Great Arizona Puppet Slam (Pheonix, AZ) Gwen Bonar, 2011, Photo: Nancy Smith
Connect with a Puppet Slam online or in your area of the world! Choose from the 55 Puppet Slams we are now following and find out more in the Slam Profiles section of our website, www.PuppetSlam.com.
* * *
The 24-Hour Puppet Show Challenge (Atlanta)
What makes the 24-Hour-Puppet Show Challenge so unique is this: all artists will be given one day’s notice of each slam’s theme, as well as cash to create their puppet. 24 hours later, Atlanta’s best puppeteers will perform skits, all on one theme, using their own (very recent) creations.
* * *
Action Puppet Force (Orlando, FL)
Action Puppet Force is an adult puppet slam curated and hosted by the members of the Central Florida Puppet Guild. Action Puppet Force… enforcing a good time for all!
* * *
Adult Puppet Cabaret (San Diego)
The APC is actively fostering artistic development of new short works of adult puppetry. Puppet making, audience participation, heckling, cheering, and even dancing is encouraged as well as audience performance with our Puppet-e-Oke musical interludes. Our future goal is to invite more local audience to attend and more out-of-town puppeteers to perform at APC.
* * *
All The Saints Theater Co's Spaghetti Dinner! (Richmond, VA)
Our Spaghetti Dinners act dually as a grassroots artists cabaret of puppetry, vaudeville, and good old cardboard enthusiasm while feeding the community all at a sliding scale rate. Eccentric, delicious, and the ultimate go-to for RIchmond’s experimental performance scene. All the Saints Theater Company began hosting these dinners to offer a radical gathering place for garlic, bread, community and puppet shows
* * *
Austin Puppet Incident (Austin, TX)
The Austin Puppet Incident is a joint creation of Glass Half Full Theatre and Trouble Puppet Theatre Company to highlight short works of puppetry for adults. We encourage artists to participate in our reciprocal model, in which artists work with and for each other in a variety of pieces. We welcome local performers as well as visiting artists.
* * *
Band of Puppets Fest (Brooklyn, NY)
Band of Puppets Fest is an annual series featuring new work from selected puppetry artists working within a musical theme. Our festival this December 2011 will focus on the music of Michael Jackson. We challenge our artists to incorporate video into their performances, with the goal of uniting the aural landscape of music with the visual expression of puppetry.
* * *
Beady Little Eyes Puppet Slam (Portland, OR)
These Pacific NW slams are a combination of live shows by a talented gaggle of local puppeteers and puppet short films from around the country. Frequently hosted by a 7-foot-tall amphibian, Mr. Toad, these slams have become a popular way for Portlanders to drink good beer, be entertained by talented performers and be a part of something unique.
* * *
Blood From a Turnip (Providence, RI)
Blood from a Turnip is a puppet salon that offers professional puppeteers and those new to the art form an opportunity to present big stories, in miniature. Co-curated and hosted by Vanessa Gilbert,David Higgins, and Boston-based video ventriloquist Evan O’Television, BfaT continues to redefine itself, but refuses to grow up.
* * *
Bobbindoctrin’s Puppet Slam (Houston, TX)
In our ongoing effort to introduce artists and audiences alike to the most daring contemporary puppetry for adults, Bobbindoctrin is proud to present its Seventh Annual Puppet Festival! This year, Bobbindoctrin company members and local artists will present new live works of puppetry, along with short films from national and international puppetry artists, distributed by Heather Henson’s Handmade Puppet Dreams
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bobbindoctrins-Annual-Puppet-Festival-aka-Slam/258089080879084
* * *
Cabaret Automata (Los Angeles, CA)
Automata presents a dazzling array of short experimental object performances, puppet shows, music, and films, reflecting a vital community of Los Angeles artists: highly original, low-tech, and adventurous.
