Object Movement is a CWP Residency Program for the development of new works by puppeteers and object theater artists. Curated by Maiko Kikuchi, Rowan Magee, Marcella Murray, and Justin Perkins, Object Movement supports the development of new work that addresses eternal human questions and the urgent challenges of our society today through puppetry and object theater, culminating in an annual festival of short performances.
We are delighted to be returning to live, in-person performances for the 2022 Object Movement Puppetry Festival, which will include 14 performances by members of the 2019-2020 and 2021-2022 residency cohorts. The festival will take place over three weeks from April 1 to 16, 2022.
PROGRAM A — April 1 & 2 at 7:30pm
How I disappeared by Tianding He
Baba Vanga by Tyler B. Quick
Matter of Fact Flea Act by Kevin P. Hale
PROGRAM B — April 8 & 9 at 7:30pm
it's not always good for hard material by Sara Stern
Body Stories by Brzezinski & Schap
Tin Iso and the Dawn by Tristan Allen
Dirt by Amanda Card
PROGRAM C — April 14 & 16 at 7:30pm
Madame Edgewise Tells Your Fortune by Brodrick Jones
All We Have Left by Christine Dempsey
BlueBeardGasLight by Kyra Miller
Lives and Deaths of the Sea Simians by Ed Valentine
Journey to Home by Leila Ghaznavi
Starman* by Aubrey Clinedinst
Title TBA by Lim
The 2022 Object Movement Puppetry Festival is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the Jim Henson Foundation, and the Puppet Slam Network. Thank you for your support!
MEET THE ARTISTS
Tristan Allen (they/them)
As a composer and performer of electroacoustic music, Tristan Allen's (b. 1993, New York) work is concerned with the storytelling potential of instrumental music. Tristan applies improvisational composition to create experimental electronic music, often including field-recording, acoustic instrumentation, and bass. Tristan holds a degree in piano from Berklee College of Music. They’ve pursued studies in gamelan, choreography, and mythology throughout the world. In addition to recorded output, Tristan has toured extensively across the Americas, Japan, China, and Southeast Asia, sharing the stage and collaborating with artists such as Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman, and Marina Abramovic. Tristan works as a professional puppeteer, using marionettes to tell traditional folktales. Their ambitions to combine puppetry with musical works is ongoing. Tristan aims to build a fantasy world from scratch, beginning with a shadow puppet symphony named Tin Iso and the Dawn.
Jim Freeman (he/him)
Jim Freeman is returning to the theater and filmmaking after a long time away. He acts with the Ridiculous Theatrical Company and Theater at St. Johns. You can see some of his movies on the YouTube channel Eurekajim Films. Jim began building for Nicolo Marionettes in 1976. He continued that tradition with their successor, Puppetworks. Jim specializes in integrating traditional building techniques with newer technologies such as 3D printing and laser cutting. Jim is very proud to collaborate with Tristan Allen on Tin Iso and the Dawn. Together they have pioneered a new style of shadow puppetry which requires mastery of laser cutting of natural materials, and adaptation of 19th Century magic lantern designs. Jim’s carpentry brought the shadow puppet stage to life.
