NYpuppets.org
|
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.
|
|
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:
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. |
MARCH
4 TO 21
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
"REVOLUTION!?"
This theatre spectacle, featuring Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre
and guest artists, examines revolutions throughout the history of mankind
as a backdrop for the extraordinary peaceful 1989 Velvet Revolution in
former Czechoslovakia.
The piece will be performed in the tradition of Central European medieval street and traveling circus shows, using puppetry, object theater and circus arts. Czech and Czech-American theater artists will collaborate to offer their particular perspectives on the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and an overview of the very notion of revolution. Characters, live and puppets, will include Prometheus, Jesus, Jan Hus, Jean Paul Marat and the "Cleaning Lady" who repeatedly mops up bodies and rubble. Dobrusky and Horejs will draw script materials from the Titanomachy (when the Olympian gods overthrew the Titans), the Agrarian Revolution (when organized agriculture started and animals were domesticated), the Spartacus Rebellion, the rise of Christianity, the 15th century Hussite movement of peasants in Czech lands, the American, French, Industrial and Russian Revolutions; the Counterculture, the Computer Revolution and the Czech Velvet Revolution.
"Revolution!?" will be written and directed by Pavel Dobrusky and Vit Horejs. Set, costumes and lighting will be designed by Pavel Dobrusky. The performers will be Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre members Theresa Linnihan, Ronny Wasserstrom and Vit Horejs, together with four guests from the Czech Republic: stilt walkers/perfomers Adela Jirackova and Sergej Sanza, and dancers Pavel Strouhal and Hana Kalouskova.
MARCH
25 TO APRIL 11
LA MAMA E.T.C.
"THIRST: MEMORY OF WATER"
Puppet theater has an uncanny ability to take on big themes, and such
will be the case when Jane Catherine Shaw, co-director of the Voice 4
Vision Puppet Festival, takes on water scarcity and conflict in "Thirst:
Memories of Water," her newest puppet theater work. It's a big subject,
but Shaw is trying to make it manageable by concentrating on themes of
women and water because, as she writes, "around the world women
are carrying (literally) the burden of maintaining life by walking for
water."
The piece is based on such literary sources as first-person writings about Ethiopia, testimonials from Haiti, Tanzania, the Jenin Camp on the West Bank, Taiwan and Japan; newspaper accounts from Saudi Arabia; the Hindu Deluge Story, Leonardo Da Vinci's Treatise on Water and Book Six (The River Styx) of The Aenead. Features air rod puppets, shadow puppets, a giant inflatable baby puppet and images from the NYC Sand Hogs (diggers of the third giant NYC water tunnel).
Sources of texts
include The Common Language Project, 1h2o.org, wateraid.org, a Chinese
women's org, and an activist named Kathy Kelly. Music composed by David
Patterson. Choreography by Hillary Spector. Lighting design by Jeff Nash.
Set design by Gian Marco Lo Forte. Puppets, costume design and construction,
script and concept by Jane Catherine Shaw in collaboration with the all
woman cast of Sophia Remolde, Ora Fruchter, Spica Wobbe, Margot Fitzsimmons,
Kristine Haruna Lee and Cybele Kaufmann.
 |
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.
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.
Login
|
Register
| Password
Reminder
Update
your profile | Cancel
your membership