Bushwick Starr and Alphabet Arts to Host 4th Annual Puppets & Poets Festival

Diverse artists and audiences will explore the relationship between two of the world's oldest and most diversely practiced art forms at Puppets & Poets. The fourth annual festival features puppeteers, poets, musicians, actors, and other artists from NYC and beyond in a cabaret program for mature audiences and a matinee program for all ages. Both programs include exciting and eclectic performances blending puppetry, poetry, and other arts. With more than forty artists participating, a few highlights of this year's festival include: a toy theater performed via live web feed from a Starbucks bathroom in Texas; an Emily Dickinson poem performed as Parisian-style puppet circus; poems by Edgar Allan Poe performed with matchbooks and matchsticks; the adventure of a brother and sister on their first subway ride alone; an Adrienne Rich-inspired feminist performance using live plants as puppets; and City of Hamburgers, a puppet play with live oom-pah band by Alphabet Arts based on the children's book by The Simpsons' writer Mike Reiss. Matinees also include interactive activities like sing-alongs and puppet-making. Featured Artists include: Jessica Abrego, Jamie Agnello, Teresa Bayer, Ren Carrillo, Ugo Chukwu, John Dyer, Zach Dorn, Jonathan Ellers, Cassidy Elms, John Foti, Charlotte Gaspard, Matthew Groff, Kevin Hale, Kirsten Kammermeyer, Matt Leabo, Lindsay MacNaughton, Brett Macias, Christine Malvasi, Jamie Moore, Megan Murtha, Tyler Rivenbark, Lavinia Roberts, Maggie Robinson, Sarah Sala, Rachel Schapira, Lake Simons, Shayna Strype, Storm Thomas, Kathleen Kennedy Tobin, BooLynn Walsh, Zeb West, Christina Quintana, Alex Young. Production Team: Artistic Director: Dr. Amber West; Puppetry Director: Kirsten Kammermeyer; Production Manager: Neelam Vaswani; Stage Management: Carmen Torres Location: The Bushwick Starr theater: 207 Starr Street, Brooklyn, NY [between Irving and Wykcoff]

Tickets to evening cabaret are $18.00 at www.thebushwickstarr.org

About Alphabet Arts: Alphabet Arts was founded by a group of artists on a front porch in Flatbush, Brooklyn in 2009. This nonprofit multi-genre artist collective brings together poets, puppeteers, actors, musicians, dancers and other artists to create innovative hybrid performances and programs for adult, family, and youth audiences. Learn more at alphabetarts.org.

More About Puppets & Poets: Alphabet Arts launched Puppets & Poets (P&P) in 2011 to create opportunities for diverse artists, youth, and audiences to collaboratively explore the relationship between puppetry and poetry, art forms practiced throughout the world and across the ages. Participants in our inaugural workshops created original "puppet poems" and performed to sold-out audiences at Brooklyn Arts Exchange and Creative Arts Studio. Thanks to this success, The Bushwick Starr invited Alphabet Arts to produce a larger festival in 2012. P&P creates opportunities for professional artists to collaborate and innovate by supporting the development and presentation of new work that crosses boundaries between artistic disciplines. Through free programs and bilingual outreach efforts, P&P also provides diverse families with access to the arts. In addition to the four-day festival, P&P includes a donation of arts education programs to PS 123, a Title 1 elementary school in Bushwick. This fall 100+ third and fourth graders will take a field trip to the Starr for two exclusive P&P performances, and fifth graders will receive a month of after-school poetry and puppetry workshops. P&P 2014 is made possible in part by grants from the Greater NY Arts Development Fund of the NYC DCA, administered by the Brooklyn Arts Council; Citizens Committee for New York City; Poets & Writers, Inc. through public funds from the NYC DCA, in partnership with the City Council; and the Puppet Slam Network.

"Puppets & Poets build[s] roads connecting distant corners of the artistic universe...[with a] magic combination of the literary and the popular." -Nora Brooks, Poets & Writers

"What's most impressive [is Alphabet Arts'] true-blue dedication to arts education and arts activism...[I]t's comforting to see generosity injected back into art-making...They truly understand the importance of a dialogue and exchange between artists and audiences." -Lauren Nicole Nixon, HerCircle