Puppetopia 2024: Lectures

Eat Drink Tell Your Friends’s Lectures is an allegory about emotional vulnerability and trauma that centers around a girl who is navigating a challenging home life and a carousel horse-maker stuck in time. A physics lecturer serves as a bridge between their two worlds. It is a story about hiding your heart.

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. 

Artist bios:

Andy Manjuck (Co-Founder, Company Member since 2012) is also a co-founder of Official Puppet Business and a company member of Wakka Wakka. Select performance credits: Bill’s 44th, Hello Tomorrow! (Apple TV+), The Immortal Jellyfish Girl, Saga (Drama Desk Special Award), Baby Universe (Obie Special Award), Made in China (Off-Broadway), The Pigeoning, Antrak, and Petrushka with Giants are Small and The New York Philharmonic Orchestra. He directed EDTYF’s first show Photo & Supply as part of Flint & Tinder at The Tank.

Rachel Schapira (Co-Founder, Company Member since 2012) makes theater, books, drawings, fiber art, prints, puppets.  Rachel has worked with Basil Twist, Welcome to Campfire, Ripe Time, The Story Pirates, New Georges, Opera Slavica, and Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew. She is a teaching artist with Red Hook Art Project. 

Ashur Rayis (Co-Founder, Company Member since 2012) is a composer, performer, and theater technician. He is a founding member of Eat Drink Tell Your Friends puppetry collective, and Monster Trux performance collective. Often he can be found hanging out with animals, riding his bike, or cooking late dinners. 

Dorothy James (Company Member since 2020) is a puppet artist and fabricator who creates otherworldly narratives that meld the grotesque with a sense of innocence. Theatre: The Immortal Jellyfish Girl and Made In China (Wakka Wakka), Hansel & Gretel (Basil Twist with Michigan Opera Theatre), The New York Spectacular… (Radio City); Television: Hello Tomorrow! (AppleTV+), Moon and Me (BBC), and Patriot (Amazon).  She is co-creator of Bill’s 44th, which was named a NY Times Critic’s Pick and has toured nationally and internationally, including sold-out runs at both the London International Mime Festival and Edinburgh Fringe. She is a co-founder of Official Puppet Business.