The Twelfth Annual New Orleans
Giant Puppet Festival
Artist Lineup
The Mudlark Puppeteers. Toybox Theatre. String and Shadow. Boxcutter Collective. BrainTime Productions. BreakFAST Puppets. Brzezinski & Schap. Jawbone Puppet Theater. Nate Puppets. Muddy Roots Theatre Collective. Happy Accident. Playdoh Puppet Productions. Steve Ackerman and Dominique Herskind. FeliceGoLucky and SaraO'Keefe. Emily Schubert. BreakFAST Puppets. Rabbit Foot Puppets. PUPPETKABOB. Honey Goodenough. Fernfrond Puppet Ensemble. Mr. Bonetangles. Lily Haje. Miss Pussycat and Quintron. Velvet Effigy. Habitat Recovery Project + String and Shadow. Puppet Pants. Poose Productions Inc. Possibly Puppets. Jake (he/they) & Ches (they/them). Mutual Obsession Circus . Little Chaos Company. Cila Puccadella. abandoned ships. Madison J Cripps. Nocturnal Creatures Troupe. The Silly Gooses. Naughty Little No Good. Isabel's Zombie Nightmare. Samuel J Lewis . Water Striders. MR KY WHY + WET WIG PRODUCTIONS.
“Cinderella” & “Charlie”
‘Cinderella' and 'Charlie ' are companion accounts of an intersecting tale. Together they outline the tragedy of two families from parallel worlds whose lives and destinies intertwine through a misbegotten love; setting in motion the dual blessings and burdens of legacy. In 'Cinderella,' a young woman invites the viewer to wander with the ghosts of her mother's romantic past. We meet Charlie and all the possibility he represents, daring the world to dream. In 'Charlie,' the ghosts of ‘Cinderella’ reveal a life all of their own. The viewer is invited into Charlie’s world, where the cost of dreaming is dire and the mantle of the storyteller is sacred and sometimes cruel. When the ways to tell a story are as limitless as there are ways to live it, sometimes it is simplicity which eludes our understanding.
A romantic fable in two parts told through large scale shadows, giant puppetry, music and marionette.
Boxcutter Collective
Dimension Zero
Dimension Zero is a sci-fi puppet-filled anti-capitalist musical theater spectacle unlike anything you’ve seen before! While our planet falls apart, this absurdist adventure story offers audiences a timeline where we all survive. It is a grand love letter to our city, an ode to classic sci-fi, rock-n-roll, and a tribute to badass space-adventuring women battling against the madness of unbridled capitalism and giant space monsters everywhere that will leave you hopeful and humming.
Riperion: Piano Creatures is an evolving performance project where salvaged piano parts and reclaimed trash come to life in whispers of exploration. We catch a glimmer of the brilliance and memory stored in these discarded objects as they test their potential for movement, connection and play.
Using shallow tanks of water, RIPERION’s landscape unfolds as a place between earth and water. Whether from neglect, abandonment or the soggy refuse of storms, the creatures of this world are a product of an in-between place. Taken from the streets of New Orleans, these reformed piano parts awaken and dance at the precipice. With musical accompaniment, their story unfolds in a wordless language dictated by their unique physicality and substance. Through their play, they reveal to us culture, consequence, wisdom, and humor.
The corner of the Gulf South from which this story takes root is a place of storm and extraction. These forces leave rubble that hovers like ghosts, affecting us in unseen ways. RIPERION asks us: if this rubble was to come alive, what could it teach us about our own connection to this place? What forgotten mythologies might we find? What current realities might we see anew? And can our way of working with these realities be transformed?
PUPPETKABOB
Presents Tempur CarniVEIL: Midway to Nowhere
Something wicked creeps beyond the veil and into this world.
Welcome to the Tempus Vorator CarniVEIL hosted by the Zeit Geist a Spirit with the ability to freeze a moment or someone’s essence in TIME. Does she keep them for her amusement or devour them? Only Time will tell who is really pulling the strings.
The Tempus CarniVEIL blends poetry and puppetry into a sensory feast that blurs the line between abstraction and nostalgia. Its parasol-centric puppets spin cautionary tales filled with danger, while the curtain is pulled away revealing the secret relationship of puppeteer and puppet without the playboard, while the tantalizing Lady Mai dances the ancestors home.
