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PRODUCTION GRANTS ($7,000) | |
| Brzezinski & Schap (Chelsea, MA)
Flying Lessons
When three women enter an abandoned house during a storm, they discover a strange world of memory, light, and shadow. Here the impossible can become possible: the women can transform, escape undesirable situations, and fulfill their deepest desires. Flying Lessons is a dance-like shadow show full of surprise and delight in which the familiar becomes unfamiliar. Photo: Libby Schap |
| Concrete Temple Theatre (New York, NY)
PACKRAT
PACKRAT is a new multi-media puppetry play that contemplates humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Inspired by the classic survival and adventure novel, Watership Down, PACKRAT follows one peculiar rodent on his vivacious journey to discover the interconnectedness of life. Photo: Stefan Hagen |
| Nick Lehane (Brooklyn, NY)
Chimpanzee
“To endow animals with human emotion has long been a scientific taboo. But if we do not, we risk missing something fundamental, about animals and us.” – Frans de Waal, primatologist and ethologist An aging, isolated chimpanzee pieces together the fragments of her childhood in a human family. Bleak reality bleeds to vivid memory in this non-verbal puppet play. Inspired by true events. Photo: Richard Termine |
| Mesner Puppet Theater (Kansas City, MO)
Bond: A Soldier and His Dog
Bond explores the age old relationship between K-9 and human in this deeply affecting true story. While serving in Iraq, Logan Black and Diego, his Specialized Search Dog, were one of the most successful K-9 bomb sniffing teams ever, working side by side, saving each other’s lives, and surviving the bloodiest year of the war together. Photo: Claus Wawrzinek |
| Paradox Teatro (Pittsburgh, PA)
MIGRACIONES
MIGRACIONES follows the journey of migrating refugees in a unique performance that combines life-sized puppets, sand drawings, shadow puppetry projections, live music, and poetry in English and Spanish. This culture-crossing production is created in response to the increasing barriers between the Paradox Teatro co-founders’ home countries, the United States and Mexico. Photo: Max Haynes |
| Martin P. Robinson (Redding, CT)
All Hallows Eve
All Hallows Eve is a wild eclectic musical that takes place on a Halloween evening gone extremely wrong: a horror show using humans and puppetry in a cautionary tale of redemption. Photo: Richard Termine |
| Hanne Tierney (New York, NY)
18 Stanzas Sung to a Tartar Reed Whistle
This work is a dramatization of a Chinese epic, written in 200AD, by the woman poet Ts’ai Yen. She tells of her abduction by the Tartars, and her life in a desert Nomad Camp. |
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| Eat Drink Tell Your Friends (Brooklyn, NY)
Lectures of the Physics of Reversibility
These lectures, delivered by our distinguished messenger professor, will examine the fundamental laws of physics as they pertain to time, its relativity, and its potential reversibility. Woo woo woo woo... it’s a show about hiding your heart. Photo: Teddy Wolfe |
| Andy Gaukel (New York, NY)
G.G. (Girl in the Rubble)
A clown-like character, serves as the grotesque conductor of a make-believe war conjuring up images of American life, popular culture and consumerism that morph into images of the current military actions, playing out on a large screen adorning the stage. |
| Chris Green (Brooklyn, NY)
The Rest of It (working title)
Created by Chris Green and multiple choreographers, The Rest of It is a series of solo dances for highly articulated half-scale human figures set to original music. Puppeteer ensemble includes Erin Orr, Rowan Magee, Katie Melby and Leah Hoffman. |
| Chris Heady (Ellicott City, MD)
The Custer Wolf
After nine years of carnage on the small town of Custer, a legendary Grey Wolf and a brilliant hunter will engage in a battle of wits in this unforgettable true story. |
| Liz Howls (Minneapolis, MN)
Bug Girl (working title)
An episodic shadow puppet horror story about a young girl who is forced to face her inner demons when she consumes a strange beetle that transforms her into a bug that eats its way through the minds of unsuspecting citizens, driving them mad. Aesthetics borrowed from classic horror films & comic book art, combined with shadow puppetry techniques. Photo: Mark Vancleave |
| Kalob Puppet Co. (Manchester, CT)
El Beto
El Beto is a one-man hand puppet adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth molded into the world of the Mexican drug cartels and performed bilingually in Spanish and English. Photo: Radu Corcodel |
| Magdalena Kaluza & Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra (Minneapolis, MN)
Star Girl Clan
