Showing posts with label Puppet Underground. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Puppet Underground. Show all posts

Sunday, March 25, 2012

April 2012 Slam Calendar

There’s no fooling with April when it comes to Puppet Slams and Cabarets! #SanJuan #Houston #Melbourne #KansasCity #Philadelphia #Providence #DC #Portland #Columbia #Toronto #Richmond #Asheville #GlenEcho #NYC 

Sobre La Mesa Slam #SanJuan
Sunday April 1st at 8:00PM
Friday April 6th at 8:00PM
Saturday, April 7th at 8:00PM
Sunday, April 8th at 8:00PM
Taller Teatro Y No Habia Luz
1416 Avenida Ponce de Leon, Santurce, frente de la Escuela Central High
San Juan Puerto Rico 00912
(787) 365-1925
$11

Puppeteers create short pieces inside a labyrinth of intimate spaces based on their response to an identical object.


Bobbindoctrin's 8th Annual Puppet Slam #Houston
Friday April 6th at TBA
Saturday, April 7th at TBA
Sunday, April 9th at TBA
Midtown Arts Center
3414 LaBranch
Houston TX 77004
(713) 521-8803

Bobbindoctrin's Puppet Slam returns to Houston for another vivid collection of short puppet plays.

Set Up Punch #Melbourne
Thursday, April 12th at 11:00PM
St Ali
12 – 18 Yarra Place Sth Melbourne
3205
0478 548 709
Free
Featuring Randy, The Mighty Littles, Derek Rowe’s puppet band, Wes Snelling, The Soubrettes, Humple the Slam Poet and Ken the Koala. Set Up Punch is a one night Slam celebrating FUNNY puppets, especially for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2012.

KC Puppet Slam #KansasCity
Friday, April 13th at 8:00PM
Saturday, April 14th at 8:00 PM
Paul Mesner Puppets Studio
1006 E. Linwood Blvd.Kansas City, Missouri 64109
(816) 756-3500
$10

Join us for the KC Puppet Slam. A puppet slam is an evening of adult-themed puppet pieces. Quirky, edgy and oh-so-naughty...You’ve never seen a puppet show like this before!

Puppet Manualfesto #Philadelphia
Saturday, April 14th at 7:00PM & 9:00PM

Puppet Manualfesto #Philadelphia
Walking Fish Theatre
2509 Frankford Avenue
Philadelphia, Pa, 19125
(215) 427-9255
$12 Advance / $15 Door
Come join Puppet Manualfesto as it celebrates short-form puppetry and community, 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.

Bobbindoctrin's 8th Annual Puppet Slam #Houston
Saturday, April 14th at TBA
Sunday, April 15th at TBA
Midtown Arts Center
3414 LaBranch, Houston TX 77004
(713) 521-8803
Bobbindoctrin's Puppet Slam returns to Houston for another vivid collection of short puppet plays.

Blood From a Turnip #Providence
Friday, April 20th at 10:00PM
Black Box at 95 Empire
95 Empire Street
Providence, RI 02903
(401) 331-2695
$7
Video-ventriloquist Evan O’Television and non-motivational speaker Brian Longwell explore their relationship to puppetry together under the umbrella, “The Itching Man A/V Society Presents”.


PSN-2
Puppet Underground Cabarets #DC
Friday, April 20th at 8:00PM
La Casa Community of Christ
3166 Mt Pleasant St NW
Washington, DC 20010
$5-$15 Sliding Scale
This slam will feature NYC puppeteer Erin Bell’s “Do Right Belly Fire, Do Right Monkey Brain” as well as other local acts.

Beady Little Eyes #Portland #OR
Friday, April 20th at 8:00PM
Funhouse Lounge
2432 SE 11th Street
Portland, OR 97214
(503) 841-6734
www.beadylittleeyes.com
Beady Little Eyes to take SE Portland by storm! The theme, Heroes and Villains will evoke triumph and despair in the hearts of even the quirkiest Portlanders. $1 off admission with a superhero/villain costume.

Spork In Hand Puppet Slam #Columbia #SC
Friday, April 20th at 7:00PM
Saturday, April 21st at 7:00PM

Spork In Hand Puppet Slam #Columbia #SC
Tapp's Arts Center
1644 Main Street
Columbia, SC 29201
803-988-0013
$10 advance / $12 door
Spork in Hand Puppet Slam will be a celebration of Southern puppetry that is off-the-beaten-path. We hope to amaze, entertain, and inspire with two gloriously gritty evenings of experimental puppet and object theatre performances heretofore unseen in South Carolina.
 