Come revel in the bewebbed fairgrounds, see the sights, ride the rides - you never know if this time will be your last… your last… your last… you las… yo la… y l…
Runtime: 50 mins
Show in Progress.
String and Shadow is a theater company based in Olympia, Washington and (lately, sometimes) in New Orleans. They create giant outdoor touring puppet shows that weave together a variety of puppetry and theater styles. With copious amounts of cardboard, fabric, and paper-mache, String and Shadow's worlds of fantasy and fable aim to pluck at the strings of universal wonder, innocence, and joy.
BrainTime Productions
presents Sweet Baby Brain
Floating baby heads! Concerned parents! Rock n roll! And much, much more!
Sweet Baby Brain is a play told through a series of vignettes, each highlighting moments in Dane’s life. We will watch him navigate life from adolescence to adulthood as an epileptic. With absurdist and surreal puppetry, Dane’s memories will be portrayed as if we are walking through the halls of his brain. Behind each door is a new Technicolor, trashy, honest dreamland; this is Dane’s brain.
Brain Time is a New York/New Orleans based production company created by Dane Eskin, Smith Smith, and Tau Bennett. They will also be pairing with artists from Leroy’s Place, such as Jacques Duffourc and Caitlin Davis, who previously worked with Eskin on “DoomScrolling”, a puppetry performance that premiered at the 2024 New Orleans Giant Puppet Fest. With the help of Duffourc, Davis, and many others, Smith, Dane, and Tau will be putting on a showing of “Sweet Baby Brain”!
Lily Haje
presents The Light Bearer
In 1310 Marguerite Porete was burnt at the stake for refusing to denounce her book, The Mirror of Simple Souls, in which she offers a transgressively open-hearted and poetic reading of morality, divine love, and sin. Interweaving Porete's writing with events from her biography, The Light Bearer is a rumination on light, reflection, conflagration, and what it means to be a woman simultaneously trapped and freed by her circumstances. The piece, in which the character Marguerite appears in many, prismatic forms, incorporates dance alongside puppetry and is intended for three live performers.
NATE PUPPETS
Welcome to TheAte-A Monstrouso a living, live puppet theater!
The TheAte-A Monstrouso is huge monster that transforms into multiple puppets right before your eyes!
See just how many puppets are able to fit inside just one, at THE THEATE-A MONSTROUSO!
Mutual Obsession Circus
The Dream Show
The dream show is exploration of dreaming - of sleep, new horizons, and other ends of the world through the love story of Pierrot & the Moon. Giant mache puppets, lullabies, marionettes, disembodied limbs searching for their homes, and textured landscapes create a dreamworld both tender and horrifying.
BreakFAST Puppets
CRAZY HARD STUFF: DDR Crunch Time 6K Super Ultra
Investigating the factor of procrastination in my life that so easily makes me resist tasks and create a fear of improving myself. This comes through interactions I have with my puppets and alternate selves that pull me in different directions.
This show has been building for over the past year as my puppetry has shifted to larger than life puppets and costumes that my clown character can inhibit and perform alongside. The use of puppets that required the whole body lets me transform and tell stories non-linearly, providing information through each puppet and creating a whole understanding at the end of the show.
My show has multiple large puppets that are worn as costumes. Additionally, I am using hand puppets to help keep track of the game aspects of the world and a character that's "all legs".
Photo Credit Richard Termine
Brzezinski & Schap
Say Mama
In the hauntingly beautiful world of a miniature dollhouse, Say Mama explores the isolating and terrifying experience of new parenthood. This psychological journey follows a mother who, while trying to soothe her baby one night, encounters a nightmarish transformation of shadows within the dollhouse. Developed as part of Les Sage Fous' Micro-festival of Unfinished Puppetry in Montreal and Puppet Blok at Dixon Place in New York. Performed by Libby Schap. Original music by Christopher Vu. Puppet design by Caitlin Brzezinski.
