New York

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The Harlem Doll Palace * - Alva Puppet Theater

Puppetopia 2025

Photo by: Richard Termine

HERE **
145 6th Ave
New York, NY
https://here.org/shows/puppetopia-2025/

HERE’s Puppetopia, a two-week puppetry state of mind, returns for its fourth annual edition. Curated by HERE Co-Founder Barbara Busackino and Dream Music Artistic Director and star Alum Basil Twist, the festival presents original work. We’re kicking off Puppetopia 2025 with THE HARLEM DOLL PALACE, with more exciting shows to be announced soon—stay tuned! Welcome to Aunt Len’s Doll and Toy Museum! Behind the pink door of a three story Harlem brownstone lies a world created by Lennon Holder Hoyte – affectionately known as Aunt Len. The dolls from her “dollection” seek to keep Aunt Len, their beloved museum founder, alive before the outside world can invoke its realities of life, ashes and dust. As Harlem deteriorates around her beloved doll museum, the dolls recreate their journeys to the museum in an effort to keep Aunt Len’s memory alive. Enter the world of The Harlem Doll Palace. Remember, an appointment is necessary for admission.

* Recipient of a Jim Henson Foundation Workshop Grant (2023) and Production Grant (2024)
** Recipient of a Jim Henson Foundation Presenter's Grant (2025)

May 21 - June 1, 2025
Wednesday - Friday at 7pm
Saturday at 2pm and 7pm
Sunday at 2pm

$37

Variations On (the) Water * - Lake Simons

Puppetopia 2025

HERE Arts Center
145 6th Ave
New York, NY
https://here.org/shows/puppetopia-2025-variations-of-water/

Join Lake Simons in a poetic solo puppet performance that invites the audience to imagine and co-create a story. Variations On (the) Water, a solo rendering of the larger work, Raft Project (My Shapes Are In Turmoil). A lyrical embodiment of the sea exploring its movement, vastness, poetry, and ability to saturate, flow, carry, drown, and nourish. Weaving puppetry, objects, dance, clown, and music. A full length wordless puppet theatre work by Lake Simons and John Dyer.

* An exploration of Raft Project, which received a Jim Henson Foundation Workshop Grant (2025)

May 28 - June 1, 2025
Weds - Fri at 8:30pm
Sat at 4pm and 8:30pm

$37

Rhynoceron - KT Shivak

Puppetopia 2025

HERE Arts Center *
145 6th Ave
New York, NY
https://here.org/shows/puppetopia-2025-rhynoceron/

From Chicago to NYC—Shivak’s life-sized rhino puppet transforms before your eyes in a tale of beauty, extinction, and obsession. The world premiere of a puppetry show that traces the true events surrounding the arrival of a one-horned rhinoceros to Renaissance Europe, sparking an obsession that continued for hundreds of years. Through acts of hunting and collecting, Shivak’s life size rhino puppet transforms in front of our eyes from a natural inspiring wonder to an object of human greed. Shivak and Company hail from Chicago where this show was created with support from The Chicago International Puppetry Festival and High Concept Labs, this show mark’s their New York Debut.

* Recipient of a Jim Henson Foundation Presenter's Grant (2025)

May 21 - 25, 2025
Weds - Fri at 8:30pm
Sat at 4pm and 8:30pm
Sunday at 4pm

$37

BOOP! The Musical

Puppetry on Broadway

Broadhurst Theater
235 W 44th St
New York, NY
https://tinyurl.com/2s3mr5xu

Betty Boop longs for an ordinary day off from fame in her black-and-white world. What she finds is an extraordinary adventure of color, music, and love in New York City!

Actor's theater that includes puppetry. Puppetry by Philip Huber.

March 11 - September 28, 2025
See website for performance times

From $59

Becoming Eve

Justin Perkins, Emma Wiseman, Amanda Villalobos

Photo by: Matthew Murphy

Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand St
New York, NY
https://tinyurl.com/yb43zh3a

A week before the High Holidays, three rabbis find themselves in a room fighting to save a family by building a bridge between orthodoxy and modernity. One of these rabbis is Chava, the child of a dynastic Hasidic rabbinical family and destined to become a leader of the next generation before the revelation of her trans identity clashed explosively with the strictly gendered world in which she was raised. As we jump through memory and wrestle with theology, truths and secrets emerge that ensure no one will read the old stories the same way again.

Actor's theater that includes puppetry.

March 19 - April 27, 2025
See website for performance times

$26

The Puppet Ball

Tristan Allen, Tiresias, Evolve Puppets, Jacob Graham

Photo by: Virginia Garcia

The Brick
579 Metropolitan Ave
Brooklyn, NY
bricktheater.com/event/the-puppet-ball/2025-05-01/

Tristan Allen presents The Puppet Ball, a spectacle of puppet sorcery by Evolve Puppets, Tiresias, Tristan Allen, and Jacob Graham. The four of us will present tiny epics whisking you away from starless nights and into an ethereal ballroom of the beyond.

To honor the night, we encourage our guests to embody the essence of fairy tale elegance. Adorn yourself in attire befitting an evening of splendor and divinity ~ deep jewel-toned gowns, intricate lace, cloaks, masks, armor or leather… no scepters. Let us leave this wretched land and enter the night.

May 1 - 2, 2025
Doors 7:30pm
Show 8:00pm

$25

The Puerto Rican War

John Vasquez Mejias

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 5th Ave
New York, NY
metmuseum.org

Join us for a costume/puppet performance of The Puerto Rican War (based on the book) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. May 9th. There will be two shows, 6pm & 7pm. This event is free/included as part of the museums admission. The Met will be setting up a reservation registry because space is limited. More information soon.

May 9, 2025
6pm and 7pm

Free with museum admission

Puppets in the Garden

Caitlin Brzezinski, Libby Schap, Amanda Card

Phoenix Community Garden
16 Somers St
Brooklyn, NY
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/puppets-in-the-garden-tickets-1335324173549?aff=oddtdtcreator

Welcome to Puppets in the Garden! Join us for a puppet slam in Phoenix Community garden! Featuring work by Brzezinski & Schap, Amanda Glynn Card, Leah Levine, and Maisie O'Brien. Doors open at 7:30pm. Anticipated run time: 75mins

May 10, 2025
8pm

FREE

Faust

Heart Beat Opera

Baruch PAC
55 Lexington Ave 25th St
New York, NY
https://www.heartbeatopera.org/faust

A lonely scholar makes a bargain with the devil, and all hell breaks loose. Heartbeat Opera’s distinctly American adaptation tells the story of Faust and Marguerite — a man who wildly misuses his regained youth, a young woman whose potential for life and love is cut tragically short, and the ravaged community left in their wake. Retelling one of the most popular operas of all time, we ask what happens when the soul hasn’t evolved along with the mind? When voracious ego rules us, and reckless forward motion is all?

May 13 - 25, 2025
Tues - Sat at 7:30pm
Sunday at 2:00pm

From $36.50

Little Shop of Horrors

Off-Broadway

Westside Theatre Upstairs
407 West 43rd St
New York, NY
littleshopnyc.com

The world's most ravenous plant has returned to its acclaimed, sold-out run at the Westside Theatre! Winner of the 2020 Drama League, Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk Awards for BEST MUSICAL REVIVAL, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS is “wildly exuberant” (The Hollywood Reporter), and a New York Times Critic's Pick. Get tickets now and enjoy a taste of what we’ve all been craving: live theater!

Tuesdays & Thursdays - 7:00pm
Fridays - 8:00pm
Saturdays - 2:00pm & 8:00pm
Sundays - 2:00pm & 7:30pm

Starting at $59