In the magical realism show Star Girl Clan, an Indigenous Maya grandmother’s spiritual conflict of internal racism leads her on a journey into an enchanted jungle and starworld. The Henson workshop grant will help the artists deepen and expand their work, including adaptation of the types of puppets used. Photo: Bruce Silcox |
| Tom Lee & Lisa Gonzales (Chicago, IL)
place (no) place
place (no) place is a dance puppetry performance that explores memory and place using the artists’ family histories in Louisiana and Hawai’i as a starting point. This intimate and interactive performance invites the audience to consider the complex relationship between our present identity and sense of home. Photo: Marquisha Lu / High Concept Labs Chicago |
| Spencer Lott & Maiko Kikuchi (Brooklyn, NY)
9000 Paper Balloons
Collaborators Maiko Kikuchi and Spencer Lott use humor and puppetry to weave their own family histories into the remarkable true story of a deadly secret weapon – 9000 paper balloon bombs. Photo: Maiko Kikuchi |
| Mabou Mines (New York, NY)
Medea
A re-envisioning of the Euripides play Medea pays homage to the original myth while weaving contemporary themes such as gender, immigration, and violence at the crossroads of East and West. Photo: Tucker W. Mitchell |
| Kimi Maeda (Pendleton, SC)
Surfacing
Using the ancient Japanese myth Yamata no Orochi as inspiration, Surfacing will be a meditation on aging and the uneasy relationship between humans and water. Photo: Andy Smith |
| The Object Group / Michael Haverty (Decatur, GA)
L’Etranger A new adaptation of Albert Camus’ classic cautionary tale. Told with Punch and Judy style hand puppets and noir-inspired animation and live cinema, this brutally comedic story exposes the inner vacuity and outer systems of oppression that lead a pied-noir in French-occupied Algeria to petty acts of violence, tribal privilege, and an absurdly dark fate. |
| Paper Heart Puppets (Poughkeepsie, NY)
Error Code 451
Error Code 451 uses a variety of puppetry styles to investigate the way we construct truth from multiple sources. It’s a show about uncertainty, trust, tribalism, and murder, all wrapped up in a detective story featuring robots and aliens inspired by mid-century pulp. Photo: Brad Shur |
| Rough House Theater Company (Chicago, IL)
The Dust, The Hand, The Hammer
This devised puppet piece will draw from Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, early 20th century folk music, & curated object exploration to explore the burdensome inheritance of history & the absurd mundanity of the present. Juxtaposing the minutiae of daily life with the socio-political burden of the past this new work examines the things we inherit, the things we try and escape from, and the things that refuse to be forgotten. Photo: Mike Oleon |
| Pam Severns (Los Angeles, CA)
Moving Pictures
Moving Pictures is a collection of comedic puppetry vignettes with a vintage twist. The pieces are inspired by the films and music your grandparents were into and was developed in part at the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. Photo: Ashley Steed |
| Visual Expressions / Hua Hua Zhang (Boothwyn, PA)
The Mystery of the Chinese Dragon
Experimental shadow puppet theater exploring the blending of modern and traditional shadow puppets telling the stories of three Chinese dragons. |
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| Center for Puppetry Arts (Atlanta, GA)
Harold and the Purple Crayon
This unique live experience blends blacklight rod puppetry, video projection, and other special effects to create the illusion of Harold using his crayon and the magic of his imagination to create entire scenes and characters that come to life. |
| Drama of Works (Brooklyn, NY)
Rent Party
Rent Party is a new toy theater puppetry play intended for all ages/family audiences about the struggles people faced during the Harlem Renaissance. Collaborating once again with award-winning playwright Amina Henry; together we can tackle difficult issues through drama, fantasy and humor. |
| Liz Joyce and A Couple of Puppets (Sag Harbor, NY)
Itty Bitty Bunny
A fearless pastry chef rolls out a tasty tale in this partially perishable puppet show. Follow Itty Bitty, the marzipan bunny, on her journey, meeting unlikely friends and overcoming shadows in the night on her way to the most delicious raspberry patch ever! |
| Wee the People / Tanya Nixon-Silberg (Jamaica Plain, MA)
My Night in the Planetarium
This project transforms Innosanta Nagara’s autobiographical story of political repression and resistance in Indonesia into a giant pop-up book performance filled with visual surprises, fascinating discoveries, and moments of profound humanity as seen through the eyes of a curious child. Photo: Tess Scheflan |