* * *
Café Concret (Montreal, Quebec)
Café Concret is a soirée of experimental puppetry, object theatre, and other media accompanied by a serving of food and live music in Montreal. In a city with a vibrant puppetry community, Café Concret is the only informal (and bilingual) event for short-form performance presented by a mix of emerging and established artists, often presenting works-in-progress in an interdisciplinary context
* * *
CalArts Puppet Cabaret (Valencia, CA)
CalArts Puppet Cabaret is a biannual, interdisciplinary event curated by students from the Cotsen Center for Puppetry and the Arts. Small in number but large in talent and creativity, we puppetry students use puppetry as a means for bringing CalArts students from all disciplines together to share puppet experiments and animation sequences outside of class in a casual, fun atmosphere.
* * *
CoLAB Arts Puppet Slam (New Brunswick, NJ)
If you’re interested in irreverence, ridiculousness, and theatrical whimsy, the CoLAB puppet slam is for you. Collaborative Arts’ mission is to cultivate a community that is empowered to create inspired and inspiring art. The partnership between CoLAB and Mary Gragen Rogers has resulted in a dynamic slam that assists puppeteers in developing new work and thrills audiences throughout New Jersey.
* * *
Das WunderKammer Puppet Kabarett (Brooklyn)
Welcome to the New Weimar Era, and “Das WunderKammer Puppet Kabarett”, where we celebrate the collapse of the empire, one puppet-act at a time.
Das WunderKammer ~ Puppet Kabarett (Brooklyn, NY) Basil Twist, 2011 Photo: Lexi Karafelis
* * *
Dolly Wiggler Cabaret (Calgary, Alberta - Canada)
It’s wild, it’s weird, and it’s always entertaining. The Dolly Wiggler Cabaret features short bits of brilliance from local, national and international animated object artists. Adults only.
* * *
The Downstairs Puppet Cabaret (Copenhagen, Denmark)
The Downstairs Puppet Cabaret is described as unusual, surprising, magical and entertaining. (Note: Please let us know if you have a contact there as they have just appeared on our RADAR)
* * *
Feed the Birds Cabaret (Toronto, ON)
Feed the Birds is a reoccurring multidisciplinary puppetry & performing objects cabaret in Toronto, Canada. With a focus on new works that aim to take artistic risks, we subscribe to the “cheap art” school of thought, and believe that no act is too small or absurd for our stage. Free grilled cheese with the show!
* * *
For the Love of Puppets Cabaret (Minneapolis, MN)
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...When talented artists gather together to share their love - in this case, puppets - in a cabaret of short performances, you will be thrilled, touched, and thoroughly entertained. With all this (unconventional) love in the air, the scene will be set to woo your valentine as you never have before.
* * *
Full Moon Cabaret (Minneapolis)
Blurring the line between audience and spectacle, The Full Moon Puppet Show provides puppeteers a space to develop experimental work and mentors emerging performers in their exploration of the puppetry arts.
* * *
The Fussy Cloud Puppet Slam (Seattle, WA)
Fussy Cloud aims to be an ongoing series of quality puppet shows for grownups featuring a selection of short works by puppeteers from the greater Seattle area (and beyond!). We hope to be quirky, edgy, hilarious, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, beautiful, disturbing, profound, and profane. We intend to use Fussy Cloud to promote and support the puppetry community in the Pacific Northwest.
* * *
Great Arizona Puppet Slam (Phoenix, AZ)
Puppeteers from near and afar team up for an evening of weird, funny, offbeat and irreverent puppetry. You must be 18+ to attend.
* * *
Great Small Works Soiree (Brooklyn, NY)
A newly-initiated monthly series of informal showings of works in progress. Primarily for artists working in the interdisciplinary medium of puppetry, the Soirees also welcome artists in other mediums who wish to get feedback from our puppeteer/visual artist community. Artists of many ages and levels of experience show and respond to work, in conversations facilitated by Great Small Works.
* * *
Great Small Works Spaghetti Dinner (NYC)
Spaghetti Dinners are thematic evenings presented in cabaret format, offering plates of home-made spaghetti and a healthy roster of puppetry and live music. Semi-nomadic, each is a unique, one-time-only event and designed to the scale of the venue, from grand spectacle in Judson Church’s vast sanctuary to intimate miniature work at One Arm Red’s 99-seat theater.
