Lee Bryan - That Puppet Guy (Atlanta, GA)
Pinocchio is a family theater piece which uses found objects, shadow
puppets, and Commedia-style mask work to explore an old peddler's story of a
woodcarver's wish for a real live boy. Twists within the script explore the
parameters between authority and rebellion while blurring the lines between
fantasy and reality. ($3,000)
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Center for Puppetry Arts (Atlanta, GA)
Dinosaurs is an educational show for children that recounts the
development and decline of the dinosaurs from the point of view of a
dissatisfied young songbird. Through black light, black Czech, shadow, and
other puppetry techniques, the appearance, characteristic behavior, nutritional
needs, and adaptive capabilities of these prehistoric giants will be explored. ($4,000)
Chinese Theatre Works (New York, NY)
Journey to the West is a bilingual production that blends traditional
Chinese opera and shadow theater with Western styles of puppetry and
performance. Based on the 16th century Chinese epic novel, it tells the story
of the Monkey King who accompanies a Buddhist monk on a journey across China
through a demon-infested landscape in search of a collection of sacred
scriptures. ($3,000)
The Cosmic Bicycle Theatre (New York, NY)
The Crazy Locomotive, the 1923 avant garde classic by Stanislaw Ignacy
Witkiewitz, is a scathing commentary on the Futurist movement, envisioning the
chaos and destruction wrought by the embrace of human automatism and
technological society. Puppets, actors, automata sculptures, and projected
cinematic imagery combine in this interpretation of Witkiewitz's "theater
of pure form". ($5,000)
Figures of Speech Theatre (Freeport, ME)
Everest: The Human Face is a piece combining actor/storytellers, shadow
puppets, projected imagery, Bunraku-style puppets and original music. Based on
the first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953 by Tibetan-born Sherpa Tenzing Norgay
and New Zealander Edmund Hillary, the play explores the relationship between
the two men and their distinctly different relationships to the mountain. ($4,000)
In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater (Minneapolis, MN)
Queen Nanny, Queen Nanny! tells the inspiring story of an 18th
century Jamaican woman who fought for the preservation of her people and
culture as the leader of a group of revolutionary former slaves. Intended for
youth and adult audiences, the piece employs puppet theater, dance, music, and
visual art to convey the colors and sounds of Jamaica. ($3,000)
Lone Wolf Tribe (New York, NY)
Animal is a dark, ultimately redeeming tale told through puppetry,
masks, movement, and silence. It is an exploration of ancient practices of
traditional healing represented through shamanism, in contrast to the billion
dollar industries of regulated health care. The two worlds intersect when a
shaman's spirit animal is incarcerated in a research laboratory to help find a
cure for mental illness. ($5,000)
Lunatique Fantastique (Oakland, CA)
Executive Order 9066 is a found-object puppet performance focusing on
the internment of the West Coast ethnic Japanese population after the December
1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. Six puppeteers manipulate a "cast" of
rice paper, a tea set, sand, an American flag, and other objects to explore
such issues as racism, patriotism, fear, violence, incarceration, and national
hysteria. ($4,000)
The Paul Mesner Puppets(Kansas City, MO)
Chupacabra, which means "goat sucker" in Spanish, is based on real news
events reported from roughly 1988 to 1997, when animals across Mexico were
found with the blood drained from their bodies. The piece, performed in both
English and Spanish, examines our basic desire to make sense of the mysterious
and threatening, using actors, rod puppets, large inflatable figures. ($4,000)
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Wendy Morton (Pt. Richmond, CA)
I Demand to Know is the story of a woman who questions her own beliefs
in a struggle between loyalty and truth after a relative is convicted of rape.
