PRODUCTION GRANTS ($7,000)

Kate Brehm (Brooklyn, NY)
The Eye Which We Do Not Have
The Eye Which We Do Not Have is an eerie, cinematic tale of suppressed female desire told with live bunraku-style, toy theater, and scenic puppetry. Photo: Enki Sumer

Doug Fitch with music by Victoria Bond and libretto by Stephen Greco (Brooklyn, NY)
How Gulliver Returned Home in a Manner that was Very Not Direct 
A “puppet operetta”, based on Jonathan Swift’s classic satire-cum-travelogue for singing puppeteers and various instruments: an allegory to invigorate a mindful curiosity about people who are not ourselves.

Andy Gaukel (Tillson, NY)
Animist
Animist is a meditation on the stress of self-isolation, health, addiction, and the profound feelings of loss many of us experienced and felt more acutely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo: Richard Termine

Glass Half Full Theatre (Austin, TX)
Yamel Cucuy
Thirteen year-old Yamel, an undocumented immigrant in hiding, navigates a treacherous emotional and sociopolitical landscape through interaction with the folkloric spirits of her cultural heritage.  Photo: Annie Ulrich

The Object Group (Atlanta, GA)
Pinocchio
A rambunctious tale newly resonant for a naughty society, created in collaboration with Marium Khalid's Sky Creature Productions.  Photo: Chris Anthony Hamilton

Open Eye Theatre / Michael Sommers (Minneapolis, MN)
Once Upon A Winter Night - A Chamber Symphony for Piano, Cello, Voice & Puppet Theatre
On a cold February night, after the crows have taken roost, it begins to snow. Icicles grow as the moon lights the forest and the fields. Smoke curls from the bell tower where a lone child sleeps, dreaming of a sister made of snow.

Paradox Teatro (Minneapolis, MN)
SPEECHLESS / SIN PALABRAS
SPEECHLESS / SIN PALABRAS is a collaboration between artists from the United States and Mexico intertwining the extremes of both isolation and proximity between uncanny neighbors.  Photo: Paradox Teatro

Lake Simons (Brooklyn, NY)
Sorry About the Weather
Lifting the blanket of dementia and sliding in next to my mother I try to slip beneath her skin and unravel pieces of her life, tying them together with my own interpretation of what is in her weathered mind.   Photo: Richard Termine

Jaime Sunwoo / Free Rein Projects with Ping Chong and Company and Dixon Place (Brooklyn, NY)
Specially Processed American Me
Specially Processed American Me is a surreal autobiographical performance using SPAM, the canned meat, as a portal into Jaime Sunwoo's Asian American upbringing and her family's experiences of the Korean War. Photo: Toby Tenenbaum

WORKSHOP GRANTS ($3,000)

Anthony Michael Stokes / Kessto Kreatures Productions (El Paso, TX)
The Scarecrow
A young black man is hung because of the threat of who he is and who he could be, but mysterious forces are at play in Oz and leave him transformed into a scarecrow.  He then must discover who he was and who he must be.  Photo: Jacob Probasco

Patti Bradshaw and Christopher Williams (New York, NY)
Walking Iris
Inspired by the botanical wonder of the walking iris (Neomarica gracilis), a host of winged immortals on ancient Greek and Cretan artifacts, and the mysterious “Ladies in Blue” fresco of the Minoan palace of Knossos.  Photo: Richard Termine

Maria Camia (Brooklyn, NY)
The Healing Shipment
A spiritual/sci-fi musical galactic play about a fourth-generation Aricamian space captain, Marikata, communicating with her grandmother, Maricama, to heal her mother, Mar, in present day. Photo: Lou Gonzales Jr.