Julia Cavagna (she/her)
Julia is an Argentinian-born, Brooklyn-based, actress, director, and dramaturge. She studied Sociology and classical and physical theater. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in acting in Buenos Aires (EMAD). After 2009 she kept learning from different mentors (Belisario and Movement Theater Studio). Her work is in the frontier of movement, site-specific, classical and contemporary theater, new media and film. She is an active member of the NY theater scene. As a director, she released: O.Y.A., Sentimiento González is da Bomb! (Undiscovered Countries, Boog City), MALALA (selected at NYC Indie Theatre Film Festival) and Prácticas Materiales (under Undiscovered Countries Incubator). In 2016 she was selected to be part of Patrice Chéreau’s Elektra (Metropolitan Opera). Since then, she works as a featured actress at Metropolitan Opera. She´s performed at St. Ann’s Warehouse (Puppet Lab), The Tank, HERE Arts Center, Dixon Place, and the Knockdown Center. Internationally appearances include Argentina, Puerto Rico, Brasil, Thailand, Japan, Scotland, Spain. She was a recipient of JACK Artist Residency at Governors Island 2021. She co-founded: Lampazo Group, Las Pibas Theater Company, and THEATER TO THE PEOPLE (awarded with the 2019 and 2021 BAC Grant and 2020 Town Stages Fellowship). www.juliacavagna.online / www.theatertothepeople.com
Caitlin Brzezinski & Libby Schap (she/her)
Brzezinski & Schap, the creative partnership of Caitlin Brzezinski and Libby Schap, began constructing and producing shadow puppet theater collaboratively in 2016. Together they have developed a distinct style featuring moving shadows screens, innovative light textures, and blurred lines between performer and shadow character. Their premiere production was a whimsical full-length shadow play, Flying Lessons, that began touring the US in 2019 and will resume in the fall of 2021. Flying Lessons was a recipient of the Jim Henson Foundation Workshop Grant (2018) and Production Grant (2019), as well as generous support from the Bob Jolly Charitable Trust. Most recently, Brzezinski & Schap have created several short shadow puppet films including a four-part series, Body Stories, which asks the viewer to explore the question: what is it like to be in your body? In addition to creating original productions, they have had the opportunity to complete artist residencies at Puppet Showplace Theater, The Ko Festival, and The Virtual Puppet Residency.
Amanda Card (she/her)
Amanda Card is a multidisciplinary theatre artist. Most recently, her work has appeared in Music City Puppet Slam, Liz Oakley’s Anywhere Festival of Everywhere Stages, Great Small Works' Toy Theater Festival, Kindling Arts Festival's Kindling Sparks, Verge Theater Company's Cabaret, and Nasty, Brutish & Short’s Puppet Cabaret. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where she worked as a production assistant and swing puppeteer for Dan Hurlin’s Bismarck. She is a recipient of the 2021 Lipkin Prize for Playwriting. Her solo show I May Be Ugly But I’m Also Scared received a development workshop at the O'Neill National Puppetry Conference and a grant from The Puppeteers of America Endowment Fund. Amanda was a Resident Artist with the Spring 2021 Object Movement Digital Puppetry Festival. amandacard.com
Mikey Rose (he/him)
Mikey Rose (@thedumbamerican) is a professional amateur, mad maverick, true troubadour wandering this wild world in search of the beautiful, the strange, and everything in between. When he’s not lost on a mountain, Mikey makes melodie and crafts theater experiences for audiences young and old. Recent musical dreams include: Metropolitan, ASHWA, Lovesick, The Parable of Pizza, Same Sky. Mikey is a member of Actor’s Equity, the Summer Director of the Performing Arts at TASIS (The American School in Switzerland), and recent MFA Grad of the Musical Theater Writing Program at TISCH NYU, where he acted as the co-president of the Graduate Student Organization. Mikey strives to find the magic in the mundane and won’t stop dreaming ’til he’s seen it all.
Kevin P. Hale (he/him)
Kevin P. Hale is a puppeteer, writer, and director. In 2019, he appeared in Evolve Puppets’ HOME at the Tank. Kevin has been a participant of the last five Eugene O’Neill National Puppetry Conferences, appearing in Mervyn Millar’s Signs of Life, being a part of the Resident Company, and developing his own projects including W-Who’s S-S-Scared? and A Rough Pencil Sketch. These and Kevin’s other short works have been performed at the La Mama Puppet Slam, Puppets After Dark, Bad Theater Fest, Puppets Come Home at Coney Island USA, PUNCH Kamikaze, and Puppet Playlist. Kevin has been seen in Poe-Dunk - A Matchbox Entertainment at Great Small Works Toy Theater Festival, Figment, Governors Island Storytelling Festival, FRIGID New York, FringeNYC, and Puppets & Poets. As a director, credits include: Macbeth at Socrates Sculpture Park’s Halloween Harvest Festival, Perfectly Natural at Midtown International Theatre Festival, The Altoona Dada Society Presents: The Velvet Gentleman and Professor Ralph’s Loss of Breath at FringeNYC & FRIGID New York, and Emma & Company at the Wings Theater. In 2008, Kevin founded Playlab NYC with Jennifer Wilcox, a theater company dedicated to taking fun way too seriously.
