1994

PROJECT GRANTS

Center for Puppetry Arts – Untitled
A carnavalesque work by John Ludwig exploring Haitian drumming and voodoo. ($2,000)

Garland Farwell – Pipe — A Courtroom Drama
A quasi-post mortem on the Clarence Thomas case told with actors and life-sized puppets of varying abstract and surreal forms. ($2,000)

Figures of Speech Theatre – Nightingale
An adaptation of the traditional fairy tale withlarge Bunraku style puppets featuring vocalist & composer Andrea Goodman . ($2,500)

Janie Geiser – Evidence of Floods
A diorama-performance using puppets, actors, and miniature sets to create a nightmarish journey of a woman fleeing abuse. ($2,000)

In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater – Befriended by the Enemy
A work based on the true story of a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan who is transformed by the love of a Jewish family.($2,000)

INTAR Hispanic Arts Center – Popol Vuh
A multi-media collaboration between puppeteer Ralph Lee, playwright Cherrie Moraga and composer/musician Glenn Velez. ($3,000)

Roman Paska – The Burial of the Whale
A work based on Moby Dick with live actors and an assemblage of puppets and found objects. ($2,500)

ShadowLight Productions – In Xanadu…Invisible Cities
A piece based on the story of Kubla Khan using shadow puppetry, music, and dance. ($3,000)


SEED GRANTS ($1,000)

Los Angeles Puppet Artists Collective – Icons Revisited
A second annual evening of original puppet vignettes for adult audiences by various artists.

Mum Puppettheatre – When the War is Over
A work drawing from vaudeville, stage magic, Indonesian shadow puppetry, and Japanese bunraku and Czech black theater.

Skysaver Productions – The History of Medicine–Part One
A theatre installation which weaves together a history of disease and the art of healing from prehistoric times to the mid-19th century.

Alice Farley Dance Theater – Untitled
A production featuring dance gesture extended by puppetry and an the unique sculptural instruments of Harry Partch.

Hanne Tierney – A Play Called Not and Now
A piece based on the play by Gertrude Stein told with an assortment of taffeta fabrics and industrial materials.

Mirage Puppet Theatre – Hammer at Sue
A piece by Patti Smith exploring cycles of creativity in the face of ultimate destruction.

The Now or Never Theater – Untitled
A solo theater performance by Betsy Tobin exploring the cycles of human nature and their metaphors in nature.

Persona Grata Productions/Paul Kwan – Pins and Noodles
An interdisciplinary performance work in the tradition of Chinese opera that integrates masked performers and movement with film and puppetry.

Poko Puppets, Inc. – Peer Gynt
An adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play using masks, dance, and the simple scenic devices.

Puppetsoup – Soup Talks #3: Voice of the Machine
Voice of the Machine transforms the snows of the Russian winter into the frozen Arctic landscape in order to tell the story of Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to find the Northwest Passage in 1845 — the age of photography.

Sandglass Theater – Untitled
A collaboration between Eric Bass and painter Ric Campman exploring the process of making art.

“Apart from putting puppetry into the limelight, the festival has been a tremendous force for American puppetry. Not only because performers have been able to perform; much more far reaching has been that performers can works towards an exciting goal. This may sound trivial, but it isn’t. It means one pushes harder, works harder and stretches further. Ultimately I would say that a lot of the work that has grown and expanded in the last years has done so because of the possibility that the festival might, and in many ways did, produce it.”

– Hanne Tierney