Puppetopia 2025
HERE’s Puppetopia, a two-week puppetry state of mind, returns for its fourth annual edition. Curated by HERE Co-Founder Barbara Busackino and Dream Music Artistic Director and star Alum Basil Twist, the festival presents original work.
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Click here for Puppetopia 2025 Digital Program
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Click on each show title link for individual show tickets:
THE HARLEM DOLL PALACE
May 21-June 1, 2025
Written by Alva Rogers
Direction and Production Design by Ashley Winkfield
Music, Lyrics, and Scoring by Bruce Monroe
Welcome to Aunt Len’s Doll and Toy Museum! Behind the pink door of a three story Harlem brownstone lies a world created by Lennon Holder Hoyte – affectionately known as Aunt Len. The dolls from her “dollection” seek to keep Aunt Len, their beloved museum founder, alive before the outside world can invoke its realities of life, ashes and dust. As Harlem deteriorates around her beloved doll museum, the dolls recreate their journeys to the museum in an effort to keep Aunt Len’s memory alive. Enter the world of The Harlem Doll Palace. Remember, an appointment is necessary for admission.
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RHYNOCERON
Directed and designed by KT Shivak
May 21-25, 2025
The world premiere of a puppetry show that traces the true events surrounding the arrival of a one-horned rhinoceros to Renaissance Europe, sparking an obsession that continued for hundreds of years. Through acts of hunting and collecting, Shivak’s life size rhino puppet transforms in front of our eyes from a natural inspiring wonder to an object of human greed. Shivak and company hail from Chicago where this show was created with support from The Chicago International Puppetry Festival and this mark’s their New York Debut.
Puppeteers: Chih-Jou Cheng, Jacky Kelsey, KT Shivak
Music and Composition: Ben Zucker
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VARIATIONS ON (THE) WATER
May 28-June 1, 2025
A solo puppet work created by Lake Simons and John Dyer
Accompanied by music composed by John Dyer
Variations on (the) Water is experimental by design. It breaks down puppetry to its most simple base, devoid of expected form and asks the viewer to imagine. Together, the audience and the performer bring forward image and story, giving equal energy to nurture a personal yet shared story. Empathy blossoms and through the abstracted imagery we find a shared story and experience. An exploration of Simons & Dyer’s Raft Project (My Shapes Are In Turmoil) a full length wordless puppet theatre work.
THE HARLEM DOLL PALACE
Dates: May 21-June 1, 2025
Performances:
Wednesday, May 21st: 7 pm
Thursday, May 22nd: 7 pm
Friday, May 23rd: 7 pm
Saturday, May 24th: 2 pm and 7 pm
Sunday, May 25th: 2 pm
Tuesday, May 27th: 7 pm
Wednesday, May 28th: 7 pm
Thursday, May 29th: 7 pm (Post Show Discussion)*
Friday, May 30th: 7 pm
Saturday, May 31st: 2 pm and 7 pm
Sunday, June 1st: 2 pm
Location: HERE Mainstage, 145 6th Avenue, New York, NY
Ticket Prices: 10 for $10, $37, $50, $100
RHYNOCERON
Dates: May 21-25, 2025
Location: Here’s DOT Theater, 145 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY
Runtime: Approx. 55 minutes with no intermission
For Ages 8 and up
Performances:
Wednesday, May 21st: 8:30 pm
Thursday, May 22nd: 8:30 pm
Friday, May 23rd: 8:30 pm
Saturday, May 24th: 4 pm and 8:30 pm
Sunday, May 25th: 4 pm
Ticket Price: 10 for $10, $37, $50, $100
VARIATIONS ON (THE) WATER
Dates: May 28- June 1, 2025
Location: HERE’s Dorothy B. Williams Theater (DOT), 145 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY
Performances:
Wednesday, May 28th: 8:30 pm
Thursday, May 29th: 8:30 pm
Friday, May 30th: 8:30 pm
Saturday, May 31st: 4 pm and 8:30 pm
Runtime: 45 minutes
Ticket Prices: 10 for $10, $37, $50, $100
We understand the extreme challenges that our current financial climate presents. No matter your socioeconomic status, we want everyone to have access to groundbreaking art. There are ten tickets priced at $10 available for each performance on a first-come, first-served basis, for those in need of financial assistance. These tickets are available with the code ACCESS. Limit two tickets per patron. Subject to availability.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
THE HARLEM DOLL PALACE
Alva Rogers, the Artistic Director of ALVA PUPPET THEATER, is a dramatist, puppeteer, and multidisciplinary artist. The company’s most recent work, Topsy-Turvy, was presented at The 2024 Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Gala at the request of Creative Trailblazer honoree, Solange Knowles and The Museum of Modern Art in 2023. Her work with Rodeo Caledonia High Fidelity Performance Theater ignited an early career as a performance artist and film actor (School Daze, Daughters of the Dust). Later, she concentrated more on writing, earning MFAs in Musical Theatre Writing (NYU/Tisch) and Playwriting (Brown); she also holds an MAT in History (Bard).