Tianding He (she/her)
Tianding He is a director, puppeteer, curator, and producer of hybrid work originally from China. She is the founding artistic director of B·O·N·D International Virtual Performance Festival. She focuses on creating inclusive, intercultural, and experimental theatre and performances with global artists. Recent puppetry works: Warning! Apocalypse! (International Virtual Toy Theatre Festival) and Me, You, He & She (Dixon Place Puppet BloK); directing credits include inclusive performance: Imaginarium in CSL; virtual theatre: South Node of the Moon; immersive theatre: The White Night (Margo Feiden Gallery), Versailles 2.0 (Shanghai Theatre Academy); physical theatre: Plastic Mirror and Invisible Days (UNFIX Festival); and performance arts: Getting Lost with Yoko Ono in NYC. She also produced the Off-Broadway shows: The Romantic Misadventures of Ah Q (Theatre Row), A Language of Their Own (IATI Theatre) and line produce Be HERE Now Reopening Party (HERE). As Artistic Director, she cultivates international artists and programs virtual performances for over 250,000 audiences. She received her two MA degrees from Tisch School of Arts at NYU and Hunter College. She pursues her Ph.D. degree at UC Irvine and UCSD.
Tyler B. Quick (he/him)
Tyler B. Quick is a puppeteer, puppet builder, and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. His work in puppetry began in 2014 at the Columbia Marionette Theatre in Columbia, South Carolina under the tutelage of Artistic Director Lyon Hill (who has become his friend and mentor over the years). He now works as a performer for the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre in Central Park and as a puppet builder for Rockefeller Productions. Despite having only one head, Tyler wears many hats, working as a freelance puppeteer, costume designer, and costume/prop/puppet builder since moving to New York in 2016. This project has been an idea for many years, thus he looks forward to bringing it to fruition with his fellow resident artists. Tyler would like to thank his friends who have become his family and queer support system over his years in New York City. He would also like to thank his family back home in the south for teaching him kindness and respect for others (he still holds the door for people here, even if it confuses them). For more of his work or to contact for commissions, visit his website www.TylerBQuick.com.
Sara Stern (she/they)
Sara Stern is an interdisciplinary artist from New York City. Stern approaches her projects as an expanded form of ventriloquism. She makes architecture, historical objects, and photographs speak and perform across video installation, sculpture, printmaking, and performance. Her recent projects prod histories of urban development with animacy and speculative fiction. Stern received her BA from Harvard University and her MFA from Columbia University. She has exhibited and screened her work in the US and internationally, at venues including SculptureCenter, NY; Anthology Film Archives, NY; the Museum of the Moving Image, NY; The Jewish Museum, NY; MuseumsQuartier, Vienna; and the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore. Her awards include the 2018 Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant, the 2017-18 Fountainhead Fellowship at VCU Sculpture + Extended Media, and the 2018-2019 Visual Artist Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. Most recently, Stern was an Artist in Residence at the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center in West Rutland, VT, and a 2021 Fellow in the Art & Law Program.
MEET THE CURATORS
Maiko Kikuchi (she/her)
Maiko Kikuchi received her B.A in Theater Arts and Fashion Design from Musashino Art University, Japan in 2008, her M.F.A in Sculpture from Pratt Institute, in 2012. She is a multidisciplinary artist working in illustration, painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, animation, and puppetry/ performance. Her object theatre pieces include DAYDREAM TUTORIAL(Work in Progress) as part of Under The Radar Festival 2020 (INCOMING! Program) at The Public Theatre, LaMaMa and FiveMyles Gallery, PINK BUNNY at Japan Society and St.Ann’s Warehouse, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENSE at Dixon Place, NO NEED FOR A NIGHT LIGHT ON A LIGHT NIGHT LIKE TONIGHT at LaMaMa, DAYDREAM ANTHOLOGY at St. Ann’s Warehouse. She is currently in an artist residency program at HERE collaborating with Spencer Lott. She presented her visual artworks in “Crown Heights Film Festival”, group exhibition “In Time/Out of Place” at Parasol Project(NY), “NO PARKING” at Ca’d’ Oro Gallery(NY), “By Chamber 02” at CITAN (Tokyo), WWW(Tokyo), etc. She has also committed to musicians and bands for creating their music videos both in Japan and U.S.