* * *
Indie Grits Puppet Slam (Columbia, SC)
As part of the Indie Grits Festival, our puppet slam will celebrate Southern puppetry that is off the beaten path. Since its inception six years ago, the festival has been growing every year, expanding to include not just independently produced Southern films, but also an indie craft fair, local bands, and a slow food event featuring local chefs
* * *
KC Puppet Slam (Kansas City, MO)
KC Puppet Slam is quirky, edgy, and oh-so-naughty…you’ve never seen a puppet show like this before!
* * *
King Friday's Dungeon (Portland, ME)
King Friday, post-monarch, deposed and living in squalor beneath an old vaudeville house hath requestedeth new puppet works and puppet works-in-progress for an impromptu, after-hours, puppet-roadhouse show. Pieces shall be edgy, bawdy, humorous, elegant, or bizarre. Object theater, canastoria, and ventriloquism are likely candidates too. Come romp through the netherrealms of puppet and object theater with K.F. Adults only please.
* * *
Nasty, Brutish & Short: a Puppet Cabaret (Chicago, IL)
Curated by puppet artists Julia Miller and Jessica Simon, Nasty Brutish & Short invites performers to create new work and risk sharing it with an audience for the first time. Puppet artists across all puppet forms present new shorts three times a year at Links Hall. All ticket sales are split among the performers.
* * *
The National Puppet Slam (Atlanta, GA / Multi-City)
The National Puppet Slam showcases the best slam pieces from across the country at the National Puppetry Festival. The pieces are nominated by the individual slams in the Puppet Slam Network. This evening is a showcase of the beauty, ingenuity, and hilarity of Puppet Slams, not for regular audiences, but us, the Puppeteers of America.
* * *
Pinocchio’s Puppet Slam (Altamonte Springs, FL)
Pinocchio’s Slam takes place in a beautifully realized 18th century string marionette theater, and patterns itself on the traditional puppetry salons and cabarets of Europe, England, and Ireland. We hope it will help Pinocchio’s in its overall goal of becoming an artistic and intellectual hub for puppetry in Central Florida, drawing on the theater’s staff and Orlando artists.
* * *
Playhouse Puppetry Slam! (Glen Echo, MD)
The Puppet Co. Playhouse presents another Puppetry Playhouse Slam!, a showcase of short puppetry vignettes. Starring puppeteers from up and down the East Coast. Audiences will experience puppeteers performing edgy and provocative works that won't be seen in mainstream venues. Content ranges from the raunchy and risqué to the tender and tear-jerking of both rough and polished acts.
* * *
Professor Willikers Puppet Slam (Arcata, CA)
Hosted by Professor Willikers, the indestructible puppet, and featuring a variety of puppet artists, this slam event is in a cabaret format with live music. The 2012 event will feature puppeteers from San Francisco, , Calgary, and Portland as well as an array of local puppeteers.
* * *
The Puckin’ Fuppet Show Atlanta, GA)
The Puckin’ Fuppet Show is a night of uncensored puppetry drawing on the vast pool of puppeteer talent in Atlanta GA, as well as a welcoming atmosphere for newcomers to puppetry. Cash prizes are awarded for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place as voted on by the audience.
* * *
PUNCH (NYC)
PUNCH - NYC’s most consistent puppet slam, roams the city from venue to venue bringing you the widest array of short puppet theater pieces and theater spaces in the city! We are so excited about this and we hope you’ll join us for a great night of puppet mayhem, curated by Drama of Works!
* * *
Puppet Art Attacks Slam (NYC)
The V4V Puppet Festival seeks short works of genius for its Puppet Art Attacks Slam. Short works should be between three to eight minutes. We seek short, condensed works for puppetry that are: brilliant, witty, tragic, funny, stunning, startling, ironic, exotic, political, lyrical, musical, beautiful, intellectual, experimental, wild, but always demonstrates genius in a matter of minutes!