Jawbone Puppet Theater
“Der Golem”
“Der Golem” is a dense puppet show about a secular Jewish-American radical puppeteer who has complicated feelings when asked to build a golem puppet at the height of a genocide. We take a deep dive into hard drugs, toenail fungus, ancient sacred monsters, Kabbalah wizards, Jewish diaspora and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
MUDDY ROOTS THEATRE COLLECTIVE
The Muddy Roots Theatre Collective is a collaboration between old school Mudlark Puppeteers Otter Goodfellow and Amanda Stone. Their performance in Aprils is a sequel to their last show: Three Impossible Tasks. As they continue their quest to kill a tyrannical king/abusive husband, our heroes set off to the Goblin Market to procure supplies and allies. They encounter many strange characters, both sinister and saintly, along the way.
Little Chaos Company
Moondance
Little Chaos Co. manufactures whimsy, wonder and cacophonous joy. A strong belief in the power of the extraordinary compels us to be constantly searching for visually creative ways to tell stories. Based in Toronto, Canada and founded in 2024, Little Chaos specializes in whimsical shadow puppetry and spectacular ambient street performance. Our innovative shadow tent shows have appeared at Concrete Cabaret, Fresh Ideas in Puppetry, the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto International Buskerfest and the World Harmony Puppet Innovation Festival in Thailand.
Moondance is the story of a young girl coping with loneliness, finding magic and going on an adventure that changes her perspective.
Happy Accident
Happy Accident: "Vol 2 or Nothing is Everything"
Happy Accident explores the exponential pace of overwhelming absurdity in our world. Found objects, large scale puppets and sputtering lights bring you face to face with the cuddly nightmare that is everyday life. An anti-clown car driven by master puppeteer liz HOWLS and co-piloted by musician/unlicensed electrician Servant Baby, Happy Accident ecstatically careens down the wrong side of the lost highway leaving a trail of old copies of Weekly World News and Jack in the Box wrappers in its wake. Colorfully reimagining Saturday mornings spent drooling over piles of synthetic material in front of the TV, Happy Accident revels in naked, antipathetic americana. You will probably laugh, you might cry, and like other designer drugs, you will want more within minutes. Ultimately you will ask yourself, “What kind of culture would produce something like this?”
Cila Puccadella
"Often magical, probably funny, usually scientific, and always fantastical, Cila Puccadella presents original myths and fairytales that explore themes of love, loss, transformation, and other trivial matters such as the meaning of life on earth. And if the conclusively quirky puppets aren’t enough, New Orleans’ very own Eight Dice Cloth members Chris Booth and Zach Thomas are ready to steal the show with live music. Puppeteering by Audrey Fiala, a New Orleans star in her own right with writing and direction by Elena Ricciardi.
abandoned ships
weather reports of the future
weather reports of the future examines the idea of small talk, often thought of as inconsequential or unimportant. But as larger forces start to disappear the information needed to make sense of the world, we realize that we can start to understand how everything is changing by making small observations. This is the fourth and final vignette in the "how to read a storm" series.
weather reports of the future has received support from the MAP Fund and the Puffin Foundation.
Miss Pussycat began her career in art and puppetry as a child in the Southern Baptist Church of Antlers Oklahoma as part of the Christian Puppet Youth Ministry. She is always excited to bring puppetry into the pantheon of contemporary art, as well as the subculture of underground music.
The magical collaboration that is Quintron and Miss Pussycat began at a Mardi Gras party in New Orleans. For thirty years, the two of them have been busy presenting live puppet shows and playing organ driven party music in rock clubs, pizza restaurants, and secret clubhouses all around the world.
Madison J. Cripps
“A Slice of Crazy Pie”
Step into the enchantment of "A Slice of Crazy Pie," a mesmerizing cabaret style marionette puppet show meticulously crafted by Madison J Cripps. Since 2006, this captivating production weaves interests, viewpoints, and eccentricities into a spellbinding journey. Characters like Pinkey the Mayor and Ratty Ratkinson engage with audiences, while diverse settings from the moon to the street provide intrigue. With themes spanning ecology to well-being, the show's fluid duration accommodates any space. Beneath the puppetry lies a world of creativity and interaction, where harmonica melodies and singing add depth. Blurring imagination and reality, the show thrives on creative engagement. As the curtains rise, all ages are invited into a captivating realm, a profound exploration of the human spirit, and a shared adventure of fascination.