Rowan Magee (he/him)
Rowan Magee is a puppeteer and educator from Troy, NY. He has puppeteered on international tours with Phantom Limb Company, Robin Frohardt, Nick Lehane, and Dan Hurlin, and in New York City for American Opera Projects, Trusty Sidekick, Chris Green, Spencer Lott, and the National Theater in the 2018 Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of Angels in America. Rowan operated the reference puppet for the titular character in the upcoming feature film Clifford the Big Red Dog, in theaters Fall 2021. He has designed puppets for The Dalton School, St Mark’s School, and Lincoln Center Education, taught for CO/LAB, Marquis Studios, Manhattan Youth, The Brooklyn New School, and Story Pirates, and he has received a Jim Henson Foundation Grant for his marionette show No 1 Chinese. During the pandemic, Rowan directed puppetry for Yiddish New York 2020, The Dalton School’s Hamlet Project, and is designing puppets for a recent Henson Workshop Grant Recipient: One Night in Winter, by Nekaa Lab/Sachiyo Takahashi.
Marcella Murray (she/her)
Marcella Murray is a New York-based theater artist from Augusta, Georgia. She is a playwright, performer, collaborator, and puppeteer. Murray’s work is heavily inspired by the observed ways in which people tend to segregate and reconnect. Her work tends to focus on themes of identity within a community and forward momentum in the face of trauma.
Performances include The Slow Room, a piece directed by Annie Dorsen at Performance Space New York; a workshop of Ocean Filibuster which was co-created by the team Pearl D’Amour (Lisa D’Amour and Katie Pearl) with composer Sxip Shirey at Abrons Arts Center; I Don’t Want to Interrupt You Guys which was created in collaboration with Leonie Bell and Hyung Seok Jeon during RAP at Mabou Mines; New Mony created by Maria Camia; and Shoot Don’t Talk at St. Ann’s Warehouse/Puppet Lab created by Andrew Murdock.
Along with David Neumann, she recently co-created Distances Smaller Than This Are Not Confirmed (Obie Special Citation for Creation and Performance) which opened at Abrons Arts Center, co-produced by Chocolate Factory, in January of 2020.
Justin Perkins (he/him)
Justin Perkins is a puppet artist and performer. Recent puppet performance includes Madama Butterfly at Met Opera (cover), and Hansel and Gretel at Michigan Opera Theater (principal). He has appeared in works by Ping Chong+Company (Alaxsxa|Alaska, LaMama, US tour), Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew (And Here We Are, National Sawdust), Tom Lee (Shank’s Mare, LaMama, US tour), Lake Simons, Patti Bradshaw, Puppet Cinema, Unitards, imnotlost and more. In 2019, his puppet installation DIANAMAS was developed at Puppet Lab at St Ann's Warehouse. Justin's forthcoming work Unicorn Afterlife is supported by the Jim Henson Foundation and developed through residencies at the Jim Henson Legacy Carriage House and Center at West Park, premieres May 2021 at Dixon Place.
He is also the Program Director at New Country Day Camp in Staten Island. http://www.justinaperkins.com
SUPPORT OBJECT MOVEMENT
Please consider making a donation to support the Spring 2021 Object Movement Puppetry Festival. We rely on the generous support of people like you to make this program possible. Your donation will help us pay all the wonderful humans who work to put on the festival, including the artists, the curators, the production technicians, and the administrative staff.
The Center at West Park, Inc. is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization. Donations to the Center at West Park are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.