Based on a short story by Dan Choan, the piece utilizes large-scale projected
shadow puppets, in conjunction with collaged images of American iconography and
graphics from New York Times cartoonist Peter Kuper. ($5,000)
Sandglass Theater (Putney, VT)
The Child Behind the Mirror, inspired by the tale of Noah's Ark, depicts
the ark as a child's bed, and the destructive flood as a war outside the
child's window. The room is a place of safety, but refugees spill through the
window seeking safe haven. In the end, the child's integrity is called upon to
defeat the one who claims the bed for itself. The child is performed by an
actor, the refugees by puppets. ($5,000)
ShadowLight Productions (San Francisco, CA)
In Search of Karagoz continues ShadowLight's tradition of updating stock
characters by exploring American storytelling archetypes that form our cultural
subconscious, such as vaudeville, cartoons, and television. Mentored by
shadowmaster Larry Reed, Greek artist Leonidas Kassapides will create a karagoz
language for today's audiences, mixing live Greek music, actors, and projected
shadow. ($5,000)
Skysaver Productions (New York, NY)
Helen is a site-specific adaptation of the legend of Helen of Troy and
her role in the Trojan War. Set in the various spaces of a large theater, the
piece moves the audience to different locations as they move through the story.
It utilizes a wide range of techniques, including elaborate shadow screens,
moving video projections, inflatable figures, and object theater. ($5,000)
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| Helen by Skysaver Productions | |
| Photo by Richard Termine |
Tears of Joy Theatre (Vancouver, WA)
The Day of the Dead uses a various puppet styles to create a festival
atmosphere similar to what one might encounter on the Mexican Day of the Dead.
Traditional rod puppets are a part of the day's entertainment, but with altars
come to life, and the spirits of the dead roaming unobserved, the audience
experiences a strange mixture of realities. ($3,000)
Blair Thomas & Company (Chicago, IL)
The Ox-herder Tale is based on the traditional Zen teaching tool of ten
paintings with accompanying verses that depict a journey of enlightenment,
performed with masks, human-size puppets, banners, shadows, and projections.
The traditional narrative, told in the paintings and verses that appear on the
banners flanking the stage, will be illuminated by a contemporary adaptation of
the story. ($5,000)
Hanne Tierney (New York, NY)
Man, the Flower of all Flesh, based on a story by E.M. Forster, tells of
an underground world tyrannized by The Machine, a totalitarian communal brain.
An architectural environment of sound, light, and abstract human elements is
manipulated, in full view of the audience, through a counterweight stringing
system of approximately 100 strings by Tierney and an assistant. ($5,000)
Top Shows (New York, NY)
Madison's Descent is a multi-disciplinary piece featuring puppetry, live
performers, and musicians, adapted from Page Allen's story of a baby's journey
from the cosmos towards her birth while traveling down the Great River of
Stars. Michael Curry's puppetry design incorporates marionettes, shadow
puppets, Bunraku, and large soft sculpture to depict Madison at various stages
of her travels. ($5,000)
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Christopher Williams (New York, NY)
Virgo Genitrix is a work for nine dancers: three women and six small,
highly articulated Bunraku-style puppets. It is set to 14th century music and
investigates the medieval Christian phenomena of desert asceticism,
mortification of the flesh, holy fasting, sexual abstinence, virginity, and
daemonlogy from a feminine perspective. ($3,000)
SEED GRANTS ($2,000)
3 Legged Race (Minneapolis, MN)
Quicksilver is an object theater piece that incorporates music and
animations to tell the story of mercury madness among hatters in Danbury,
Connecticut during the Great Depression. The project is a collaboration between
writer and animator Kira Obolensky, director and movement-theater artist Kari
Margolis, and visual artists Irve Dell and Brad Kaspari (Theater of Machines).
Carlo Adinolfi (Tarrytown, NY)
L'Ornitotero (The Bird Machine) is an allegorical play inspired by Ray
Bradbury's short story The Flying Machine and the life and works of
Leonardo da Vinci. Using choreography and a wide range of animated objects and
puppets, the work examines the potential beauty and horror inherent in
technology and the choices we make as a result.
Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs (Chicago, IL)
Dreams from an Upside Down Man is a family piece conceived and written
by puppeteer Michael Montenegro. Using a variety of puppetry techniques,
Montenegro presents a series of surreal and dream-like vignettes featuring a
man with seven heads, an enormous baby waiting to be born, two weary artists
facing annihilation, and a statue that swallows everything in its path.
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Erin Eagar (New York, NY)
The Savage Nursery is a mysterious fairy tale of a bird woman raising
her young fledglings, her lone defiant brattling, and the pack of feral
children who collect at the foot of her nursery. It is the story of how
identity is shaped and revealed by hunger, cruelty, and resilience in the face
of lost love. Told with music and sounds instead of text, the piece uses rod,
hand, shadow, and bunraku style puppets.
Scott Hitz (New York, NY)
Ursa Major: The Voice of the Bear uses stories about bears and humans
from around the world to help us better understand ourselves, the environment
around us, and our role within it. The tales are from China, Russia, Greece,
Scandinavia, and Native America, and each story is told through styles of
puppetry and music that reflect the region from which it is drawn.
LOCO 7 (New York, NY)
Yurupari, an epic ballet and life size puppet creation, is a
combination of puppetry, dance, acrobatics and video framed in the world of the
indigenous Ticunas tribe of artist Federico Restrepo's native Colombia. Set in
the jungles of the Amazon, the piece recounts the Yurupari rite through which a
young man embarks on a spiritual and physical journey to become an adult.
Mother Puppet Theater (Los Angeles, CA)
Bari Gongju, created by dollmaker Eum Jeoung Ae,
director/puppeteer Andrew Kim, and puppeteer Beth Peterson, tells the ancient
Korean story of Princess Bari who, though abandoned as a child, travels to the
land of the dead to find the water of life for her dying parents. The work
features puppets and masks of many sizes and forms and a live ensemble of
traditional Korean musicians.
Eric Novak (New York, NY)
The Bacon/Mingus Triptych is a full length piece composed of three
vignettes inspired by the paintings of Francis Bacon and the music of Charles
Mingus. Both artists addressed issues of isolation and art, and violence in
society, sex, and biology. These themes are expressed in the piece through
music and movement, utilizing shadow puppetry and a modified Bunraku style.
Pamella O'Connor (Asheville, NC)
The Anatomy of Melancholy is based on Robert Burton's 1621 compendium of
all things melancholy, along with their causes, symptoms, and cures. Using
passages from the anthology as an introduction, the piece explores contemporary
and universal instances of the emotion. Puppeteer/actors interact with puppets
and objects of various styles and scales on an abstract and constantly changing
set.
Other Hand Productions (Portland, OR)
On the Seashore recounts the remarkable life of Mary Anning, a working
class woman in Victorian England whose collection of fossils made her a leading
figure in the emerging field of paleontology. The world of fossils appears
through shadow with rear-screen projection and moving light sources, and
full-figured table-top style puppets represent Mary Anning, her dog, and other
characters.
Saw Theater (Cincinnati, OH)
Patient depicts the evolving relationship between a Caretaker, played by
a live actor, and his Patient, a puppet. Dressed in nurse uniforms and working
mainly in Bunraku-style, the puppeteers become part of the world of the play.
Created in collaboration with writer Elizabeth Logan Harris, the work tells a
complex story of dependence, obsession, and self-discovery.
Ed Woodham (New York, NY)
Useful Tables is a surreal, multi-media piece for five puppeteers that
explores different uses of the word "table" through a series of
vignettes. It is an examination of the nature of contemporary ridiculousness
utilizing various puppetry styles: marionette, rod, hand, and shadow as well as
dance, film, slides, sound, music, and video.
2002 Grant Review Board: Cheryl Henson, Jane Henson, Allelu Kurten, Louis Borodinsky, Leslee Asch, Heather Henson, Mark Levenson, Marty Robinson, Nancy Staub, Richard Termine, Caroly Wilcox