HERE's Dream Music Puppetry Program to Celebrate 25th Anniversary With PUPPETOPIA

The Obie award-winning HERE has revealed details for Puppetopia, a two week puppetry state of mind with new puppet theater from Chile, London, Maryland, and New York. This third edition of Puppetopia celebrates the 25th anniversary of HERE's Dream Music Puppetry Program, one of few programs in the country to grow and commission contemporary adult puppet works, particularly works that feature live music as a collaborative element. Puppetopia will run February 27 – March 10, 2024 in the HERE Mainstage & Dorothy B. Williams Theatres (145 Sixth Avenue, Manhattan). Tickets, which start at $35, are currently on sale at www.here.org.

The festival opens with The Adventures of Curious Ganz from the London-based Curious School of Puppetry. Running February 27 – March 2, The Adventures of Curious Ganz is a fictitious story based on the true life of 16th-century copper smelter Joachim Ganz with a little leap to Ada Lovelace, Galileo, Al-Buzanji, Brunelleschi… A response to the closing of borders and narrowing of minds, this show is a celebration of the new, the strange, the brave, and the curious! Told without words through design, table-top puppetry, and original music, all wildly based on the principles of alchemy.

Dream Music is thrilled to welcome back Silencio Blanco, one of Chile's most distinguished companies, with its newest production dedicated to people who live from the sea. Running February 28 – March 3, Pescador (Fisherman) tells the story of a man, who, together with his boat and his fishing net, establishes an invaluable connection with his profession; an artisan who inhabits those places that have become strange and alien to us. Through puppets and elements of genuine eloquence, actor-manipulators coexist in a space where the company's aesthetic work and research take on new focuses.

The Maryland-based puppetry duo Alex and Olmsted will delight audiences with MAROONED! A Space Comedy featuring music from the Voyager Golden Record that takes place in the outer reaches of space. Running March 5–10, this innovative puppet show centers on an astronaut who crashes on an uncharted planet. Will she be able to survive strange creatures, anomalous atmosphere, and isolation? Will she find her way home?

The non-hierarchical storytelling collective Eat Drink Tell Your Friends, based in New York, performs its newest work, Lectures, from March 6–10. Lectures is an allegorical story about emotional vulnerability and trauma. The show uses a multitude of puppetry styles including shadow and tabletop, as well as masks and stop-motion animation, and will feature four puppeteers and one musician. The story concerns a girl who is navigating a challenging home life, a carousel horse-maker stuck in time, and a physics lecturer (based loosely on Richard Feynman) who serves as a bridge between their two worlds. Lectures is a show about hiding your heart. 

Puppetopia is curated by HERE co-founder and Dream Music producer Barbara Busackino and Dream Music Artistic Director Basil Twist who said, “Twenty-five years ago we opened The Dorothy B. Williams Theatre with Symphonie Fantastique and began the Dream Music Puppetry program at HERE. We were instantly embraced by audiences and fellow artists in the act of pure creative expression. Over time, this extraordinary community in New York has blossomed, international friendships have been forged, and the simple idea that we had in creating Dream Music has grown into a breeding ground for wondrous creativity. It's a blessing that continues today and shines brightly in this year's edition of Puppetopia.”

As part of Puppetopia, HERE's cafe will be transformed into a puppet lounge featuring specially crafted cocktails and snacks. Additionally, a selection of puppets, relics, and other ephemera spanning 25 years of Dream Music Puppetry will be on display throughout the cafe.

General admission tickets for each Puppetopia show start at $35. A Puppetopia package is available for $110 and includes admission into all four shows. Each performance will also have 10 tickets available for $10. Tickets can be purchased by visiting www.here.org or by calling 212-647-0202. Students and seniors can access free tickets on a rush basis, subject to availability for each performance, and must be redeemed at the box office. For Group Sales, contact boxoffice@here.org. Standard ticketing fees apply.

Please visit https://here.org/shows/puppetopia-2024/ for more information.

About the Artists

Silencio Blanco has distinguished itself for its meticulous work with highly expressive puppets, built from everyday materials such as newspaper and chopsticks. The company articulates its productions from observation and research on the ground, delving into the lives of simple people and solitary jobs. Exploring through gestures and dispensing with text, they manage to transfer human movement to the puppet, causing an illusion in the viewer to the point of transmitting the heartbeats of the character.

Alex and Olmsted (Alex Vernon and Sarah Olmsted Thomas) is an internationally acclaimed puppet theater and filmmaking company based in Maryland, USA. They have toured at festivals in Italy, Denmark, South Korea, and Canada, and have performed at numerous venues within the United States. Alex and Olmsted was awarded the 2020 State Independent Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council, the highest honor for performing artists in the State of Maryland; their works have been supported by the Jim Henson Foundation and Greenbelt Community Foundation, recognized by the New York Times, and named an official selection of the Maryland Film Festival, Paris Art Film, and others. Alex and Olmsted is a resident company at Baltimore Theatre Project. Vernon and Thomas are also proud company members of Happenstance Theater with whom they have created 11 productions since 2012.

Curious School of Puppetry's mission is to be a center for puppetry arts, nurturing an inclusive sector and developing the art form through training, convening and advocacy. Its vision is for a nationally celebrated and thriving puppetry sector that is collaborative, open, and inclusive, recognized internationally for its rigor and innovation. Founded in 2015 by Sarah Wright, its national touring school is artist-led and focuses on puppetry performance, theatre making, and collaboration. Curious has reached various locations across the UK; the school has been run in London, Edinburgh and Falmouth, and we have facilitated workshops in Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Bradford, Truro, Chichester, Leeds, Leicester, Glasgow, Dublin and Galway.

Eat Drink Tell Your Friends is a non-hierarchical storytelling collective that uses puppetry, mask, and music to create intimate and imaginative theatre.  Co-founded in 2012 by Rachel Schapira, Ashur Rayis, and Andy Manjuck, EDTYF generates through a devised process, stretching personal experiences into surreal and resonant narratives.  Their first full-length production, Photo & Supply, premiered in 2016 as a part of Flint & Tinder at The Tank in NYC and received a UPSI residency at The Church (now The Visionary) in upstate New York.  Their new production, Lectures, formerly Lectures on the Physics of Reversibility, is the recipient of both a 2019 Workshop Grant and a 2024 Production Grant from the Jim Henson Foundation. Its development has included the 2018 Puppet Lab at St. Ann's Warehouse as well as a 2020 P.A.T.C.H. residency.

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