Christopher Holliday is Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts and Visual Cultures Education at King’s College London, UK, specialising in Hollywood cinema, animation history, and contemporary digital media. His research is largely concerned with digital media technologies and forms of computer animation in contemporary visual culture. He is the co-author (with Sarah Thomas) of Smart Stardom: Advanced Digital Technologies and the Replication of Celebrity (2026) and author of The Computer-Animated Film: Industry, Style and Genre (2018). He is also the co-editor of the anthologies Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: New Perspectives on Production, Reception, Legacy (2021) and Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres (2018).

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction – Animation and Performance: A Moving Target?Christopher HollidayPart I. Becoming Animated1. On Performativity and Becoming AnimatedBirgitta Hosea2. Animation Doubled: Performing Uncertainty through De-SynchronisationVicky Smith3. The Implications of Arbitrary Movement in Puppet AnimationFarzaneh Yazdandoost4. Acting Algorithms: Animated Deepfake Performances in Contemporary MediaMihaela MihailovaPart II. Character, Stardom, and Voice5. Performing Stardom in Early Animated CartoonsMalcolm Cook6. Embody, Vocalise, Infiltrate: The Many Queer Performances of AnimationJacqueline Ristola, Edmond “Edo” Ernest Dit Alban and Kevin Cooley7. “I’d Like to Thank All of the Little People… That Have Made My Performance Possible”: Cartoon Stars, the Voice, and the Construction of Animated Acting in DVD Commentary TracksDavid McGowan8. “It’s the Voice Box that’s Broken”: Female Vocality and Pixar Animation StudiosColleen MontgomeryPart III. Expanded Performance9. Animating the Absent OtherPaul Piris10. Fusuma Karakuri – The Metaphysical, Animated, and EntertainingZach Dorn11. Indexing Dimensions: Performance and Animation in the VTuber Media EcologyCole Armitage12. “The visuals become the lead singer”: Animated Effects and Live Music ‘Performance’Matt NichollsBibliographyList of Contributors

This is the first major work systematically exploring the innumerable facets of animation performativity. Taken together, the essays in Performing Animation, Animating Performance: Bodies, Voices, and Spaces Between Screen and Stage outline a hermeneutic, expressed in various and sometimes competing definitions of performance, that gives us a glimpse of the cohesive dark matter binding not only animated media, but also human awareness and activity in so many forms.

Christopher Holliday is Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts and Visual Cultures Education at King’s College London, UK, specialising in Hollywood cinema, animation history, and contemporary digital media. His research is largely concerned with digital media technologies and forms of computer animation in contemporary visual culture. He is the co-author (with Sarah Thomas) of Smart Stardom: Advanced Digital Technologies and the Replication of Celebrity (2026) and author of The Computer-Animated Film: Industry, Style and Genre (2018). He is also the co-editor of the anthologies Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: New Perspectives on Production, Reception, Legacy (2021) and Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres (2018).

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction – Animation and Performance: A Moving Target?Christopher HollidayPart I. Becoming Animated1. On Performativity and Becoming AnimatedBirgitta Hosea2. Animation Doubled: Performing Uncertainty through De-SynchronisationVicky Smith3. The Implications of Arbitrary Movement in Puppet AnimationFarzaneh Yazdandoost4. Acting Algorithms: Animated Deepfake Performances in Contemporary MediaMihaela MihailovaPart II. Character, Stardom, and Voice5. Performing Stardom in Early Animated CartoonsMalcolm Cook6. Embody, Vocalise, Infiltrate: The Many Queer Performances of AnimationJacqueline Ristola, Edmond “Edo” Ernest Dit Alban and Kevin Cooley7. “I’d Like to Thank All of the Little People… That Have Made My Performance Possible”: Cartoon Stars, the Voice, and the Construction of Animated Acting in DVD Commentary TracksDavid McGowan8. “It’s the Voice Box that’s Broken”: Female Vocality and Pixar Animation StudiosColleen MontgomeryPart III. Expanded Performance9. Animating the Absent OtherPaul Piris10. Fusuma Karakuri – The Metaphysical, Animated, and EntertainingZach Dorn11. Indexing Dimensions: Performance and Animation in the VTuber Media EcologyCole Armitage12. “The visuals become the lead singer”: Animated Effects and Live Music ‘Performance’Matt NichollsBibliographyList of Contributors

This is the first major work systematically exploring the innumerable facets of animation performativity. Taken together, the essays in Performing Animation, Animating Performance: Bodies, Voices, and Spaces Between Screen and Stage outline a hermeneutic, expressed in various and sometimes competing definitions of performance, that gives us a glimpse of the cohesive dark matter binding not only animated media, but also human awareness and activity in so many forms.

Christopher Holliday is Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts and Visual Cultures Education at King’s College London, UK, specialising in Hollywood cinema, animation history, and contemporary digital media. His research is largely concerned with digital media technologies and forms of computer animation in contemporary visual culture. He is the co-author (with Sarah Thomas) of Smart Stardom: Advanced Digital Technologies and the Replication of Celebrity (2026) and author of The Computer-Animated Film: Industry, Style and Genre (2018). He is also the co-editor of the anthologies Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: New Perspectives on Production, Reception, Legacy (2021) and Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres (2018).

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction – Animation and Performance: A Moving Target?Christopher HollidayPart I. Becoming Animated1. On Performativity and Becoming AnimatedBirgitta Hosea2. Animation Doubled: Performing Uncertainty through De-SynchronisationVicky Smith3. The Implications of Arbitrary Movement in Puppet AnimationFarzaneh Yazdandoost4. Acting Algorithms: Animated Deepfake Performances in Contemporary MediaMihaela MihailovaPart II. Character, Stardom, and Voice5. Performing Stardom in Early Animated CartoonsMalcolm Cook6. Embody, Vocalise, Infiltrate: The Many Queer Performances of AnimationJacqueline Ristola, Edmond “Edo” Ernest Dit Alban and Kevin Cooley7. “I’d Like to Thank All of the Little People… That Have Made My Performance Possible”: Cartoon Stars, the Voice, and the Construction of Animated Acting in DVD Commentary TracksDavid McGowan8. “It’s the Voice Box that’s Broken”: Female Vocality and Pixar Animation StudiosColleen MontgomeryPart III. Expanded Performance9. Animating the Absent OtherPaul Piris10. Fusuma Karakuri – The Metaphysical, Animated, and EntertainingZach Dorn11. Indexing Dimensions: Performance and Animation in the VTuber Media EcologyCole Armitage12. “The visuals become the lead singer”: Animated Effects and Live Music ‘Performance’Matt NichollsBibliographyList of Contributors

This is the first major work systematically exploring the innumerable facets of animation performativity. Taken together, the essays in Performing Animation, Animating Performance: Bodies, Voices, and Spaces Between Screen and Stage outline a hermeneutic, expressed in various and sometimes competing definitions of performance, that gives us a glimpse of the cohesive dark matter binding not only animated media, but also human awareness and activity in so many forms.