Ashley Winkfield (xe/xem/xyr) is a multi-disciplinary artist working primarily in theater and the puppetry arts. Winkfield specializes in new and devised work presented in New York City, and has toured domestically and internationally with Basil Twist (Rite of Spring, Sister’s Follies, Book of Mountains and Seas), The Walk with Little Amal (NYC, Toronto, US Tour), and most recently Yaa Samar Dance Theater’s world premiere of “Gathering”. Winkfield is passionate about creating work that speaks to the emotional experience of humanity in the face of injustice.
RHYNOCERON
Puppeteers: Chih-Jou Cheng, Jacky Kelsey, KT Shivak
Music and Composition: Ben Zucker
Puppets/Stage designed and built by KT Shivak
KT Shivak is a builder, puppet designer, and puppeteer working in Chicago. Her puppets have appeared in the Chicago International Puppetry Festival, the New York Times, Puppetry International, the Chicago Tribune, and at the Chicago Cultural Center. As one of the first members of the Chicago Puppet Studio she has designed for numerous theater and film productions including Jeff Award winning The Steadfast Tin Soldier (Lookingglass Theater), Jeff Award nominated Pinocchio (House Theater), and Vancouver (Ma-Yi Theater Company). Her works “Rhynoceron” and “Derelict Devils” have been supported by DCASE grants and residencies at High Concept Labs, the National Puppetry Conference, and the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival. She studied sculpture and performance at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where a love for wood carving and simple machines led her to start working for a puppet theater for the first time. www.ktshivak.com
VARIATIONS ON (THE) WATER
Lake Simons is a Texas raised, Brooklyn based director, designer, puppeteer, and physical theatre performer. Her original theatre productions utilize movement, puppetry, and live music to create stylized visual storytelling for the stage. She is a believer in the childhood ability to play “make-believe” and her creations encourage the viewer, of any age, to rediscover their own ability to do so. Lake has collaborated with a multitude of musicians, performers, designers, and artists throughout her lengthy, 30 plus year, career. She has received seven Jim Henson Foundation grants in support of her original puppetry productions. Lake is the Managing Artistic Director of Hip Pocket Theatre in Ft Worth, TX. Her productions have been seen at HERE Arts Center, La MaMa, Dixon Place, One Arm Red, Miller Theatre, and Hip Pocket Theatre. Career highlights: Puppet Designer for Have You Met Jane Goodall and Her Mother? (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Associate Puppetry Director for Warhorse (Lincoln Center), Puppetry Coach for Wolf Play (MCC), and co-director for the Puppet Lab at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY. Lake teaches puppetry at Sarah Lawrence College and is a teaching artist with Arts Connection in NYC. She is an alum of Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, France and North Carolina School of the Arts.