* * *
Puppet Manualfesto (Philadelphia, PA)
Puppet Manualfesto celebrates short-form puppetry, community and food, embracing a multitude of performance aesthetics. If it involves puppetry, mask work or object theatre we want to see and share it with everyone else. Pay-what-you-can for dinner, stay for the show. A night filled with 2 to 10 minute gems of live puppetry, short film screenings between set-ups and dinner beforehand.
* * *
Puppet Meltdown (Chicago, IL)
Sea Beast Puppet Company is proud to present Puppet Meltdown, one of the newest slams in the Chicago puppetry scene. Founded in 2011 the Puppet Meltdown makes its primary home at Gorilla Tango Theatre but stumbles around the city bringing puppetry to the fleece-hungry masses desperate to satisfy that rumbling in their tummies for the unusual and unexpected.
* * *
Puppet Pandemic (New York City, NY)
This showcase of works developed at the National Puppetry Conference, explores the infectious nature of puppets. Watch as artists redefine conventional notions of puppetry. From marionettes to Papier mache mayhem, puppeteers breed new strains of creativity. All profits from these performances will fund an Alumni Scholarship to attend the Eugene O'Neill National Puppetry Conference. Spread the Puppet Pandemic!
* * *
Puppet Parlor (NYC)
Join the Dream Music Puppetry Program’s feisty showcase of tidbits, characters and shorts from the pinnacles of the puppet community.
* * *
Puppet Playlist (NYC)
Puppet Playlist is a bi-monthly slam in Manhattan. For each Playlist, a musician is chosen (e.g. Tom Waits, David Bowie) and puppeteers create new pieces inspired by that person’s work. Between acts, musicians play interpretations of songs by the chosen artist. This mix of puppetry and music attracts a wide audience, many of whom have never attended a puppet slam.
* * *
Puppet Pot Pie (Hartford, CT)
Puppet Pot Pie, brings short form puppetry to the masses, creating another venue for puppet performers in the North East Corridor while introducing short form puppetry to the Hartford audience.
* * *
Puppet Rampage – The Slam
South Florida’s Puppet Rampage explodes bi-annually in an uncensored blitzkrieg of puppet mayhem. While professional and novice puppeteers lob surrealism and satire, THE RAMPAGE gives special consideration to Sideshow Freaks, Burning Man Creatives and Asylum Escapees looking to perform.
* * *
Puppet Showplace Slam (Brookline, MA)
The Puppet Showplace Slam is a much-loved Boston tradition that brings together amateurs, professionals, and emerging artists from across the region to showcase the finest in short-form puppetry arts. We aim to present a variety of puppetry styles and feature work that ranges from thought-provoking to mind-blowing.
* * *
Puppet Slamwich! at Black Cherry Puppet Theater (Baltimore, MD)
Puppet Slamwich at Black Cherry Puppet Theater celebrates puppetry for adult audiences in all of its forms, from traditional to experimental, as well as related genres, such as vaudeville, cabaret, toy and object theater. Puppet Sandwich hopes to introduce audiences to a broad array of puppetry, welcoming emerging and established artists from the Mid-Atlantic Region and beyond.
* * *
Puppet Underground Cabarets (Washington, DC)
Puppet Underground cabarets bring together local and touring artists for fun, community-building evenings of puppetry and performance. Our cabarets are usually politically relevant and we try to link our puppetry with local grassroots organizing efforts.
* * *
Puppetzilla Slam (Los Angeles, CA)
The LAGuild of Puppetry has hosted annual evenings of short shows as part of our Holiday Party. This year we are planning an Anti-Valentine’s Day Puppet Slam in February and another Halloween-themed one in October.
* * *
The Singing Picture Show (New York City)
Banners & Cranks’ The Singing Picture Show is committed to presenting and promoting cantastoria as a contemporary puppet practice mixing music, object theater and traditional forms of picture performance. We seek to present the widest variety of puppetry that incorporates cantastoria traditions remaking them and transforming them into puppetry that sings its stories.
* * *
Slam Noir Puppet Slam (Melbourne, Victoria - Australia)
Lit only by torchlight (flashlights, not flames!) and held at a local funky laneway café, new and inspired puppet pieces are created according to different slam themes, popping up anywhere in the café space. Interactive audiences shine their torches to help light the piece. Curated by Lana Schwarcz and Nancy Black, and supported by UNIMA and St Ali.
