NYpuppets.org
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We are dedicated to building up our puppet theater community and expanding our audiences. We are grateful for your involvement and thank you for sharing your enthusiasm. This free, members-only website contains discounts and special offers to puppet theater productions in NYC and vicinity.
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As a user of NYpuppets.org, you can log in for special offers: discount tickets, festival passes, invitations to special previews and openings, meetings with artists and much more. Participating productions will include:
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| A dreamer (Matthew Cabbil) encounters a gun-toting Dalai Lama in "Deathscape." Photo by Eva Ostrowska. |
NOVEMBER
10 TO DECEMBER 4
"DEATHSCAPE"
BY MISHA SHULMAN
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
"Deathscape,"
written and directed by Misha Shulman, is a multi-media, puppet-centered
" Kafka-meets-Cocteau-in-A-Yellow-Submarine" play that examines
the dark place where change and fear meet. Puppetry will include a combination
of Indonesian-style shadow work, live overhead projector artwork and three-dimensional
puppets. The play is performed by two actors and four puppeteers. Puppets
are created by Jane Catherine Shaw, Zvi Sahar, Andrew Benincasa, Katey
Parker and Alexa Elmakki.
To simulate how we can drive our own dreams, much of the play's soundscape will be generated from the brain waves of the audience, as detected through an "Audience Brainwave Sonification Device" developed at Princeton's PEAR Lab.
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| Wall outside the Old New Synagogue (Czech: Staronova synagoga; German: Altneu-Synagoge) leading to Golem’s attic. Photo by Bonnie Stein. |
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Fruit Seller in "Golem." Puppet by Jakub Krejci. Photo by Jan Frank. |
NOVEMBER
17 TO DECEMBER 4
"GOLEM" BY CZECHOSLOVAK-AMERICAN MARIONETTE THEATRE
LA MAMA E.T.C.
To this day, a legend continues that a Golem lies covered by
cobwebs in the attic of the Altneu Shul, the famous 15th-century synagogue
of Prague, where there are still visible steps leading to the Golem's
resting place.
In a featured presentation of its 50th Anniversary season, La MaMa will reprise Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre's dance-theater "Golem," a stage rendition of this famed Jewish legend, conceived, written and directed by Vit Horejs.
La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre, 66 East Fourth Street, has been a site of innovation in Jewish Theater since 1882, when it was known as the Turn Theater and home to the first Yiddish play in New York. The production features music by Frank London (The Klezmatics) and choreography by Naomi Goldberg Haas. The ensemble includes puppeteers, dancers and a whole cast of small to life-sized wooden marionettes.
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| Bread and Puppet Theater's "Man=Carrot Circus" in Glover, VT. Photo by Greg Cook. |
DECEMBER
1 TO 18
BREAD AND PUPPET THEATER
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
For the 40th year, Peter Schumann's Bread
and Puppet Theater will return to Theater for the New City
with two new works, one for adults and one for family audiences. For
adults it's "Man of Flesh and Cardboard: A Cardboard Opera,"
dealing with Bradley Manning, the soldier who supplied restricted material
to WikiLeaks. For young audiences it's "Man = Carrot Circus,"
based on the revelation that an upright man rooted in dirt was created
in the image of the upright carrot rooted in dirt. See excerpts of the
latter on Vimeo here
and here.
Bread and Puppet Theater is an internationally recognized company that champions a visually rich, street-theater brand of performance art that filled with music, dance and slapstick. Its shows are political and spectacular, with huge puppets made of paper maché and cardboard; a brass band for accompaniment, and anti-elitist dance. Most are morality plays--about how people act toward each other--whose prototype is "Everyman." There are puppets of all kinds and sizes, masks, sculptural costumes, paintings, buildings and landscapes that seemingly breathe with Schumann's distinctive visual style of dance, expressionism, dark humor and low-culture simplicity.
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| I LAID AN EGG--Puppets by Margot Fitzsimmons and Spica Wobbe. Photo by Spica Wobbe. Production is featured in 2011 Voice 4 Vision puppet festival at Theater for the New City. |
DECEMBER
8 TO 18
VOICE 4 VISION PUPPET FESTIVAL
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
The sixth Voice 4 Vision
Puppet Festival will be presented December 8 to 18 by Theater
for the New City to celebrate the work of a unique group of New York artists
who have been creating dynamic puppet theater for many years. Jane Catherine
Shaw and Karen Oughtred are co-curators. The bi-annual festival is committed
to supporting and encouraging the recognition of New York artists--both
emerging artists and established artists--who are creating dynamic puppet
theater. In fostering the development of their work and their audiences,
the Festival also celebrates and promotes puppetry to New York audiences,
who may never have attended a full length theatrical piece conceived for
puppetry.
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PUPPET FORUM
DOES THE ELIZABETHAN UNDERSTANDING OF THE ACTOR AS PUPPET UNLOCK THE MEANING OF SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS?
The occasion of The Dark Lady Players' performance of "Shakespeare's Anti-Christian satires: The Virgin Mary Parodies" gave us the opportunity to investigate how Elizabethan Meta-Theater could be enacted with contemporary puppet theater.
So we asked John Hudson, the theorist and dramaturg of The Dark Lady Players, to illuminate the possibilities. We learned, in short, that all puppetry is metatheatrical but not all metatheater is puppetry.
PUPPETRY WITH A SOCIAL CONSCIENCE -- Theater for the New City hosted a panel entitled "Puppetry with a Social Conscience" on December 11, 2008. Some of New York's leading puppet theater artists discussed how our world is reflected in the eyes of the Puppet. Panelists included Peter Schumann, head of Bread and Puppet Theater; Vit Horejs, head of the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater; Jane Catherine Shaw, co-artistic director of the Voice 4 Vision Puppet Festival; John Bell, theater journalist and puppet theater artist; and Eileen Blumenthal, author of "Puppetry: A World History," an authoritative book on puppet theater. The event was moderated by Crystal Field, Executive Director of Theater for the New City. |
Listen to an audio recording of
If you navigate away from this page, this flash recording will stop. But you can listen to the recording while you browse: click here to play through your computer's media player. (Download time: five minutes) © Copyright 2008 Theater for the New City. All rights reserved--no commercial use or reproduction without permission. Our slide show begins with photos from "Puppetry with a Social Conscience" and continues with selected photos of productions that participated in the Passport to Puppet Theater (precursor to this website) between 2005 and 2008. Photos by Jonathan Slaff. |
About this website: NYpuppets.com is a successor to the Passport to Puppet Theater (2005-2008), which was a program sponsored by The Linux Loft and supported by the Jim Henson Foundation.
Presenters: If you would like to propose an offering for an upcoming puppet theater production for this page, contact us at: NYpuppets "at" acedsl.com. Describe your project and give us your contact info. Be creative! Offerings can include discount ticket offers, invitations to special previews and openings, meetings with artists (actors, directors, etc.) and much more.
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