Feed the Birds Cabaret #Toronto
Thursday, April 26th at 8:00PM
Tallulah's Cabaret at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
12 Alexander Street
Toronto, Ontario M4Y 1B4
Feed the Birds brings on the love and feathers in the latest installment of their performing objects and puppetry cabaret

 
All The Saints Spaghetti Dinner! #Richmond
Saturday, April 28th at 7:00PM

All The Saints Spaghetti Dinner! #Richmond
The Backyard Theater
1012 W. 49th St.
Richmond, VA. 23225
$8-$15

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.

Wham, Bam! Puppet Slam #Asheville
Saturday, April 28th at 9:00PM
The BeBe Theatre
20 Commerce Street
Asheville, NC 28801
828-254-2621
$12 

For the National Day of Puppetry, the Wham, Bam! Puppet Slam presents a ‘Quick & Dirty Slam’! One show only! Twelve acts, five minutes each!  Come witness the mayhem and madness, or even come perform yourself!


PSN-5
Playhouse Puppetry Slam! #GlenEcho #MD
Saturday, April 28th at 7:00PM & 9:00PM
The Puppet Co. Playhouse
7300 MacArthur Blvd
Glen Echo, MD 20812
$15 

The Puppet Co. Playhouse presents its adult-friendly showcase of vignettes. Content ranges from the raunchy and risqué to the tender and tear jerking, in a fast-moving succession of both rough and polished acts with live jazz by JFQ in between.



Puppet Playlist City #NYC
Monday, April 30th at 8:00PM
The Kraine Theater
84 E. 4th Street
New York, NY 10003
(212) 777-6088
$8/$10
You've heard it through the grapevine, now join Puppet Playlist as we bring Motown to Downtown with original works of puppetry & musical interpretations by some of NYC's most exciting singer-songwriters! Let's Get It On. Program repeats Tuesday May 1st at 7:30PM and 9:30PM.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Friday, December 2, 2011

Occupy Kabaret Street - Puppetry joins the Occupy Movement

At this point, most people are probably familiar with the Occupy movement. It started in September with Occupy Wall Street in New York City and has spread to hundreds of cities throughout the world. Arts and Culture committees are common in many of the occupation sites with art projects helping to build community, beautify spaces, enliven actions, and illustrate hopes and visions. And now PSN's favorite artform is also starting to make a regular appearance: puppets are increasingly joining the movement!

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 Context:
On November 19th, DC activists identying themselves as Free Franklin occupied the Franklin School building, a publicly owned building in downtown DC that has been vacant for years. From 2002-2008 it housed a homeless shelter but that was shuttered as part of the trend in the last decade to cut homeless services and push shelters to remote areas on the fringes of the city.

 Enter the Activists:
With national attention focused on the concerns highlighted by the Occupy camps, local activists and organizers decided to draw some of that attention toward the local issue of how public property is regularly misused and sold to private developers while there continues to be a severe shortage of affordable housing and homeless services. In recent years the city government has been trying to sell off the Franklin School building to private developers (one proposal was to turn it into a boutique hotel). It was an occupation in 2002 that originally pushed the city to open Franklin as a homeless shelter, so it seemed appropriate that another occupation would serve to highlight the potential public uses of the space.

The Cabaret:
The goals of the cabaret were layered: to introduce new people to Occupy K Street, to educate Occupy K Street activists about social movement history in the area, to creatively provide the story (and local significance) of the Franklin School building, and to provide witnesses to its occupation. (Up until the end of the cabaret, no one had any idea the school had been re-occupied.)

 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 the 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.

 The Performances:
The Bread and Puppet Theater performed two short shows. Local puppet group The Shadow Senators offered a tribute to Joe Hill. Music was provided by rock band Ugly Purple Sweater and Mexican folk music band Son Cosita Seria. Poetry was read by Zein ElAmine and a monologue was performed by political performance artist Quique Aviles. Puppet Underground ended the cabaret with the show about the history of Franklin School.

Follow Up:
The Franklin School building occupation garnered significant local and national press attention (with several international stories published about it as well). It successfully put the issue of the loss of public property and cuts to homeless services back in the spotlight. Two days after the action a community meeting was held to discuss publicly what longtime community members would want to see happen with the Franklin building. Currently activists and artists are continuing to plan how to use their momentum to support affordable housing campaigns, to broaden public engagement in the issues, and to follow up with communities about their ideas for reclaiming and repurposing their vacant public property.

 Links:

 PBS News Hour’s interactive tour of the cabaret (capturing pictures, video, sounds and stories from the route):
http://to.pbs.org/sf3D8i

 Video of the banner drop and Free Franklin’s statement:
http://freefranklindc.blogspot.com/

 Huffington Post article describing the arrests of the activists:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/20/free-franklin-police-raid-protesters-arrested_n_1103509.html
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)