Emily Schubert is an interdisciplinary artist working in the worlds of puppetry, performance, sculpture and collage. Her rag tag puppet company Pink House Puppets operates with a strong mission to aid in the critically essential effective effort to resist the gloom of our own making!
'A Period Piece'
A show about periods through the ages. Comical, educational, and a little too bloody real. Period.
RABBIT FOOT PUPPETS
The Elemental Trial
Rabbit Foot Puppetry is a Chicago-based LGBTQIA+ puppetry collective composed of fabricators, performers, writers, and artists committed to creating bold, original puppet theatre. Rooted in spectacle and driven by imagination, our work fuses the technical precision of puppetry with the joy of play and experimentation.
The Elemental Trial is a story of love and loss in an ever changing landscape. Puppets will be morphed and shifted using heat, water, and air. The Elemental Trial offers a simple question: what does it mean to live in a world that asks us to change?
FeliceGoLucky and SaraO'Keefe
The Pesky Possom
The Pesky Possum feels all alone in the world until he consults with an Oracle. She embarks on an adventure full of friends and strangers, unfamiliar places, and difficult roads. Pesky Possum finds her way to a welcoming community who embraces her after some very challenging experiences, where she feels understood and belonging.
Naughty Little No Good
Hymen Opus
Naughty Little No Good (aka Opal) is a puppetry artist working at the convergence of the surreal, sensual, and haunting. Their creative practice is driven by an emotional undercurrent and a desire to explore what’s tender, grotesque, and unspoken.
Based on the unfinished poem 'Christabel' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'Hymen Opus' is a psychedelic vampire fantasia dripping with sapphic yearning and, of course, orchid mantises. Layered with erotic tension and mythic overtones, 'Hymen Opus' pulses with an orgasmic energy. It’s part cabaret, part fevered séance, and part insectoid spectacular- a queered gothic romance drenched in lace, light, and blood.
Esmerelda the Puppet
Get to the Gig
When Esmerelda, a struggling cabaret performer, received a call from the biggest producer in town, she is offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As she races towards her big Negativité, a devilish spirit that pulls Esmerelda into deepest corners of her disheveled mind. Will Esmerelda break through, or will darkness steal her cue?
Performed with a live band and an eclectic mix of rod and cardboard puppets, Get to the Gig is an adult-oriented musical that blends comedy, puppetry, jazz and theatrical mayhem.
Nocturnal Creatures Troupe
Nocturnal Creatures Show
A multimedia musical puppet production concerning the lives of a humanoid bat, cuddly spider and cranky mouse. Distracting, absurd and endearing, for better or for worse! Provocative parody of everyday experiences of street performers in the French Quarter, the characters they encounter, as they strive to strike a record deal and make it big.
Photo credit and copyright Richard Termine
Drama of Works
The Grand Guignol Theater for Children*
(*not actually for children)
Drama of Works presents an instructional evening of theater for children (*NOT really for children). In between beautiful, innovative, large-scale shadow puppet renditions of literature by Edgar Allan Poe they use a toy theater cemetery to warn children of the dangers of misbehaving. The tales of The Raven, Tell-Tale Heart, Annabel Lee, and The Black Cat come to life spectacularly with DOW’s signature inventive shadow puppetry! All the while trick toy theater skeletons and cadavers inspired by Heinrich Hoffman, Edward Gorey, Maurice Sendak, & the Dead Milkmen get sliced, blown away, drowned, set on fire… Is everyone ready for a bloody good time?!?
Photo credit Stephanie Creekpaum
MR. BONETANGLES
Mr. Bonetangles' Vortex
Will Schutze is a marionette artist, maker and music producer from Austin, Texas. He is also Mr. Bonetangles.
Mr. Bonetangles is a cute and disturbing punk rock puppet spectacle of marionettes, broken toys and home-recorded music that has entertained audiences from the street to the screen--ranging from busking across the country and performing on stages in theaters and venues all over the land to being featured in Jon Favreau's 2014 film 'Chef'
Mr. Bonetangles' Vortex is a whirling combination of marionette characters, old and new, performing the home-recorded album, Eddy by Mr. Bonetangles, accompanied by a broken toy and robot band. It's a punk rock puppet show.
