Creative Residency for Black Puppeteers

Stay Tuned for Applications for our 4th Cohort Launching Summer 2023!

If you would like to help support future grantees, we welcome contributions to this initiative. You can donate by clicking the button below, or mailing a check to Puppet Showplace Theater, 32 Station Street, Brookline, MA 02445 with “Creative Residency for Black Puppeteers” in the memo.

About the Program

To diversify representation on our stage and in our field, Puppet Showplace’s Creative Residency for Black Puppeteers initiative invests in creative research and early-stage production development by Black puppeteers from Greater Boston and from across the country.

Puppet Showplace Theater is dedicated to presenting outstanding professional puppetry to diverse audiences through performances, workshops, and community outreach. As articulated in our 5-year vision statement, we are committed to cultivating new work that reflects our values by empowering diverse artists to address contemporary issues, respond to community needs, explore the far realms of their imaginations, and engage audiences wherever they may be. We also aim to develop new programs that teach technical skills, promote artistic literacy, encourage experimentation, foster collaboration, and build confidence in people of all ages to express themselves through puppetry. 

This initiative launched in summer 2020 with an initial cohort of 6 artists. Funding, mentorship, and regular virtual meetings supported their creative discoveries over a 2-month period. In January 2021, thanks to the support of the Jim Henson Foundation, another 4 artists were able to embark on a residency journey. In future seasons, we hope to award more grants while continuing to work with the initial groups of artists to bring their full productions to our stage.

Questions? Contact Artistic Director Leslie Burton at artistic@puppetshowplace.org.

Community Sharing

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the Grantee Community Sharing on March 13, 2021!

0:00 - Intro / Welcome
3:10 - Faith James, Ankou
19:28 - Hadley Mays, Sycorax
29:43 - Barrington Edwards, Apocatastasis, Apocalypse, Apotheosis Plan
43:49 - Tanya Nixon-Silberg, Community Curator
48:23 - Question and Answer, facilitated by Dey Hernández

Thank you to the Jim Henson Foundation for supporting our winter 2021 artists.

Meet the Artists - Winter 2021

Barrington Edwards (“Apocatastasis Apocalypse Apotheosis Plan”) is from Boston and is an artist and community activist. He attended Hampton University in Virginia and the Massachusetts College of Art where he earned both a BFA in Communication Design and a MSAE in Art Education. Barrington taught visual arts at the Boston Arts Academy for nineteen years. He is a Massachusetts State Universities Educator Alumni Award 2019 winner, a Surdna and an Expressing Boston fellow, a publisher of comics and graphic media, and works as a freelance artist and consultant. Barrington is a member of the Boston Comics Roundtable, a co-founder of Comics in Color, and is active with the Design Studio for Social Intervention and the Black Speculative Arts Movement. He currently teaches Art Education as an assistant professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design where he continues to help develop young teachers. Barrington consistently works to develop his practice as an art maker and social interventionist in concert with his teaching.

Dey Hernández (Scenes from “On the Eve of Abolition”) is an Afro-Caribbean bicultural worker (AgitArte collective), curator, interdisciplinary artist, permaculturist, puppeteer (Papel Machete), movement artist (Danza Orgánica), designer and educator centering on collaborative projects + practices. As a border artist between Puerto Rico and Boston, through modeling, manifesting and building opportunities for liberation in the everyday, her work untangles how the complicated diasporic and colonial histories of this so-called nation persist and continue to operate throughout the world and within its own perimeters. She is a producer and co-host of When We Fight, We Win!: The Podcast and curator/art director of the book by the same name. Dey holds a Master of Architecture (March) from the University of Puerto Rico. Issues of race, identity, language, and community are fundamental to her work. Dey is based in Roxbury, MA.

