Indian artist Diptej Vernekar attached puppets of Hindu avatars to exercise equipment that anyone could activate and engage with.
Puppetry
Posted inArt
A Historic Marionette Theater in LA Lives On, and It’s Still Magical
The Bob Baker Marionette Theater — the country’s longest-running puppet theater — has found a new space that seems like a natural fit.
Posted inFilm
The Dark Crystal Is a Marvelously Imaginative Puppet Series
The Netflix prequel series to the 1982 Jim Henson film faithfully embodies both the craft and spirit of the original.
Posted inArt
Painting Four Decades of Change in the East Village
New Works and the Avenue A Cut-Out Theatre, Anton van Dalen’s first solo show in eight years, charts the shifting landscape of New York City. Populated with imaginative characters, the artist’s latest work vividly documents the forces of gentrification and change.
Posted inPerformance
Lesbian Noir with Hard-Boiled Wooden Puppets
LOS ANGELES — Last week, Automata mounted Concrete Folk Variations, a noir puppet play set in McCarthy-era Los Angeles that was written, directed, and designed by artist Susan Simpson.
Posted inOpinion
Surreal Puppets Retell the Jabberwocky
SAN FRANCISCO — At San Francisco’s annual Dickens Fair, I learned about the work of Darren Way, whose Dangerous Puppets creations feature fanciful characters and bizarre imagery bordering on the fantastical and grotesque.
Posted inPerformance
Politicizing Puppets at St. Ann’s
Great Small Works’ International Toy Theater Festival is in its 10th year of celebrating miniature puppet works of all kinds. The last two weeks saw the festival transform St. Ann’s Warehouse in DUMBO, Brooklyn into a family circus-style labyrinth festooned with hand-painted banners, dividing the space into several individual makeshift theaters supplementing St. Ann’s usual venue.
Posted inArt
Nick Cave’s Equine Exercise in Puppet Magic
I first learned about Nick Cave’s work in an undergraduate puppetry class. Puppetry, like architecture and some other disciplines, is the synthesis of a myriad of techniques both artistic and mechanical, attracting sculptors, dancers, and engineers in equal number. Similarly, Cave’s 30-strong herd of horses that visited Grand Central last week in his piece HEARD•NY, presented by MTA Arts for Transit and Creative Time, as well as the “Soundsuits” for which he gained initial recognition are genre-bending works of art: they are visual and performative wonders as well as feats of construction. Cave is the director of the Graduate Fashion Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, so while he may be an unwitting puppeteer, he is certainly no stranger to the intersections of beauty, functionality, and craftsmanship.