* * *
Slamdango! (Mobile, AL)
Slamdango! is an evening of puppeteers throughout the Gulf Coast gathering to present new, short-form puppet and object theatre to an adult audience. In addition to providing a forum for puppeteers, we hope that it will reignite an audience interest and appreciation for puppetry geared toward adults.
* * *
Sobre La Mesa Puppet Slam (San Juan, PR)
The puppeteers are presented with an identical object that is the point of departure for the creation of a five minute piece that is presented on a tv dinner table inside a labyrinth of small spaces each of which fits one puppeteer and 6 members of the public. The public rotate and the puppeteers repeat.
* * *
Strung Out Puppet Cabaret (Cincinnati, Ohio)
Madcap Puppets hosts a series of cabaret style puppet slams in Cincinnati to create a supportive environment for provocative short form puppet performances and films.
* * *
Titeretada: Noches de Cabaret Puppet Slam (San Juan, PR)
Noches de Cabaret are presentations (generally 2 or 3 nights) of adult puppet short pieces within the Titeretada, our yearly celebration of World Puppetry Day. Individuals and groups are invited to create 5-8 minutes pieces; experimentation is encouraged and audience response is overwhelming. These cabaret nights have forged a path for adult puppetry here in Puerto Rico.
* * *
UConn Puppet Slam (Storrs, Connecticut)
UConn Puppet Slams bring together working puppeteers from New England and New York with students from UConn’s famed Puppet Arts Program and other disciplines to present new and compelling puppet works. These performances take place in UConn’s School of Fine Arts Studio Theater and are free and open to the public.
* * *
Wham Bam Puppet Slam (Asheville, NC)
This is a night of short form puppetry for adults, and promises to be a fun time had by all. We are very excited about the opportunity to share such a fun and transcendent art form with Asheville. Puppetry is not just for kids, it can be moving, hilarious, risque, heart breaking, taboo, thought provoking, and sincere to any audience.
* * *
Winnipeg Puppet Slam (Winnipeg, MB)
In the icy and isolated city of Winnipeg, the Winnipeg Puppet Slam showcases innovative, eclectic and original short works of adult puppetry. The content can be political, philosophical, raunchy or just plain silly but we always guarantee audiences something they have never seen before.
In this blog post I will be focusing on just one puppetry project, a cabaret, organized by Puppet Underground for Occupy K Street in Washington, DC. But puppetry is starting to blossom in other occupations, perhaps most notably in New York City with the Occupy Wall Street Puppetry Guild who formed in October and helped organize the Occupy Halloween parade. The Puppet Underground cabaret, “Occupy Kabaret Street”, was organized in coordination with local organizers and activists to support an action—the occupation of a vacant building—planned for November.
The cabaret was organized like a walking tour: sites related to social movement history were chosen and the shows were set up at each of those sites. Musicians played while the audience was led from one site to the next and activists presented the history of the site at each new location. The final location was in front of the Franklin School and hosted a show about the history of the building. At a dramatically timed moment toward the end of the show, a forty foot banner reading “Public Property Under Community Control” dropped from Franklin’s roof and th
e show ended with the announcement that Franklin was now occupied. A statement from the occupiers was read and an after-party commenced with pie-eating (OccuPie!) and music to support the activists inside the building.
Follow Up:
Image courtesy of Martina Plag, Puppet Manualfesto (Philadelphia)
KC Puppet Slam (Kansas City, MO), Mike Horner, Spencer Lott, 2011. Photo courtesy of Paul Mesner Puppets
Playhouse Puppetry Slam (Glen Echo, MD), 2011, Photo: Bruce Douglas
Great Arizona Puppet Slam (Pheonix, AZ) Gwen Bonar, 2011, Photo: Nancy Smith
Das WunderKammer ~ Puppet Kabarett (Brooklyn, NY) Basil Twist, 2011 Photo: Lexi Karafelis