VELVET EFFIGY
Eyes of the Beholder
Caught in a web of romance and deception, a Beautiful Priestess must choose between The Queen's wishes or her newfound feelings for a Bestial Baroness.
Join us as we reimagine Villeneuve's Classic
"Beauty and The Beast"
HONEY GOODENOUGH
WORD PLAY: Clown around with the alphabet.
"Word Play" uses clowning and puppetry to take audiences on an adventure through the alphabet. Words come to life in the hands of two skilled performers, who clown around with sounds and letters to create dozens of interactive characters and imaginative scenes. It’s the perfect blend of education and entertainment—a play on words, literally!
FERNFROND PUPPET ENSEMBLE
"The Owl and the Pussycat"
Fernfrond Puppet Ensemble, a newly germinated New Orleans based troupe, will bring an extended and enlivened story of "The Owl and the Pussycat" with handmade papier maché puppets and live music to sweep you away on a pea green boat. The show is for children of all ages and lasts for a year and a day .... or just for 10 minutes, or so.
Possibly Puppets
Save the Day for Snail
Save the Day for Snail is an interactive handmade puppet show featuring Gladsy the snail, denizen of the empty lot next to The Waffle House; designed for ages 3 through 9 and their families. Puppeteer Risa Lenore combines live acting and puppetry in this new show made from reclaimed materials. Children become part of the performance, by making the sound effects, joining as puppeteers and helping rebuild Gladsy's house. With the use of tabletop mouth puppets, rod puppets, one very simple marionette and a rotating backdrop, Risa as storyteller and performer guides the audience as the cable-knit snail searches for a new home. This is an eco-fable, a timely, yet silly tale that reminds us that innovative community solutions are the only way forward.
Poose Productions Inc.
Heart On Your Nose Clowns
“Heart on Your nose!” is an artist led project by Benjamin Martin and Emi Rane Fisher with Poose Productions Inc.
"Heart on Your Nose is an all-ages puppet and clown show that invites children and grownups to discover the clown they’ve always been. Through whimsical marionettes and lovable misunderstood monsters, the story gently encourages audiences to embrace their emotions, their weirdness, and their hidden “clown heart.” By the end of the show, everyone is transformed—invited to wear their hearts on their noses and celebrate the joyful magic of being fully themselves “
Photo Credit Matthew Gilson Photography
Forged By Family LLC: Samuel J Lewis
Praiseworthy -
In 2022, Sam discovers an amazing newspaper article in the Memphis Daily Appeal from 1872 that describes a heroic story from rural Tennessee.
music composed and performed by: Hunter Diamond
crankie puppet building and art direction by: Grace Needlman
Photo credit @samuelbirdsong
Habitat Recovery Project + String and Shadow
present The Little Shrimp and the Terrible Noise
The Little Shrimp and the Terrible Noise tells the real story of a small coastal town in Southwest Louisiana and its fight against destructive industry. Told from the point of view of a heroic shrimp, this show shares the impact of a new liquified natural gas plant on the ecology and way of life of Cameron, and the ongoing fight for the sake of both the shrimp and the shrimpers.
Water Striders
float
Our performance tells a story that is fictional, yet draws from our personal and the collective's experiences from Hurricane Helene. It interweaves the dynamics of several characters (humans, creatures & landscapes) in the process of reuniting with one another after a natural disaster. The themes explored in the story are of grief, loss, connection, magic, and the mystery of eternal unknowing. We find inspiration in zen koans, fables and the bewildering beauty that lies within every biome. Our intention is to evoke a sense of unity with the audience, offering lanterns of light while portraying the cycles of death and rebirth. We wish to tell a tale that is unique in its composition, yet universal in its essence.
Oracle Puppets
Sierra Kay, Bixby Boss and Maggie Tonra
Presents
Octopus Dreams
Dive into the depths of the ocean with Octopus Dreams, a deep-sea journey brought to life through an enchanting array of puppetry; marionettes, hand puppets, giant puppets, and a crankie, tell a story where poetic, ethereal science unfolds beneath the waves.