Faith James (“Ankou”) is currently completing her MFA degree in Costume Design and Technology in the School of Theatre, TV and Film at San Diego State University. She has studied and practiced Costume Design and tech in Trinidad and Tobago where she specialized in wire artisanry yearly for Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival. Her Puppet and Costume design and artisanry experiences range from working on small experimental new plays such as Lying With Badgers with the Native Voices of the Autry to big budget main stage productions such as James and the Giant Peach where she also focused on puppet build. She is currently working on the production of She Kills Monsters at San Diego State University. Her latest project has been costume designing for The Niceties directed by Delicia Turner and  a production of the opera Orpheo (Peri) directed by Alan E.Hicks. She is also a member of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT).

Hadley Mays (“Sycorax”) is an actress, interdisciplinary performing artist, theater deviser, teacher and workshop facilitator. She has worked and studied in many cultures in contemporary, ancient and postmodern traditions. Hadley holds an MFA in Theater: Contemporary Performance from Naropa University. Performing nationally and internationally, she has devised work across many genres including classical theater, Butoh, Afro-diasporic dance, object theater, performance installations, and ritual performance.

Says Hadley: “Alternative states of consciousness and the translation of messages, images, and energy between worlds is central to the way I work. African genius as manifested and felt for through cultural, intellectual, spiritual and somatic means is one of my passionate pursuits”.

Tanya Nixon-Silberg of Little Uprisings (biography below) returns to serve as our community curator. Tanya has been a Puppet Showplace Incubator artist and was recently awarded an artist fellowship from the Arts and Business Council of Boston.

Watch the September 2020 Community Sharing

Audiences from across the country gathered for an inspiring afternoon exploring the creative discoveries made by the artists in our first grantee cohort.

Artistic Director Roxie Myhrum - 0:00
Nehprii Amenii - (Human) - 5:25
Tanya Nixon-Silberg - (Feeling Good = Feeling Black = Feeling Free) - 22:45
Sara Outing - (Doors) - 35:48
Anthony Michael Stokes - (Bawba Sheep’s Black) - 50:15
Danysha Ligon - (Tout timoun bondye yo fet ak dan) - 1:06:17
Dirk Joseph - (The Truth about Cats and Dogs) - 1:20:25
Question and Answer - 1:30:00

About the Artists - Summer 2020

Nehprii Amenii (Project: “Human”) is a director, writer, puppeteer and educator.  She has worked with and created puppetry for  Bread and Puppet Theatre, In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Foundation, The New York Philharmonic, and more. She has enjoyed  20 years of teaching and curriculum development . She uses storytelling and puppetry to mentor teachers and  help newly arrived immigrants share their own stories.  She is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors lab, has served as advisor for Ballard Institute and Museum of puppetry, is recipient of the Lipkin Prize for playwriting for her Play Food for the Gods, is author and Illustrator of Memories of the Little Elephant, and is the artistic director of Khunum Productions. www.nehpriiamenii.com

Dirk Joseph (“The Truth about Cats and Dogs”) is the founder of String Theory Theater, a small Baltimore-based puppet troupe composed of artist Dirk Joseph and his daughters Sequoia (20 yrs) and Azaria (13 yrs). Founded in 2016, String Theory Theater’s performance themes range from children’s puppetry to adult satire to a style of narrative improv that pulls the audience into the show. Their shows employ various narrative styles though multiple puppetry formats including hand puppets, rod puppets, crankies, shadow puppets, marionettes, toy theater, and large scale festival puppets. String Theory Theater also conducts creative workshops. Dirk was born in Trinidad, grew up in NY, and has been based in Baltimore for the last 16 years. For the last 30 years he has worked as a visual artist, art teacher, performing artist (puppetry and theater), and a graphic designer. In addition to being puppeteers and helping with script writing and production, Koi and Azaria are also both digital artists and sculptors. http://dirkjart.com/ http://stringtheorytheater.com/