Charlotte Lily Gaspard / Midnight Radio Show (Brooklyn, NY)
"Mia M.I.A." a shadow puppet musical for adults
This urban fairytale follows the story of a woman as she is swept away to an enchanted realm of silhouettes, puppets and dance. Photo: Richard Termine

Concrete Temple Theatre (New York, NY)
Stranded
Stranded is a fantastical journey that blends puppetry, humor and a stark understanding of our profound collective reality; it is a celebration of how we become who we want to be.  Photo: Stefan Hagaen

Annie Evans (Redding, CT)
Aanika's Elephants
A young orphan girl is adopted by an elephant herd and then must use her wits to save them.  Photo: Martin P. Robinson

Tyler Gunther (Brooklyn, NY)
High Gothic Pageantry LLC
A medieval pageant planner guides the audience through the mechanics of an upcoming royal spectacle.  Photo: Tyler Gunther

Kevin Augustine's Lone Wolf Tribe (Brooklyn, NY)
The People Vs Nature
 Lone Wolf Tribe's 9th production: a solo show of parallel stories on incarceration; in a laboratory cage and on death row.  Photo: Connor Augustine

Pinned & Sewtured (Northford, CT)
Sueños
An autobiographical story about a little girl arriving in a foreign land. Teetering between two cultures, two languages, and the imminent fear of her illegal status, she finds comfort in her art, where ultimately she discovers her voice.

Phantom Limb Company (New York, NY)
Conversations with Strangers
Conversations with Strangers uses actual recorded audio and marionette representations of deceased art and literary heroes to collage new and illuminating conversations taking place on a mobile bicycle pop-up theatre.

Sandglass Theater (Putney, VT)
Feral
A woman’s journey that experiences the tension between learned behaviors and intuitive knowledge, the cultural gaslighting of original knowing, and celebrates the transformational process that can lead to individual and cultural repair.

Theodora Skipitares / Skysaver Productions (New York, NY)
GRAND PANORAMA
Grand Panorama is a music-theater puppetry work about Frederick Douglass and  his obsession with photography, directed and designed by Theodora Skipitares with music by Mazz Smith.  Photo: Jane Catherine Shaw

Tiny Dynamite / Sara Outing (Philadelphia, PA)
Doors
A shadow allegory about exhaustion and resilience, Doors asks the audience to inhabit a stranger's interiority materialized through paper, acetate, and passing beams of light.  Photo: Sara Outing

Vineyard Theatre (New York, NY)
The Darger Requiem
Martha Clarke explores the mind of "outsider artist" Henry Darger in The Darger Requiem, a live production featuring object theatre puppetry by the Brothers Quay.  Photo: Quay Brothers

Emma Wiseman (Warsaw, NY)
Remember When They Told You This Was A Helicopter?
Remember When They Told You This Was A Helicopter is the story of a puppet trapped in a manipulative skyscraper with videogame-like rules.  Photo: Emma Wiseman

FAMILY GRANTS ($4,000)

Boxcutter Collective (Brooklyn, NY)
Happyland! Now!!
Follow Captain Fernando and their faithful but apprehensive sidekick, Marmalade the tiger, as they search for the mythical place called Happyland -made in collaboration with the Jalopy Theater and School of Music.  Photo: Erik McGregor

Mesner Puppet Theater / Mike Horner (Kansas City, MO)
How to Snag a Sea Monster
A terrifically tall tale that explores our human need to belong using table top puppetry, an inflatable puppet sea monster, and a fanciful clipper ship for sailing the high seas!  Photo: Travis Young

Modern Times Theater (East Hardwick, VT)
Big Broken Business
A junk musical comedy hand-puppet spectacle, starring two slapstick clowns— the custodians of everything— whose job it is to transform the chaos of modern life into a hilarious symphony of the absurd.  Photo: Rose Friedman

Pinwheel (Boston, MA)
Magic Pearl
Based on a Chinese folktale about resilience and the unlikely friendship between Phoenix and Dragon, Magic Pearl shares a heartfelt, humorous story of otherworldly creation and loss.  Photo:  Christopher Vu

Puppet Motion / Sarah Nolen (Waltham, MA)
Party Animals
PARTY ANIMALS [insert electric guitar riff] follows four young animals as they prepare for the biggest social hurdle of their young lives — their first party.  Photo: Sarah Nolen