2025 Grantees
PRODUCTION GRANTS ($7,000)
Official Puppet Business (Brooklyn, NY)
Parched
Parched is a sci-fi western about humanity’s complicated relationship with water. Photo: Andy Manjuck
Boxcutter Collective (Brooklyn, NY)
Dimension Zero
Dimension Zero is a puppet-filled rock-n-roll space opera that follows an alien who crash lands in New York City and discovers a hidden evil that is plaguing humanity with a deadly disease of billionaires and beige coffee shops which now threatens to spread across the universe.
Photo: Boxcutter Collective
Heather Rose Piper (Brooklyn, NY)
Homing
Homing is a poetic multimedia retelling of the epic flight of Cher Ami, a WW1 US Army Corps messenger pigeon exploring themes of displacement, intuition, resiliency, and how faith and hope shape the human experience. Photo: Heather Rose Piper
Hit The Lights! Company (New York, NY)
ISLA
Three sisters flee their war-torn island and, through a fusion of shadow puppetry, poetry, live music, and documentary storytelling, embark on a transformative journey to redefine the meaning of home.
Photo: Rebecca J. Michelson
Janel Schultz (Brooklyn, NY)
PORTALS: a journey through dreams
Traveling through portals into dreams, the puppet and puppeteer observe fragments of daily life, altered realities, and nightmares. An immersive live puppet performance with live-feed camera projection and a musical score by EEVRI. Photo: Elyse Mertz
Manual Cinema (Chicago, IL)
The 4th Witch
Manual Cinema’s THE 4TH WITCH is a work of cinematic shadow puppetry inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth and created using old school overhead projectors, hundreds of paper puppets, actors in silhouette, live feed cameras, and a live music ensemble.
Photo: Manual Cinema
Marsian De Lellis (Los Angeles, CA)
Model Killer: Giant Crimes + Tiny Cover-Ups
Vivian Nutt: Dollhouse maker. Accidental investigator. Adhesive addict. Parents and children aren’t buying Vivian’s Morbid Miniatures. Her chronically ill service parrot wants her dead. She’s crafty, she’s broke, she’s running on fumes and she’s packing a glue gun. If you happen to see her, whatever you do, DON'T call her a “hobbyist.” Photo: Chris Armenta
The Mudlark Puppeteers (New Orleans, LA)
Mother Catherine and The Temple of the Innocent Blood
This work is a celebration of the life and legacy of local folk hero, activist and spiritual leader Mother Catherine Seals. This is the story of a black woman’s ascension to glory through a life dedicated to faith, healing through spirit, and a universal belief in the sanctity of human life.
Tristan Allen (Brooklyn, NY)
Osni the Flare
Osni the Flare is a puppet symphony exploring the origins of fire and mortality by use of rod, hand, and body puppetry. Set to an original album, Osni dances a luminous blaze into being. Photo: Kristin Sollecit
WORKSHOP GRANTS ($3,000)
Andrew Murdock (Keene, NY)
Beacon
A figure, with a lightbulb for a head, awakens in the dark and illuminates a landscape of memories, fears, and dreams. Photo: Andrew Murdock
Ash Winkfield (New York, NY)
Water Walker
Water Walker tells the story of the Igbo Landing, following the journey of one man as he tries to make his way home after being stolen from the shores of Africa. Photo: Ash Winkfield
Concrete Temple Theatre (New York, NY)
PACKRAT 2: Sonora
Inspired by the Comcáac people, PACKRAT 2 embraces the language of dreams and the presence of our ancestors, who are helping to guide us on our journey to "taking care." Photo: Concrete Temple Theatre
David Lane / New England Puppet Arts (North Adams, MA)
Émile Zola’s The Belly of Paris
Inspired by Émile Zola’s novel set in 1850s Les Halles marketplace, The Belly of Paris is an audacious puppet show full of laughs, love affairs, art treatises, and ironic deaths-by-meat-pie — exploring the insatiable thirst for greed which modern society has all but baked into the mold. Photo: David Lane
Deniz Khateri (Brooklyn, NY)
Husks from Iran
A performance full of shadow puppets that invites the audience to experience Iranian culture, poetry, the current political climate, and the questions of belonging that Iranian artists in exile have been confronting. Photo: Noyu Ueda
Drama of Works (Brooklyn, NY)
The Falcon King
With natural, whimsical assemblage puppets and fairy/bird houses, Drama of Works utilizes the Arthurian legend of the Fisher King and Hans Christian Andersen’s The Nightingale to explore how the peregrine falcon was brought back from the brink of extinction. Photo: Drama of Works
Great Small Works (Cambridge, MA / Red Hook, NY)
The Myceliad
A shadow puppet epic that tracks the voyage of an eclectic crew of New York puppeteers (us) thrust out to sea by the crises roiling the country, crafted as a homeopathic horror story in which issues facing us are introduced in parable form. Created and performed by the six members of Great Small Works: John Bell, Trudi Cohen, Stephen Kaplin, Jenny Romaine, Roberto Rossi and Mark Sussman Photo: Erik McGregor
Jane Catherine Shaw (Brooklyn, NY)
SHE
SHE is a multi-media performance that uses stories and images created by a variety of puppetry styles, to explore the status of women both in the past and in contemporary times. Photo: Sara Zatz
Jon Riddleberger (Astoria, NY)
Shiny One
When Shiny One stumbles upon a dangerous sickness in the forest, they must use their unique light to save the forest and bring the people back to nature. Photo: Emma Wiseman
Joshua Holden (New York, NY)
The Life and Times of Mr. Nicholas
The Life and Times of Mr. Nicholas [working title] celebrates life and the art of puppetry through themes of transformation and growing older.
