Back to All Events

The Four Seasons by Drama of Works

  • Puppet Showplace Theater 32 Station Street Brookline, MA, 02445 United States (map)

Showtimes & Tickets

Choose a showtime to purchase tickets. You will be redirected to our ticketing service website to complete your purchase.

$16 per person
$12.50 for members Become a member
$3 per ticket with Card to Culture (WIC, EBT, MassHealth, ConnectorCare) Learn more →

On sale February 24.
Members Only Presale starts February 22!

Apr 13 (Sat): 10:30 am | 1:00 pm

Apr 14 (Sun): 10:30 am | 1:00 pm

Apr 15 (Mon): 10:30 am | 1:00 pm | 3:00 pm

Note that April 15 is the day of the Boston Marathon, which will cause slowdowns on roads and the MBTA. We recommend planning for extra time to get to the theater.

About the Show

Big Fox is only concerned with all the chores that must be done each season. Little Fox only wants to play with Bird. But when winter comes, Bird must fly away. Will Big Fox keep doing chores, or stop and play with Little Fox to cheer him up?

Set to Vivaldi’s violin compositions of the same name, The Four Seasons invites us to watch through Little Fox’s eyes as the seasons transform — with the help of innovative magnetic sets and charming and bright puppets designed by Estonian illustrator Kristiana Pärn.

Drama of Works is a New York-based, award-winning puppet theater company that travels the world with its imaginative shows. The Four Seasons is performed with brightly colored, modernist-influenced flat metal puppets — as if picture book illustrations peeled themselves off the page and came to life on stage! — in a contemporary twist on a style of puppetry known as “toy theater.”

This is Drama of Works’ first time performing on Puppet Showplace Theater’s Mainstage — don’t miss this fresh take on friends, feelings, and the passage of time!

All ages welcome, especially enjoyed by ages 3-8
Toy theater (flat table-top puppets)
Length: 40 minutes
Language: wordless
From New York City!

Written by Drama of Works ensemble
Directed by Gretchen Van Lente
Designed and built by Kristiana Pärn
Music by Antonio Vivaldi
Performed by Emmanuel Elpenord, AnJu Hyppolite, and Gretchen Van Lente

About the Artists

Drama of Works is an award-winning, internationally-acclaimed puppet theater company led by Artistic Director Gretchen Van Lente and celebrating its 25th-anniversary this year. Based in New York City, Drama of Works has taken its unique brand of theater to venues as diverse as New York’s P.S. 122, the International Festival of Children’s Theatre in Subotica, Serbia, and Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. The company’s main forms of puppetry are shadow puppetry and toy theater, and the company creates shows suitable for all ages, as well as some specifically for adults and some specifically for little ones. Drama of Works has been called “New York’s tightly organized satirists” (In Pittsburgh) and is known for its innovative works “high on fantastic production value” (Village Voice) that cross the line between actors and puppeteers.

Emmanuel Elpenord is a queer, first-generation Haitian-American actor, puppeteer, and voice-over artist born and raised in Coney Island. He graduated magna cum laude from Brooklyn College with an Acting BFA, TV & Radio BA, and Creative Writing BFA. Credits include first off-Broadway, first national and international tours of the Very Hungry Caterpillar Show; original off-Broadway cast of Disney's Winnie The Pooh with Rockefeller Productions. He has worked with long-standing companies like La MaMa Theatre, The Metropolitan Opera, The Drilling Company’s Bryant Park Shakespeare, St. Ann’s Warehouse, and more. He’s recently attended the National Puppetry Conference at the O’Neill Theater Center, and performed with Drama of Works at the National Puppet Festival in College Park, Maryland. Emmanuel also was part of Puppet Showplace Theater’s 2023 Creative Residency for Black Puppeteers. Follow Emmanuel on Instagram @sword.of.elpenord.

AnJu Hyppolite is a Haitian-American, award-winning actor, writer, and educator who works at the intersection of theater arts, technology, and social equity. In her most recent stage appearance, she puppeteered in Evolve Puppets' fall presentation of Trees at La MaMa Theatre in New York City. AnJu's work has been featured at City Hall for the New York City Council, at Photoville NYC, on The Quiet Storm with Armand Carr (102.9 KBLX), and in the Henrietta Lacks’ photo installation at TheatreFirst in Berkeley, CA. AnJu is a Conch Shell Productions Artist Collective member and is expanding a short play she wrote in 2020.

Gretchen Van Lente is the Artistic Director of Drama of Works (DOW), a freelance theater director and a full-time Special Education public school theater teacher. She has been working in the field of puppetry and visual theater since 1995. Since this time, outside of the over a dozen award-winning shows she has created with DOW, she has been a freelance director, designer, and teaching artist. She has taken DOW to over 11 international festivals, from as close as Canada, to as far as Indonesia. She was the youngest president of UNIMA-USA since Jim Henson when she served previously on the board and also served as an international councilor. She received her BFA in illustration from Parsons School of Design, her BA in theater from Eugene Lang College, an MFA in directing from Brooklyn College, and an MS in Education from Pace University.

Kristiana Pärn is an award-winning children’s illustrator, originally from Estonia. She focuses her designs (often created on wood panels) on animals and nature, inspired by the northern forests of where she grew up. If you like the show, check out Kristiana’s work on Etsy and Instagram @kristiana_parn.