Great Small Works

Let’s give a hand to this week’s Member Monday feature: Great Small Works! Great Small Works was founded in 1995 by a collective of six artists, all veterans of Bread and Puppet Theater, to create theater of high artistic quality and to keep theater at the heart of social life. The company draws on puppet, avant-garde, and popular theater traditions to tell contemporary stories. We perform in theaters, schools, parks, libraries, museums, prisons, street corners and other public spaces, producing work on many scales, from gigantic outdoor spectacles with scores of volunteers to miniature shows in living rooms. In curated festivals and decades-running Spaghetti Dinners, we collaborate with artists from varied traditions, provide performance opportunities for artists in diverse genres, and engage young artists in the process of finding their own voices. In community-based pageants and parades, we work with students, activists and artists to address issues of concern to them. On any scale, Great Small Works productions seek to renew, cultivate, and strengthen the spirits of their audiences, believing in theater as a model for participating in democracy. They are also a proud recipient of a UNIMA-USA Citation of Excellence. We thank Great Small Works for their powerful contributions and for being a valued member of UNIMA-USA!

"Calling All Giants" Spaghetti Dinner Spotlight: PUPPETEERS COOPERATIVE! Next Monday's 12/29 Great Small Works year-end event at Judson Church will feature giant puppet work by Sara Peattie's Puppeteers Cooperative. The Puppeteers' Cooperative is a group of artists and puppeteers working in cities around the nation to create giant puppet parades, pageants, and ceremonies of celebration and complaint, using simple materials and movements to build community cardboard extravaganzas. Puppeteers Cooperative has worked with groups around the US and Canada, and among other events creates an annual "Right of Spring" event at the Old Stone House in Brooklyn. Sara Peattie began her puppetry career in 1969 at the age of 18 when she studied under Peter Schumann, and travelled with his Bread and Puppet Theater to Europe. Peattie founded The Puppeteers Cooperative in 1976 with fellow puppeteer George Konnoff in San Francisco. She also founded and manages Boston's Puppet Free Library.

Join us for this spectacular event, which will also include works by Spica Wobbe, Boxcutter Collective, Frank London's Loisaida Fife & Drum Corps, Jennifer Miller, Erik Ruin, and a Convergence of Giants featuring puppets by Amy Trompetter, Peoples Puppets of Occupy Wall Street, Ronnie Asbell, Chinese Theater Works, Puppeteers Cooperative, and New Haven's Unidad Latina en Accion! More info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1373043490867574. Watch on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1577624343266027. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLE3oDaBKRs.

"Calling All Giants" Spaghetti Dinner Spotlight: CHINESE THEATER WORKS! Next Monday's 12/29 Great Small Works year-end event at Judson Church will feature giant puppets and mirror puppets by Stephen Kaplin and Kuang-Yu Fong, the founders and directors of the award-winning company Chinese Theater Works (CTW). CTW was created in 2001 to bring traditional and innovative, contemporary Chinese performing arts to local New York City, national and international audiences. CTW's programs cut across ethnic and cultural boundaries, and aim at sparking interest in Chinese cultural traditions among the wider public as well as in Chinese Americans who have not had access to this part of their heritage. At "Calling All Giants" CTW will perform their giant puppet of Zhongkuai, the ancient Chinese Taoist Demon Queller and Ghostbuster; a giant version of Hamsa, the ancient symbol of divine power which brings luck and connects to the divine; and perform new mirror puppets.

Join us for this spectacular event, which will also include works by Spica Wobbe, Boxcutter Collective, Meredith Holch, Frank London's Loisaida Fife & Drum Corps, Jennifer Miller, Erik Ruin, and a Convergence of Giants featuring puppets by Amy Trompetter, Peoples Puppets of Occupy Wall Street, Ronnie Asbell, Chinese Theater Works, Puppeteers Cooperative, and New Haven's Unidad Latina en Accion! More info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1373043490867574. Watch on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1577624343266027. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLE3oDaBKRs.