Puppets In
Progress

Each year, Dream Music commissions new full-length puppet works; develops new puppet works by emerging puppet artists through Puppetry Parlors; provides educational outreach through its partnership commissions for the legendary Village Halloween Parade; and offers national and international touring/presenting opportunities.

This year, Dream Music Puppetry Program was awarded a special grant from The Jim Henson Foundation to be one of several programs offering mini-residencies to support the creativity and ingenuity that has been flourishing in the puppetry community during the pandemic. Ours includes the development of new work with Christopher Williams, Andy Gaukel, Sara Outing, Lake Simons and Tau Bennett.

On April 9th, HERE hosted an online presentation of the five artists. Scroll down to learn about our 2021 Dream Music Puppetry Residents and watch the recording of the works-in-progress sharings and the conversation below.

Christopher Williams, Walking Iris

Walking Iris is an absurdist puppet/dance work inspired by botanical wonders such as the walking iris (Neomarica gracilis), winged immortals including the Greek goddess Iris (personification of the rainbow), Harpies (sisters of Iris), and the Boreads (wind brothers), as well as the mysterious “Ladies in Blue” fresco recreated from fragments found in the Minoan palace of Knossos on the island of Crete. Set to stylized “re-imaginings” of what a few extant ancient Greek musical fragments may have sounded like recorded by Gregorio Paniagua (along with live foley sounds and effects), the piece, will ultimately unfold as a dreamlike series of vignettes featuring several forms of direct manipulation puppetry, prosthetic costume, dance, and video. The overall work aims to present a meditation on the world of the unseen, the seemingly fleeting nature of time, and the natural cycles of plant life, seasons, and cultures that, like everything, come into being, abide for a time, dissolve, and begin again.

Andy Gaukel, Animist

In Animist, a solo performer engages with a life-sized puppet to explore the stress of self-isolation, health, addiction and the profound feelings of loss many of us are experiencing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The piece is wordless, and, with the exception of a wood box, puppet, and performer, takes place entirely on a bare stage defined by patterns of light reminiscent of broken windows.

The performer highlights and even removes several portions of the puppet’s body, in order to closely examine them and their contents. For example, the performer detaches the puppet’s head and peers inside, as a large animation of a brain MRI is projected across them, and the backstage wall.  At another point, the performer searches for a pulse within the puppet’s chest, and then manipulates its body as if coaxing it to take a breath. Their efforts pay off as a glowing, beating, human heart is projected onto the chest. 

Sara Outing, Good Morning Lonely People

Good morning lonely people is a piece in development that uses puppetry and live original music to conjure, manifest, and then examine the paradox of universal loneliness. Two performers arrive onstage, each bringing their own setlist of solitude songs. With help from each other, their instruments, and a sentient mountain of fabric, each discovers that they are not alone. A heartfelt investigation of independence and community, resistance and need, this experiment in songwriting uses puppetry and sound to score the memories that are foundational to our sense of individuality. The piece is designed to expand, shift, and be revised for each iteration with new collaborators.

Lake Simons, Sorry About the Weather

A solo, a duet and a trio with puppets and objects. The clarity in my mom’s mind is like the weather: cloudy, foggy, a chance of thunderstorms and sometimes it is a sunny day. I enter her thoughts through deep imagination hoping to lift her spirits in her final days. Her shell-like body, curled inwards as she waits in her bed.

Tau Bennett, Medicine Men

For this residency, Tau has chosen a design that he’s been developing since early 2019- a large, full-body, bass-playing character named Danko (named after Rick Danko). This puppet, built by Toria Sterling, is one of three musician characters that Tau hopes to further develop in the future. The other two, Lido (guitarist) and Shoop (drummer) haven’t been built yet but for now, Danko will be enough to demonstrate the style of puppetry that Tau has been eager to explore- large scale, complex puppets with specific points of articulation throughout the body. Danko’s most prominent articulation points are his pelvis and legs. With this project, Tau hopes to sharpen his sense of specificity with regards to his puppeteering style as well as that of his assist, Sebastiano Ricci who performs Danko’s arms. To make the performance look good, it will require careful planning, rehearsal and collaboration of the minds of the two puppeteers, dressed in all black and performing in front of a black background so Danko and his bass are all the audience can see.