Community Garden Puppets
How To: Kiss Trees, Revive the Dead and Make Friends
We welcome you into the magical garden, where you will find the child that resides within you, where all that grows comes alive! Bear witness to Willow the Tree, who yearns and aches for companion ship.! Rebirth into a child of the sun with Kresznik! Squelch with the lovers who find each other in the light of the moon!
The Silly Gooses
The Church of the Absurd
We will be presenting a liturgy from the Church of the Absurd. Sacred rituals, hymns, fellowship performed by a variety of puppets. A peaceful and joyous, somberly bombastic celebration of the absurd, where nothing means anything, and thereby, as needed, can mean everything.
Plantain Futures
Butter Woman
This is an African folktale about a fat woman made of butter. Based in Nigeria at the time of colonization. Her alluring ways and how jealousy and a non-belief of what she is made of lead to her demise.
FUGUE
“Sun Kink”
This short story follows a character, When a man ventures into the celestial realm, he is on a determined mission to free his people by defeating his mortal enemy: time itself. His journey through various stops on a cosmic train dismantles his conception of time, and charts an unexpected pathway to humanity’s liberation. Sun Kink destroys our colonial notions of the future, questions the past, and offers a window into the freedom of the present.
Jake (he/they) & Ches (they/them)
LIMBS
LIMBS is a multidimensional puppet show featuring shadowy memories and masked creatures. Inspired by the "Bride of Frankenstein," LIMBS explores memories of a three-faced Creation as they are disassembled and discarded by their Creator. The dismembered limbs follow threads from their lives - together and separate - in a swirl of interactive shadows. The performance features an 8 foot tall marionette, fleeting thoughts, and a vehement soundscape as the Creation's lives flash before your eyes.
Photo credit Elena Escobedo
Amica Hunter
Anatomica
ANATOMICA:
A Comedy About Meat, Bones, & The Skin You’re In
By Amica Hunter (they/them)
International Comedian & Weird-Lil’-Gremlin, Amica Hunter (they/them), GETS UNDER YOUR SKIN and CRUSHES YOUR FUNNY BONE in this hilarious, captivating, and sometimes-unsettling-comedy about skeletal systems and the horrors of living in a body. ANATOMICA is an intimate, unpredictable exploration of zoological fascination, chronic pain, & the collective imagination. It is a show striving to answer one crucial universal question - What is the BEST type of skeleton?!?!?
With candidness and a comfortably casual tone, Amica reviews the three skeletal systems found in animals and discusses the pros and cons of each one. What would it be like to inhabit a body completely alien from our classic human form? A gloriously deranged Ted-Talk by a wanna be scientist who dropped out of college to attend clown school instead.
Featuring a guided worm meditation, a slew of scientific animal facts, a butt-faced crab, and communication with the audience via a long plastic tube, ANATOMICA is an absurd shapeshifting show that will leave audiences with more questions than answers.
Part stand-up, part storytelling, and part clown, ANATOMICA is an investigation of the inadequacies of different animal body models, and a celebration of the absurdity of being trapped in a body that is limited by pain, fatigue, and ultimately decay. But, you know, make it fun.
cabal of crabs productions
wonders of the dumpster the musical
two friends on a quest for food must dumpster dive to get there meal but the dumpster has a secret they will never forget
Work in development.
Steve Ackerman and Dominique Herskind
Let's Make A Puppet Porno
Go behind the scenes of the creation of a puppet porno, watching a ragtag film crew put together a heartfelt, sincere attempt at the most raunchy of cinema on the most modest of budgets. Craft services. Best boy grips. Wardrobe and Make-up. The Fluffer. It's like Boogie Nights, but with puppets.
MR KY WHY + WET WIG PRODUCTIONS
There’s Something About (the virgin) Mary
Join four heathens in reimagining the story of (the virgin) Mary’s immaculate conception into gay fanfiction. Follow Mary on her provocative adventure as she cruises her way through Hell on a journey of sexual and self discovery.
WET WIG PRODUCTIONS was founded by Rhode Island sweethearts, Reba Mitchell, Ly Barber and MR KY WHY in 2022, then joined by Eilish Wilder in 2024. The group have combined their love of unhinged fantasies, musical vastness and visual artistries to produce a theatrical experience that is both biblically accurate and historically slutty.