Dream Music Puppetry

One of few programs in the country to grow and commission contemporary, adult puppet works, Dream Music provides performance opportunities to puppet artists, and encourages multidisciplinary collaboration to develop new puppetry techniques. This program was inaugurated with the premiere of Basil Twist’s OBIE-award-winning Symphonie Fantastique in 1998. Under the artistic direction of Twist, and produced by HERE co-founder Barbara Busackino, the Dream Music aesthetic is geared toward puppet works that feature live music as a collaborative element.

Puppetry is the original multi-disciplinary art form therefore Dream Music artists if they so choose, have a place in the HARP program to develop their work alongside artists of other disciplines. Dream Music curates regular Puppetry Parlors to showcase excerpts from developing works both from within Dream Music and the puppetry community at large. Each year, Dream Music commissions new full-length puppet works; develops new puppet works by emerging puppet artists through Puppetry Parlors and at CULTUREMART; provides educational outreach through its partnership commissions for the legendary Village Halloween Parade; and offers national and international touring/presenting opportunities. Touring commissions include Lake Simons’ What’s Inside the Egg?, Kevin Augustine’s Animal, Erin Orr’s Savage Nursery, and Erik Sanko’s The Fortune Teller.

The program is principally centered around the intimate Dorothy B. Williams Theatre, specifically configured for puppet works. Puppetry is a unique art form which takes many roots, and so our methods for crafting the program change with each artist who passes through our doors. Displayed outside of the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre is the Griff Williams Marionette Collection.

DREAM MUSIC PUPPETRY is made possible through the generous lead support of Cheryl Henson and The Jim Henson Foundation with the additional support of Brian Selznick & David Serlin, Elissa Auther, Stephanie D’Abruzzo, Andrea Kihlstedt, Hanne Tierney, and many other individual puppet fans.