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PRODUCTION GRANTS ($7,000) |
| Torry Bend (Durham, NC)
Dreaming
Dreaming is a new puppet production inspired by Winsor McCay’s comic Little Nemo in Slumberland written in the early 1900’s. The show both celebrates the artist’s influence while critiquing the problematic components of the comic. Photo: Alex Boerner |
| Beth Morrison Projects (Brooklyn, NY)
Book of Mountains and Seas
Book of Mountains and Seas is a new work of puppetry, music, and movement co-created by Basil Twist (director/puppetry artist), Huang Ruo (composer/librettist), and Paul Hillier (music director). These modernized 4th-century B.C. Chinese myths bring the literal creation of Earth, sky, and natural forces to life on stage. |
| Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra & Magdalena Kaluza (Minneapolis, MN)
Star Girl Clan – Ch’umil Ali Alaxik
Star Girl Clan is a magical realism shadow and mask show about an Indigenous Maya grandmother whose spiritual conflict of internal racism leads her on a journey into an enchanted jungle and star world. Photo: Bruce Silcox |
| Kevin Augustine’s Lone Wolf Tribe (Brooklyn, NY)
Body Concert
Oversized body limbs stripped of their skin become a moving sculpture of muscles, tendons and bone-achingly animated in an extremely rigorous choreography. This minimalist solo spectacle, created and performed by Kevin Augustine’s Lone Wolf Tribe, features the company’s exquisitely sculpted foam rubber puppets brought uniquely to life in a wordless, tender meditation on life’s beautiful impermanence. Photo: Vanessa Teran |
| Loco7 Dance Puppet Theatre Company (New York, NY)
Lunch with Sonia
Lunch with Sonia will be a dance puppet theatre piece, inspired by Restrepo’s true-life experience with his Aunt Sonia, a woman who decided to end her life with dignity after a long illness at the age of 72. The show will use puppets, live actors, music, video and physical theatre to deal with the themes of life, love and loss. Lunch with Sonia by Loco7 Dance Puppet Theatre Company, will be co-directed by Federico Restrepo and Denise Greber. Photo: Theo Cote |
| Spencer Lott & Maiko Kikuchi (Brooklyn, NY)
9000 Paper Balloons
9000 Paper Balloons is a bilingual collaboration between Japanese visual artist Maiko Kikuchi and American puppeteer Spencer Lott. This dark and poetic show layers rod puppetry and large scale toy-theater techniques. Together, Kikuchi and Lott explore the remarkable true story of top-secret weapons utilized during World War II, woven with their grandfathers’ personal histories. Photo: Paula Court |
| Andy Manjuck & Dorothy James (Brooklyn, NY)
Bill’s 44th
Bill turns 44 today! Well, not today. His birthday was actually on Tuesday, but for everyone’s convenience he moved his party to the weekend. Now all there is for Bill to do is to await the arrival of his guests. |
| The Object Group / Michael Haverty (Decatur, GA)
L’Etranger / The Stranger
A multimedia adaptation/investigation of Albert Camus’ cautionary tale L’Etranger / The Stranger. Told with a combination of Punch and Judy-style hand puppets and noir/new-wave inspired projected cinema. Photo: Bryan Mercer |
| Jessica Simon (Astoria, NY)
Ruby & Charlie
Ruby & Charlie is a tabletop puppet play inspired by swing dance and features a live jazz ensemble. Photo: Isaak Berliner |
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| Alice Farley Dance Theater (New York, NY)
Conversations with Monsters (I am the other you)
In this project Alice Farley concentrates on the "Conversations" between forms. Our work in costume is not as clothing, but as transformation, an animated form of puppetry that is an exaggeration and amplification of the body designed to make more visible the meaning of gesture. |
| Maria Camia (Brooklyn, NY)
New Mony! (working title)
An estranged great-great-great-great granddaughter named Allimah, finds herself lured into her Utopian lineage on the planet, Aricama. New Mony! is a spiritual-sci-fi production with Toy Theater, body puppets, music, and live feed that explores duality, ancestry, and liberation. Photo: Andrew Murdock |
| Marsian De Lellis (Los Angeles, CA)
Model Killer: Giant Crimes + Tiny Cover-Ups
A disgruntled dollhouse maker turned investigator builds dioramas of “unsolved" murders, only for it to be revealed that she’s a serial killer. In this morbid comedy, De Lellis activates intimate, domestic spaces to deactivate romantic notions of innocence - inviting the viewer to reconsider aggression through the lens of gender, the historically feminine craft of miniatures, and the sensationalism of crime. Photo: Richard Termine |
| Sam Jay Gold (Brooklyn, NY)
All Vows
All Vows is a memory play about the possibly true life of Poppy, a Russian Jewish refugee raised in China. Alongside five puppet portraits of his own grandfather, theater artist Sam Jay Gold interrogates family lore, actual history, and his own active imagination in this intimate, messy reckoning with inheritance and myth-making. Photo: Teddy Wolff |
| In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre (Minneapolis, MN)
The Impact Theory of Mass Extinction
The Impact Theory of Mass Extinction focuses on the relationship between a black queer teenager and her study of dinosaurs, from science to pop culture. With each discovery of a new dinosaur fossil, her personal history is juxtaposed with theories of dinosaur extinction, ranging from the mainstream to absurd. Photo: Madi Ballis |
| Red Wing Performing Group / Dan Hurlin (New York, NY)
BISMARCK
