The Puppet Slam Network is delighted to announce our 2014 Puppet Slam Grant Recipients! You can find out more about the 34 Slams we are supporting in 2014 here! The Puppet Slam Network aims to catalogue, connect, support, and raise awareness for the growing field of independently produced puppet slams and cabarets.
Adult Puppet Slam #Phoenix
The Great Arizona Puppet Theater hosts Puppet Slams at our beautiful historic building in central Phoenix. Local and far-flung puppeteers create funny, edgy and quirky pieces for adult audiences for a memorable evening of live theater with puppets!
Austin Puppet Incident #Austin
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.
Beady Little Eyes Puppet Slam #Portland
Our slams are hosted by a variety of Portland icons. We encourage texting in risqué comments to the hostess. We keep it fast-paced and rowdy with beer flowing in the back of the house.
Blood From a Turnip #Providence
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.
Café Concret #Montreal
Café Concret is a soirée of experimental puppetry, object theatre, and other media accompanied by a warm meal and live music in Montreal. In a city with a large and active puppetry community, too-often separated into anglophone and francophone audiences, Café Concret is the only informal and bilingual event for short-form object performance by a mix of emerging and established artists.
Calarts Puppet Cabaret #Valencia
CalArts Puppet Cabaret is an annual interdisciplinary event curated by students from the California Institute of the Arts. Students from across the institute 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.
Dolly Wiggler Cabaret #Calgary
The Dolly Wiggler Cabaret features short bits of brilliance from local, national and international animated object artists. It’s wild, it’s weird, and it’s always entertaining..
Forbidden Puppet Cabaret #Vallejo
Forbidden Puppet Cabaret at the Fetterly Playhouse presents evenings of short puppet acts in a cabaret atmosphere, with both café tables and theatre seating. Food, drink and a puppet craft project with a chance for audience members to get up on stage with their new creations are all part of the experience. Live music compliments acts during preshow and intermission.
Full Moon Pupet Show #Minneapolis
The Full Moon Puppet Show is a quarterly puppet slam with performances by puppetry novices and masters alike. The show encourages those who have never tried out the art of puppetry to perform. Live music plays between acts at every show. Watch short puppet shows and howl at the moon at the Full Moon Puppet Show.
Fussy Cloud Puppet Slam #Seattle
Fussy Cloud Puppet Slam is an ongoing series of puppet variety shows for adults featuring selections of short works from puppeteers in Seattle and beyond. We strive to offer a professional structure where artists may present a wide selection of innovative and experimental works as well as previously developed and refined pieces.
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 work at Teatro SEA’s 99-seat theater.
La MaMa Puppet Slam #NYC
The La MaMa Puppet Slam presents original, short form condensed works for puppetry that are: brilliant, witty, tragic, funny, stunning, startling, ironic, exotic, political, lyrical, musical, beautiful, intellectual, experimental, but always demonstrate genius in a matter of minutes!
The Late Night Puppet Slam at Dragon Con #ATL
Join Dragon Con’s very own puppet ambassadors, Bob and Carl: The Sci-Fi Janitors, as they present a variety show of adult geeky puppet acts. It is the biggest geekiest puppet slam in the world!
Nasty, Brutish & Short: A Puppet Cabaret #Chicago
Nasty, Brutish & Short is an evening of contemporary short-form puppet and object-based theatre for adult audiences. The cabaret is a low risk environment for artists to perform new and experimental work and foster artistic exchange between puppet artists of different generations and mediums.
National Puppet Slam #Atlanta
Experience the beauty, ingenuity, and hilarity of short-form puppet theater in this showcase of Puppet Slams from across the country. The Mission of the National Puppet Slam is to recognize and showcase excellence in short-form adult puppet theatre.
Nite at the Puppet Asylum #Fullerton
Nite at the Puppet Asylum is an intriguing evening featuring an assortment of live puppet offerings fueled by talented puppet artists and performers, ranging from highly polished to experimental, designed to deliver an extraordinary evening of mayhem for adult audiences.
Professor Willikers Puppet Slam #Arcata
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 Puckin' Fuppet Show #Atlanta
The Puckin’ Fuppet Show is an open mic puppet slam for puppeteers, 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.