Photo: Joshua Holden
Lake Simons (Brooklyn, NY)
Raft Project (My Shapes Are In Turmoil)
Raft Project (My Shapes Are In Turmoil) is a wordless theatre piece co-created by the collaborative team of Lake Simons and John Dyer, it reflects upon the current globally tumultuous times we are exposed to, both in person and via ever-cycling media, and the desire to seek balance and find solace. Photo: Lake Simons
Leah Ogawa & John Tsung (Jackson Heights, NY)
Divine Generations - Moonflower
Divine Generations–Moonflower illuminates a moment when a delicate yet powerful white flower blossoms in the moonlight, highlighting the inherent cycle of nature that is full of beauty, challenges, and hope through the use of string puppetry. Photo: John Tsung
Shadow Girls Cult (Seattle, WA)
UNRAVELING
Step into the haunting dreamscape of UNRAVELING, a bold new shadow production by Shadow Girls Cult; in this innovative series of vignettes, each story unveils a compelling new visual style centered around moments in time when it all falls apart. Photo: Shadow Girls Cult
Tau Bennett (Brooklyn, NY)
Medicine Men
With no regard for the status quo, here come the Medicine Men - your new favorite three-piece band o' freaks on a crusade to invade your space and fill it with a sound unlike anything you've ever heard. Photo: Tau Bennett
Tiresias (Evan Silver) (Brooklyn, NY)
Tiresias Presents NEW WEIRD FUTURE
Tiresias Presents NEW WEIRD FUTURE is a utopian eco-opera that envisions speculative futures where puppets, humans, cyborgs, animals, fungi, and other entities coexist in strange and wondrous entanglements. Photo: Luis Suarez
FAMILY GRANTS ($4,000)
Cinna Vesterberg (New York, NY)
Tillie the Terrible Swede
Tillie the Terrible Swede: the story of one of the best bicyclists in the world that you probably never heard about. Photo: Cinna Vesterberg
Paperhand Puppet Project (Graham, NC)
The Gift - Paperhands' 25th Annual Giant Puppet Production for All Ages
Stories move on the water. Like humans, they weave and entwine in the currents. Pulsing with the tides. This sacred element and the life it supports, takes away, and reflects is The Gift that Paperhand delves into in their 25th year. Photo: Milada Anna Vachudova
What iF Puppets (Kansas City, MO)
T-Rex Ate My Toothbrush
Mr. Green finds himself the surrogate parent to a baby T-Rex and suddenly they are negotiating bedtimes, testing each other's boundaries, and ultimately finding joy in their oddball little family. Photo: Mike Horner
Z Puppets Rosenschnoz (Minneapolis, MN)
Tales of ᏓᎦᏏ Dagsi Turtle & ᏥᏍᏚ Jisdu Wabbit
Dagsi Turtle & his sidekick Jisdu Wabbit race through time and space to bring you a new musical adventure into Cherokee language. Photo: Chris Griffith
PRESENTER’S GRANTS ($4,000)
Winter-Spring 2025
HERE – $10,000
Puppetopia 2025
– Harlem Doll Palace – Alva Rogers and Ash Winkfield
– Rhynoceron – KT Shivak
– Variations on (the) Water – Lake Simons
New Victory Theater – $10,000
– Song of the North – Hamid Rahmanian
– The Magic City – Manual Cinema
– New Shoes – Tian Gombau Companyia de Teatre
Baruch PAC– $5,000
– Dead as a Dodo – Wakka Wakka
The Center at West Park – $5,000
– 2024 – 2025 Object Movement Puppetry Residency and Festival
Dixon Place – $5,000
– Puppet BloK 2025
La MaMa – $5,000
– Seven and a Half Ways to Keep Your Child from Ruining Your Great Uncle’s Funeral – Dmitry Krymov
Lincoln Center – $5,000
– Wonderful Joe – Ronnie Burkett
Summer-Fall 2025
The Battery Conservancy – $5,000
– Playscape Performs at ShowBox 2025
Dixon Place – $10,000
– Packrat Refuge: Flood – Concrete Temple Theatre
– PORTALS – Janel Schultz
– Concrete Boom
HERE – $5,000
– Dimension Zero – Boxcutter Collective
La MaMa – $10,000
– Jump Start 2025
– Osni The Flare – Tristan Allen
– Mia M.I.A. – Charlotte Lily Gaspard
– Don Quixote Takes New York – Loco7
– The Great Zodiac Animal Race – Tom Lee
ALLELU AWARD
Handspring Puppet Company– The Life and Times of Michael K – Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival , Chicago IL, USA January 15 – 26, 2025
Nekaa Lab/Sachiyo Takahashi – Shin’nai Meets Puppetry – Festival Mondial des Theatres de Marionnettes – Charleville-Mézières, France, September 19-28, 2025
Wakka Wakka – Dead as a Dodo – Festival Mondial des Theatres de Marionnettes – Charleville-Mézières, France, September 19-28, 2025
O’NEILL RESIDENCY
Andy Manjuck & Dorothy James / Official Puppet BusinessParched
Parched is a sci-fi western about humanity’s complicated relationship with water.
SPECIAL FUNDING
Center for Puppetry Arts for the 25/26 season
$25,000 awarded in support of the creation of new work:
The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales – April 7, 2026
$25,000 awarded to Center for Puppetry Arts for the 25/26 season in support of touring works:
UNRAVELING – Shadow Girls Cult – August 13 – 17, 2025
The Mirrored Pool – Tom Lee – February 12 – 22, 2025
T-Rex Took My Toothbrush – What If Puppets – June 2 – 14, 2026