15th Annual Labapalooza! Returns to St. Ann's Warehouse, May 23—26

The Puppet Lab, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary, is St. Ann's Warehouse's experimental haven for artists developing interdisciplinary projects for puppet and object theater. Under the direction of Lab Directors Matthew Acheson and Krissy Smith, participating artists and their collaborators have met weekly over several months to develop projects, share puppetry elements and other design and technical ideas, discuss plot structure and character development, and work on narrative. They will present their works in the annual Labapalooza! festival, which will run May 23 - 26 at St. Ann's Warehouse.

Labapalooza! embraces a broad diversity of new puppetry works, which are presented in two programs. Program A includes Point Pleasant, The Completely True Tales of Boris the Peacock, and Daydream Anthology. It will be performed Thursday, May 23 at 8:00 P.M.; Saturday, May 25 at 8:00 P.M.; and Sunday, May 26 at 2:00 P.M. Program B features Essex, Before and After, and Chimpanzee. It will run Friday, May 24 at 8:00 P.M.; Saturday, May 25 at 2:00 P.M.; and Sunday, May 26 at 7:00 P.M.

Each evening includes two film trailers by Robin Frohardt: Fitzcardboardo, a trailer for Werner Herzog's infamous 1982 film, Fitzcarraldo, made entirely from cardboard, and A Corrugation of Dreams, a trailer for Les Blank's 1982 documentary, Burden of Dreams, based on the making of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo.

Advance tickets are $20 for one program or $30 for both and are available via the St. Ann's Warehouse Box Office online atwww.stannswarehouse.org, by phone at 718-254-8779, or in person at 29 Jay Street (Tuesday through Saturday, 1:00 PM-7:00 P.M.). Phone sales are also available at 866-811-4111 during extended hours (Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM-9:00 P.M.; Saturday andSunday, 10:00 A.M.-6:00 P.M.). The box office is always open one hour prior to showtime for ticket pick-up and walk-up sales; tickets will be $25 at the door.

Labapalooza! is funded by the Jim Henson Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts.

PROGRAM A

Point Pleasant

Daniel Patrick Fay and Andrew Livingston

A reenactment of the Mothman monster sightings which occurred in Point Pleasant, West Virginia between November 1966 and December 1967.

The Completely True Tales of Boris the Peacock

Randy Ginsburg

A cranky, Russian, conductor peacock is found hiding in exile in London. Forced to recount his past in order to seek asylum, he becomes a "Scheherazade of the visa," wooing border control officers with his vibrant and operatic history.

Daydream Anthology

Maiko Kikuchi

I came out of a dream, got out of bed and left home. When I walked down the street and turned a corner, I came out of a dream again. Then I got out of bed and left home.

PROGRAM B

Essex

David Commander

A toy theater piece which draws a parallel between the 1819 sinking of the whaling-ship ESSEX by a sperm whale and the dangerous backlash of overtaxing the Earth's resources

Before and After

Misty Foster, Lacy Lynch and Yuliya Tsukerman

A man cloistered in everyday objects pieces together the moment when it all went wrong.

Chimpanzee

Nick Lehane

A female chimpanzee in a biomedical facility, nearing the end of her life, remembering and coming to terms with her time as a child in a human family.

About St. Ann's Warehouse

For over 30 years, St. Ann's has commissioned, produced and presented an eclectic body of innovative theater and concert presentations that meet at the intersection of theater and rock and roll. Since 2001, the organization has helped vitalize the emerging Brooklyn waterfront neighborhood, DUMBO, where St. Ann's Warehouse has become one of New York City's most important and compelling live performance destinations. After twelve years at 38 Water Street, St. Ann's has activated a new warehouse at 29 Jay, which will be home for the next three years, while the organization designs and raises funds to adapt the Tobacco Warehouse in Brooklyn Bridge Park into a thriving cultural center.

Through its signature multi-artist concerts and groundbreaking music/theater collaborations, St. Ann's Warehouse has become the artistic home for the American avant-garde, international companies of stature and award-winning emerging artists. Highly acclaimed landmark productions include Lou Reed's and John Cale's Songs for 'Drella; Marianne Faithfull's Seven Deadly Sins; Artistic Director Susan Feldman's Band in Berlin; Charlie Kaufman and the Coen Brothers' Theater of the New Ear; The Royal Court Theater's 4:48Psychosis; The Globe Theatre of London's Measure for Measure; Druid Company's The Walworth Farce, The New Electric Ballroom and Penelope; Enda Walsh's Misterman, featuring Cillian Murphy; Lou Reed's Berlin; the National Theater of Scotland's acclaimed Black Watch; Kneehigh Theatre's Brief Encounter; Yael Farber's Mies Julie; and Dmitry Krymov Lab's Opus No. 7. St. Ann's has championed such artists as The Wooster Group, Jeff Buckley, Cynthia Hopkins, Enda Walsh, Emma Rice, and Daniel Kitson.

St. Ann's Warehouse has been awarded the Ross Wetzsteon OBIE Award for the development of new work. The OBIE Award Committee honored St. Ann's for "inviting artists to treat their cavernous DUMBO space as both an inspiring laboratory and a sleek venue where its super-informed audience charges the atmosphere with hip vitality."