Puppet Manualfesto # Philadelphia
Puppet Manualfesto celebrates short-form puppetry, music, community, food, and encourages a multitude of performance aesthetics. Experimental pieces, and artists not generally involved with puppetry share the stage with seasoned professionals as a way to explore this exciting medium.
Puppet Meltdown #Chicago
Sea Beast Puppet Company presents Puppet Meltdown, a roaming cabaret that caters to audiences in both Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. Puppet Meltdown travels 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 #NYC
This showcase of works explores the infectious nature of puppets! From marionettes to papier mâché mayhem, puppeteers breed new strains of creativity and present them to an audience of willing test subjects. Watch as artists redefine conventional notions of puppetry. Like a pandemic, the passion for puppetry is spreading. The only cure - a dose of puppet performances!
Puppet Playlist #NYC
Puppet Playlist is a quarterly slam in New York. Each Playlist has a musical theme (e.g. Tom Waits, Johnny Cash). Puppeteers create original pieces based on the theme, and musicians play interpretations of songs by the chosen artist. This mix of puppetry and music had attracted a wide audience, many of whom have never attended a puppet slam.
Puppet Showplace Slam #Brookline
The Puppet Showplace Slam is the longest running slam in the USA. As part of Puppet Showplace Theatre’s “Puppets at Night” series, the slam provides Boston-area adults the opportunity to experience the power of short-form puppetry in an intimate setting. The slam also encourages professionals, amateurs, and emerging artists to create new puppetry works in diverse and experimental styles.
Puppet Slam Café #Huntington
Puppet Slam Café promises an evening of hip, contemporary, adults-only puppetry, featuring various puppet artists performing a wide range of styles and topics. Shows are performed in the Sky Room at Cinema Arts Centre. Food and beverages are available during the performance, with seating at café-style tables.
Puppet Slamwich! at Black Cherry Puppet Theater #Baltimore
Puppet Slamwich 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.
Puppets & Poets Cabaret #Brooklyn
Puppets & Poets presents eclectic experiments blending puppetry, poetry, and other arts performed by diverse artists for mature audiences. Puppets & Poets cultivates collaborative hybrid art blending poetry and puppetry, two of the world’s oldest and most diversely practiced art forms.
Puppets Up! Cabaret #Almonte
An adults-only evening of short form puppetry just a stone’s throw from Canada’s capital. Local, national and international puppeteers, both established and emerging artists, are featured in acts that range from bawdy to absurd to sublime. Finished pieces, works-in-progress, and works that will never again see the light of day are all enthusiastically welcomed.
Puppetzilla Puppet Slam #LosAngeles
The Los Angeles Guild of Puppetry hosts evenings of short puppet acts for adult audiences. We provide ongoing opportunities for puppeteers to develop new work.
Roast of the Calacas: A Puppet Slam #FortLauderdale
Roast of the Calacas cuts to the bone as an uncensored blitzkrieg of puppet mayhem. Hosted by bawdy blacklight skeleton puppet “Mr. Bones”, The Roast is a pumpkin spiced cocktail shaking together B-Horror flick rejects, zombie fetishists, skeletal burlesque and sideshow freaks.
Spork In Hand #Columbia
Spork in Hand Puppet Slam is a celebration of Southern puppetry that is off-the-beaten-path. We amaze, entertain, and inspire the people of Columbia with gloriously gritty evenings of experimental short puppetry and object theatre performances.
Titeretada: Noches de Cabaret Puppet Slam #SanJuan
Individuals and groups are invited to create short pieces. Experimentation is encouraged and we play to full houses. These cabaret nights continue to develop audiences for adult puppetry in Puerto Rico.
UConn Puppet Slams #Storrs
UConn Puppet Slams bring together working puppeteers from the New England and New York area with UConn students studying puppetry and other fine arts. UConn Puppet Slams are performed in UConn's Studio Theater, courtesy of the Department of Dramatic Arts, usually twice a year.
Wham, Bam! Puppet Slam #Asheville
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.
Winnipeg Puppet Slam #Winnipeg
Winnipeg is known for having eccentric and creative citizens and the puppeteers are no exception. The Winnipeg Puppet Slam features new innovative short works of adult-themed puppetry and object based theatre from local and international artists.
