The Bread and Puppet Theater is a politically radical puppet theater, active since the 1960s, based in Glover, Vermont as of January 2020. The theater was co-founded by Elka and Peter Schumann. Peter is the artistic director.
The Jim Henson Foundation was founded by puppeteer and Muppet creator Jim Henson to promote and develop puppetry in the United States. Since 1992 Jim Henson's daughter Cheryl Henson has served as the president for the Foundation.
The Village Halloween Parade is an annual holiday parade on the night of every Halloween, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. The parade, initiated on October 31, 1973 by Greenwich Village puppeteer and mask maker Ralph Lee, is the world's largest Halloween parade and the only major nighttime parade in the United States. The parade reports itself to have 50,000 "costumed participants" and 2 million spectators. The parade has its roots in New York's queer community.
Jeanne Fleming is an American Celebration Artist from New York City, who organized the Harbor Festival Fair in 1986, the Official Land Celebration for the Centennial of the Statue of Liberty and who is currently director of New York's Village Halloween Parade.
Ralph Lee was an American puppeteer and theatre artist. His work was centered on the design and use of masks in theatre and performance. The majority of his productions took place outside of traditional performance venues, included parades, pageants, celebrations, and outdoor theatrical performances. Masks and large puppets were central to his productions, which aimed to make artistic experiences accessible to all members of the community. He staged his productions in familiar, public locations, charging no admission fee whenever possible and creating vivid images that could immediately resonate with the audience.
Stephanie Ann D'Abruzzo is an American actress, puppeteer and singer. She has performed various Muppets in the TV program Sesame Street. She held starring roles on Oobi and The Book of Pooh. She was one of the original cast members of the stage musical Avenue Q, receiving a nomination for the 2004 Best Actress in a Musical.
The Center for Puppetry Arts, located in Atlanta, is the United States' largest organization dedicated to the art form of puppetry. The center focuses on three areas: performance, education and museum. It is one of the few puppet museums in the world. The center is located in Midtown, the city's arts district. It was founded in 1978 by Vincent Anthony.
Dadi Pudumjee is a leading puppeteer in India and he is the founder of The Ishara Puppet Theatre Trust. He was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1992.
HERE Arts Center (HERE) is a prolific leader of New York City’s downtown performance art scene and a New York City off-off-Broadway theatre and organization that has been presenting groundbreaking hybrid performance, dance, theater, multi-media, music and puppetry since 1993.
Spiral Q Puppet Theater is a puppet troupe founded in 1995 by Matthew "Mattyboy" Hart in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After traveling the country, Hart was inspired by the street performance work of the Radical Faeries and the Bread and Puppet Theater in Glover, Vermont. On his return to Philadelphia, Hart founded Spiral Q as a way to use his new interest in puppetry, street theatre and pageantry to promote social and political change.
Alex Kahn is an American visual/performance artist and co-founder of the arts ensemble Processional Arts Workshop. He is most widely known for his creation of the large-scale puppet performance works that lead New York's Village Halloween Parade each year.
Basil Twist is a New York City-based puppeteer who is known for his underwater puppet show, "Symphonie Fantastique". He was named a MacArthur Fellowship recipient on September 29, 2015.
Thingumajig Theatre is a puppet company who creates and performs innovative visual theatre, interactive giant puppets and outdoor performances. Founded in 2005 by Korean American puppeteer Andrew Kim and British actor/musician Kathy Kim, Thingumajig Theatre is based in Hebden Bridge and Todmorden, West Yorkshire, England.
The Hebden Bridge Handmade Parade is a community-made parade in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, England. Produced by local arts organisations Handmade Parade CIC, the parade celebrates the creativity, variety and the uniqueness of Hebden Bridge and its surrounding areas. The parade takes place in June each year.
Arias with a Twist is a collaborative play created by drag queen Joey Arias and puppeteer Basil Twist. It premiered on June 12, 2008 at the HERE Arts Center in the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre. Although the play is performed as a one-person show starring Arias, it also features the work of six nearly invisible puppeteers who manipulate traditional marionettes, hand puppets, and the scenic elements. It has been nominated for the 2009 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience.
Processional Arts Workshop (PAW) is an ensemble of performing artists and theatrical technicians founded in 1998, devoted to pageant puppetry and processional art. They are also known by the name Superior Concept Monsters (SCM). They are best known for creating the large-scale puppet performances that lead New York's Village Halloween Parade.
The Puppeteers Cooperative is an association of puppeteers, musicians, dancers, and singers, working to form community bonds through the medium of puppets, parades, and pageants. It is an extremely loose affiliation - there is no membership as such, so that people are sometimes surprised to find themselves belonging to the group without having joined it.
Anurupa Roy is a puppeteer, puppet designer and director of the puppet theater. Puppeteer Anurupa Roy's views puppetry as not "manipulating dolls with strings" but an amalgam of plastic and performing arts where sculptures, masks, figures, materials, found objects and narratives come together with music, movement, physicality and theater to create the theater where humans and puppets are co actors. She started at her group Katkatha in 1998 which was registered as the Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust 2006. She has directed over 15 shows for children and adults ranging from the Ramayana and Mahabharata to Shakespearean comedy to the Humayun-nama. The puppets used by the group range from 3 inches to forty feet. The shows have toured across Europe, Japan and South Asia. A major aspect of her work is using puppets for psycho social interventions in conflict areas like Kashmir, Sri Lanka and Manipur to Juvenile Remand homes. She has worked with youth and women across the country using puppets to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and gender issues. She is a recipient of the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar ine Puppetry(2006). She has been a visiting faculty at the University of California Los Angeles an Artists in Residence at Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council.
A giant puppet is a puppet which is tall enough to be easily visible to a street crowd while being manipulated by puppeteers, on the same level. It is therefore most suitable for processions, street theatre and performance art, although some large theatrical animations can be used for the same purpose. Giant puppets are usually articulated and made from a lightweight material. Some are manipulated by puppeteers using rods, strings, stilts, other mechanisms, or a combination of these. Giant puppets have been used worldwide for street entertainment, celebrations or other purposes from ancient times, and they continue in use and in development today. Of the traditional giant rod puppets, the Chinese dragon New Year puppet is "perhaps the most recognized form of the parade puppet". Of the most recent examples, Royal de Luxe of France has produced a notable set of giant string puppets.
