytelling that is currently going through somewhat of a beautiful renaissance. It is a ‘new old way’ of thinking, making and storytelling that is a testament to the way we are going to have to start approaching the world’s problems if we are to take steps towards the collective visionary future of our dreams,” she said.
‘A link to learning’
Schubert, who now lives in Vermont, USA, said she was happy to visit the island.
“When I left, there was two feet of snow, so this is very different … very happy for my little escape from the winter,” she said.
Schubert’s visit was made possible thanks to the Center Of Cultural Vibrancy, a US non-profit that sponsors cross-cultural arts exchange programmes.
She has had the opportunity to travel across the world to inspire more artists to embrace the art form, including Caymanian artist and storyteller Nasaria Suckoo Chollette.
“I was very excited to have Emily here because she is my link to learning how to make a crankie and she shared so many insights from her experience as a crankie artist,” Suckoo Chollette told the Compass.
“During her visit, Emily immersed herself into the Caymanian culture and went to places I’ve never gone to, so I was amazed to see her immerse herself in what Cayman has to offer and all of our cultural heritage sites and institutions.”
In addition to learning how to build her own crankie and perhaps the first crankie ever in the Cayman Islands, Suckoo Chollette has been selected to participate in the inaugural ‘Crankies Take New York’ festival at Flushing Town Hall in Queens, New York from 28 Feb.-1 March.
The event is co-produced by the Center for Cultural Vibrancy and aims to support and celebrate traditional artists, musicians, craftspeople, dancers and more to promote cultural exchange and education worldwide.
Suckoo Chollette will perform a traditional duppy story alongside her husband, Randy Chollette, with cultural music as part of the event.
“I’m very grateful for that and I really feel confident that I will be able to showcase Caymanian culture through that medium. I’ll be telling a duppy story and I’ll be sharing that to the people of Queens and everyone else who attends,” Suckoo Chollette said.
Suckoo Chollette said the hope is to return to Cayman after the festival and present her works to local audiences.
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