A dog named Kashtanka finds herself lost and alone. Her master, a carpenter, has taken her out but wandered off. A new master takes her in, feeds her, and teaches her to perform. She is well-fed but becomes bored in this new life, restricted to a single room and an endless routine. Then, one night, the gander who lives with her dies suddenly. She replaces him in the master’s act in the circus. At her debut, her first master is in the audience. He calls out to her, and she jumps back into his arms. She returns to her first home.

This story, penned by Russian writer Anton Chekhov more than a century ago, acts as a structural thread to anchor an ethnography of two state-run institutions in Kazakhstan: a puppet theatre and a temporary home for children under seven. The Almaty State Puppet Theatre, in preparing a stage adaptation of Kashtanka, works to attract new audiences to puppetry through new techniques of animation.

Hope House, a home where parents place children for one to seven years, is much like the second home of the new master: it provides nourishment and warmth, but it also relies on children to perform. Government and nongovernment sponsors frequently visit, and children put on costumes to sing and dance for these benefactors. At the same time, children are taught always to anticipate their return home to their parents. They always understand that this home where most of their memories have been made is not their real, permanent home. They enact scenes of family and care in their everyday play that are at once reflections of the care they receive at Hope House and an anticipation of the family home that they will find when their parents resume care.

In Kazakhstan, as in many places, figures of cute children act as potent symbols of the future. The children of Hope House are therefore featured in government and corporate press campaigns designed to showcase a commitment to the future of the nation-state. At the same time, such animations of ideal childhood serve to ensure the continued support for children such as those at Hope House.

Throw Your Voice follows Kashtanka’s story as the children’s story. We see how they make use of play and performance, in addition to making images with my camera, to establish and maintain relationships with one another, with the adults around them, and with their absent families, always preparing for their eventual return to their first home.

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