Based on actual events, BISMARCK tells the story of a young woman who appears in the dead of winter wandering along the interstate outside of Bismarck ND, wearing only a miniskirt, and a cropped faux-fur jacket, dragging a rolling suitcase behind her. BISMARCK is performed by five actor/puppeteers with original music by Dan Moses Schreier. Photo: Richard Termine |
| The Institute of Useless Activity (New York, NY)
THIS/THAT
THAT uses light and video technology as abstract puppetry – and imagines the creation of the universe. THIS investigates the intimacy of hand shadows -- a puppeteer and his figures explore loss, love and alienation. Photo: Steven Wendt |
| Monica Lerch (Brooklyn, NY)
Otherworlds
Otherworlds is a visual meditation on the cycle of breath, life, death, decay and rebirth. Using organic material puppets, shamanic drumming, live sound healing, and guided meditation, Otherworlds immerses the audience into a healing journey through our collective subconscious. Photo: Cory Antiel |
| Matt-a-Magical (Takoma Park, MD)
Under the Sea with Dredgie McGee
A legless pirate with a mortality-preserving amulet is stuck at the bottom of the sea with a deep-sea diver as his personal valet. Not knowing when he will be reunited with his legs, he bides his time by hosting a variety show of sorts with mythical guests of lore sharing their unusual talents. Photo: Stephanie Richardson |
| Rootstock Puppet Co. (Chicago, IL)
Peckish
Peckish is a flock of uplifting marionette, rod, and found-object puppet vignettes exploring the private, idiosyncratic lives of several North American bird species. Drawing from childhood experiences on Pennsylvania rivers, brothers Mark and Turner Blashford, perform these stories with live banjo, guitar, and kazoo accompaniment. |
| Lake Simons (Brooklyn, NY)
Prairie? What Prairie?
An interpretation of my mother's present life as she is consumed by dementia. Layering assumptions of her experience living with the disease alongside a fantasized life of a prairie woman living on the open land dotted with small chaoses. |
| Skysaver Productions / Theodora Skipitares (New York, NY)
The Transfiguration of Benjamin Banneker
The Transfiguration of Benjamin Banneker is a multi-disciplinary performance that celebrates the life of Benjamin Banneker, a free black man living in Maryland from 1731 to 1806, who taught himself mathematics and astronomy, and made groundbreaking scientific discoveries. It features puppetry, dance, live music, the Soul Tigers Marching Band, and a multi-generational cast of Brooklynites. Photo: Jane Catherine Shaw |
| Shayna Strype (Brooklyn, NY)
MINE
A mountain, mined of her insides, collapses into rubble. As she tries to reassemble the remnants of her crumbled history, the rubble reckons with what she can’t let go of and what she has left behind. MINE uses a variety of puppetry styles, live-feed projections, stop-motion animation, wearable sculptures, and humor to weave together multiple themes, and to question the destructive human urge to colonize land, bodies, and minds. Photo: Peter Yesley |
| Watoku Ueno (Bronx, NY)
Tall Keyaki Tree
Tall Keyaki Tree is a shadow puppet show with live music and dance, inspired by the novel Five Storied Pagoda written by the Japanese novelist Koda Rohan (1867-1947). This is a story about a highly skilled but unsuccessful carpenter Jubei who, because of his spiritual bond with the Keyaki tree, builds a five-storied pagoda that withstands typhoons and earthquakes. Photo: Makoto Takeuchi |
| Wakka Wakka Productions (Brooklyn, NY)
The Immortal Jellyfish Girl
An original work which considers the future of animal life on earth, and explores the role of human denial in a theoretical (but increasingly possible) world. With a large cast of Bunraku-inspired and hand-and-rod puppets widely ranging in scale, The Immortal Jellyfish Girl examines light, dark and obscured vision as elements that can be manipulated in the three dimensional word of puppetry and visual theatre. Photo: Nordland Visual Theatre |
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| Alex & Olmsted (Takoma Park, MD)
Marooned! A Space Comedy
Marooned! A Space Comedy is a puppet show that takes place at the outer reaches of space. An astronaut crashes on an uncharted planet and has to face strange creatures, anomalous atmosphere, and isolation with only her Autonomous Task Assistant (ATA) to help her survive. Photo: Ryan Maxwell |
| Arm-of-the-Sea Theater (Malden-on-Hudson, NY)
ONE BLUE SKY
Arm-of-the-Sea Theater's ONE BLUE SKY is a series of stories exploring humanity’s shared hopes and dilemmas. Rendered in the elemental language of mask & puppet theater, the tales are accompanied by live music and linked by a braided memory code. |
| Goodhearted Entertainment / Honey Goodenough (Brighton, MA)
Stewie's Magic Hat
When Stewie's magical apprenticeship to the Great Garbanzo fizzles, he cooks up a new plan to find his true calling. Hilarious hand puppetry, original music, and magical effects combine in this tasty tale of how Stewie learns that the real trick is to find the hat that fits you the best! Photo: Roxanna Myhrum |
| Sandglass Theater (Putney, VT)
Oma
It is Oma's (Grandmother's) birthday; as she sits knitting, her yarn is filled with tales of childhood, war and love while surrounded by her family and a mischievous pig that steals the cake. |
| Stages Theatre Company (Hopkins, MN)
A Puppeteering Collaboration of A Different Pond
A Different Pond, a world premiere at Stages Theatre Company, is based on the Caldecott winning book by Minneapolis-based poet, Bao Phi and illustrated by Thi Bui, and will be told through shadow and direct manipulation modified bunraku puppetry to illuminate a powerful tale about family and life as an immigrant. Photo: Masanari Kawahara |
