The Show

'Skeleton Canoe' is a multimedia, one-person puppet show. This ASU professor helped write it

KJZZ | By Mark Brodie

Published June 18, 2026 at 1:19 PM MST

An interdisciplinary artist with ties to Arizona State University will be performing June 20-21 at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, Connecticut.

Ty Defoe is part of All My Relations Collective out of New York City and is a professor of practice in ASU’s Medieval and Renaissance Studies program. He’s also a citizen of the Oneida Nation and Anishinaabe Tribe.

His show is called "Skeleton Canoe," and involves himself, as well as puppets. The Show spoke with Defoe about how he describes "Skeleton Canoe"

Man wearing a white shirt with a pink and blue rectangle bolo tie — Ty Defoe

Full conversation

TY DEFOE: Yeah, so “Skeleton Canoe,” it is an Indigenous, forward-leaning puppet show that is created out of birch bark materials and other sustainable materials. The story follows a young individual named Nabin that is a mask in the rights of passage in seasons of their life. They meet a canoe, or a jiimaan in the Anishinaabe language, that shares with them ancestral knowledge. And so together, going down a big giant river, they make unexpected friends and weather storms, and really think about what it is to underscore and highlight language and traditional ways of being.

And really for youngsters out there, to find your own voice, to find courage and love and to never give up. So this show will look like in its form is puppetry mixed with multimedia design, and it’s a really transformative experience. You feel like you’re entering a portal.

MARK BRODIE: Where did the idea for the story come from?

TY DEFOE: The story came from — I was in central Michigan doing some research at Central Michigan University, and I went to the cultural center there. It’s on the Anishinaabe homelands, and while I was doing research there, I was invited to a canoe building.

It was something where folks came back to the homelands to engage in cultural activities, and while I was there, I got to actually participate in building an actual canoe by hand. And that summer, I got to ... reinvestigate my connection to language, I got to also, right, get birch bark from the woods, I got to get in battles with mosquitoes, like tons of them, and get eaten alive. ... And really engage in community connection, right, in this really beautiful, euphoric way of coming home to community. And so that was a huge inspiration for me to write this story.

MARK BRODIE: Have you had experience before where you’ve had sort of that much first-person experience — like literal sounds like blood, sweat and tears — getting this show together?

TY DEFOE: It absolutely is. You know, “All My Relations Collective,” these are collaborators that are my ride-or-dies, they’re my soul people, and I really want to as an artist be making work with individuals that are enthusiastic about language and culture and about Indigenous individuals — and also centering queer and trans joy.

So for me, it is really, I would say, a healing process, being an Indigequeer person growing up in my community as the only person, sometimes I feel like I’m building and creating worlds that I would have wanted when I was a young person, even as an adult.

Man playing with puppets — Ty Defoe and his puppets in "Skeleton Canoe"

MARK BRODIE: What appeals to you about working with puppets?

TY DEFOE: I love puppets, because I feel like through the art of puppetry, not only their movement, but as an artist, as a performer, I’m anthropomorphizing something and animating ways for the brain to understand information that you might not be able to hear just upon voice or, you know, in a conversation. But it is emphasizing a awe-inspiring world by giving the breath of life to objects.

MARK BRODIE: And am I right that on stage, it’s just you, like there are no other humans on stage?

TY DEFOE: Believe it or not, it’s just me with puppets.

MARK BRODIE: Well, I ask because I wonder if you mention a mask, you have the puppets. ... Like is that helpful to maybe keep the story moving and and be able to maybe help the audience relate to each individual characters if they’re not just looking at you for all of them?

TY DEFOE: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, listen, I get tired of my own voice sometimes talking. [LAUGHS] What’s really wonderful actually is to animate these beautiful characters that I feel like are our relatives in ways, right?

Like I get to imagine, for example, a powwow emcee announcer and place that in our puppet like the kingfisher that’s wearing a mini headroach. I also get to express some feelings that are complex and hard to understand often times, such as anger or rage through a mask, right? And allow the mask to take on that emotion where it might be a little bit challenging to do that through a body or an actual face. It might be too close. So it’s really interesting to find my way in this wheel of the complex human emotions that exists and place some of those in the puppets, in the songs and in the mask work that’s being done.