Danysha Ligon (“Tout timoun bondye yo fet ak dan”) is a teaching artist currently based in Northeast Mississippi. She spends the majority of her time teaching at Noxubee County High School in Macon, Mississippi. Upon graduating from Valdosta State University with her BFA in Theatre Performance, she has been devising new theatre works for young audiences. You can see her Haitian-American influence in her productions that are filled with color, music, and zest! Her experiences as a Haitian-American woman have devoted her artistic endeavors to shining a light on culture, inclusion, and diversity. She hopes to spread the love of storytelling and pay homage to those who came before her and leave much for those that will come after her. Danysha believes theatre is a driving force that aids creativity and understanding in a world when we need it most. Her goal is to make that accessible to as many young artists as possible. This summer, Danysha’s work explores the darker side of disparaged people, specifically Black people. Inspired by African trickster tales and the works of Basquiat, she challenges audiences to find beauty in absurd and “unappealing” scenes. Her multimedia work engages deeply with current events and questions whether people are only worthy when they are “good.”  She hopes to use her experiences and training to inspire, educate, and empower the next generation of young artists. dlamadieu.wixsite.com/danyshaligon 

Tanya Nixon-Silberg (“Feeling Good = Feeling Black = Feeling Free”) is a Black Mother, Artist, Educator, Radical Dreamer from Boston, MA. Tanya transforms theory into practice, translates concepts into conversation, and works alongside children to reimagine a just world.  Tanya is the founder of Little Uprisings, a new project that focuses on deeper relationships with institutions that serve kids to make racial justice an everyday goal. Kids+Art+Justice is her recipe for liberation and kid-powered revolutions. As an artist in Puppet Showplace Theater’s Incubator program, she produced and co-created a puppet production of Innosanto Nagara’s My Night in the Planetarium funded by The Boston Foundation and The Jim Henson Foundation. Her liberation work has been in many arts institutions in Greater Boston including the Boston Public Library, Institute for Contemporary Art, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and the Peabody Essex Museum. 

Sara Outing (“Doors”) is a puppeteer, fabricator, musician, and theatre designer from Chapel Hill, NC, where she apprenticed in construction and performance with Paperhand Puppet Intervention. Now working in Philadelphia, her recent designs have included shadow work in Medea (Hedgerow Theatre), Potts (The Greenfield Collective), and #PhillySavesEarth (Marty Pottenger), and Iphigenia (U Penn Theatre Arts), as well as masks and puppets for The Good Person of Szechuan (U Penn), Gregor (InVersion Theatre, NYC) and Children of Eden (Wolf Performing Arts Center). Her favorite work centers narratives of loneliness into commonality, finds joy in transforming and elevating second-hand materials, and seeks visions of a liberated future using the traditions of radical puppetry. Sara is an alumna of the apprenticeship program at InterAct Theatre Company and of the University of Pennsylvania, where she also coordinates advisory programs for student performing artists. saraouting.com

Anthony Michael Stokes (“Bawba Sheep’s Black”) is currently Theatre Arts director of Jefferson/Silva Magnet High School. He is a resident director of El Paso Kids-n-Co Children’s theatre company and program director of the music theatre summer program. He has been trained as a puppeteer with the Sesame Street Puppeteer workshop. He has worked in South Korea as a performer, teaching artist, choreographer and head costume designer. He has appeared in puppet cabaret performances at both The Tank and the Metropolitan Room in NYC. He’s appeared in national tours including, Season of Miracles (Pushcart Players), Clifford the Big Red Dog Live originating the roles of Charley/Mr. Partland. Most recently he appeared as Papa Shakespeare in Titan Theatre Company’s The African Company Presents: Richard III. Other credits include; Arnall in NYC’S longest running play Line (13th Street Rep), Hondo/Walt in Aisle Six (NY International Fringe Festival), Dan in Next to Normal and Othello in Othello. He’s written and published a children’s book The Chromy Chronicles: Book One and is a proud member of the Actors Equity Association. Read more about Anthony’s Project.

Thank you to our supporters!