Chicago International Puppet Theater Fest To Return January 20

It's been surprisingly busy the past 18 months at the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, as organizers have piloted new programs and retackled festival planning, all while developing major expansion plans following a year-long strategic planning process.
As a result, the Chicago Puppet Festival is ready for a major comeback this fall with exciting new activities and big plans to announce:

Mark your calendar: The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival is BACK, January 20-30, 2022 The 4th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival will return with live performances, ready to make Chicago the puppetry capital of the world, January 20-30, 2022.
For 10 days, Chicagoans and visitors alike will be treated to a deep, diverse roster of contemporary and traditional puppetry forms presented at cultural institutions large and small all over the city. Shows, artists and all festival events will be announced in the fall.

Until then, visit chicagopuppetfest.org to sign up for the fest's e-newsletter to be the first to learn the 2022 festival line-up, ticket on sale dates, special events and offers, and behind-the-strings scoop.
Currently housed in a cramped fifth floor office, the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival is tripling its space in its current location, the historic Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago.

In September, the administrative staff will move to a larger third floor office and welcoming suite, complete with a fireplace. On the fourth floor, the festival is moving into a new, 2,120-square-foot, four-room studio space with an exclusive view of the building's celebrated Venetian courtyard. Here, the festival will house its Chicago Puppet Studio, which designs and fabricates puppets for theaters around the U.S.

The expansion has also created space for the Chicago Puppet Lab, a new developmental lab for Chicago artists creating new, original puppetry work. Artists can apply for an eight-month, on-site residency program with a cohort of six to eight fellow artists, culminating in a mini-festival of works-in-progress. Learn more and apply at chicagopuppetfest.org/chicago-puppet-lab. Deadline to apply is Monday, September 13. The first Chicago Puppet Lab residencies begin Monday, October 25.

Puppetry fans know it's only fitting that the Fine Arts Building is home again to one of the most influential puppetry organizations in the world. Back in 1912, when Ellen Van Volkenburg famously founded the Little Theater of Chicago in the Fine Arts Building, legend has it she needed a name for the actors she had trained to manipulate marionettes while performing Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. So she credited them in the show program with a new word, "puppeteer." Many agree this marked the initial intersection of traditional puppetry with contemporary theater still practiced today, and now flourishing around the world.

The public is invited to explore the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival's expanded fourth floor facilities on Friday, October 8 from 5-8 p.m. as part of the Fine Arts Building's free Open Studios Event.

Vaccination and masking protocols will be in place per current Illinois Department of Public Health guidelines at all festival facilities.

Despite the pandemic, the Chicago Puppet Festival successfully ran 28 online, multi-week classes and workshops, training practicing puppeteers, other theater artists, along with a few novices looking to expand their skill set.

Now, in its newly expanded fourth floor space, the Chicago Puppet Fest will offer a full roster of live and hybrid classes and workshops, starting October 4.

Registration is now open for weekend intensives as well as one-, three-, six- and eight-week workshops. Instruction is offered in a wide array of specialties including storyboarding, puppet fabrication, toy theater, crankies and digital puppetry.

Classes are taught by Chicago's top puppeteers and key national puppetry experts, and culminate with a group show of works-in-progress.

New this fall: Atlanta-based puppet artist and educator Paulette Williams will teach a class exploring the history of puppetry in the Black Atlantic.

Visit chicagopuppetfest.org/puppet-workshops to explore the full class roster and register. Don't delay, as space is limited and classes do fill up.

The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival's fall Living Room Tour will tour to intimate spaces at eclectic locations, including Manual Cinema's new studio in Pilsen and a private residence in Evanston, November 11-13.

Audiences will enjoy unique food and drink alongside diverse new works of contemporary puppetry performed by nationally acclaimed artists. This fall, the tour will include a sneak peek excerpt of Brooklyn-based puppet artist Nick Lehane's Chimpanzee, one of the main attractions planned for the 4th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival in January.

Tickets are $150, including food, drinks and the performance. Benefactor tickets are $250 and come with a special goodie bag upon departure. Tickets go on sale in September at chicagopuppetfest.org. Proceeds benefit The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival and are tax deductible.

Many of the festival's organizational growth decisions announced today stem from the successful completion of a professional strategic planning process over the past 12 months, funded by the SmartGrowth Program of The Chicago Community Trust and support from Arts Work Fund for Organizational Development.

"While we remained active delivering virtual classes, launching our Pop-Up Puppet Gram service, investing in new work by puppeteers to create virtual puppet productions, and planning -- and re-planning -- the return of the Chicago Puppet Fest, we also spent a countless hours with our board, artists and key stakeholders reenvisioning what the organization should look like moving forward." said Blair Thomas, Founder and Artistic Director, Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival.

"Today's announcements of the return of the festival in 2022, our expanded facilities, the fall launch of in-person classes, workshops and our new play incubator, the Chicago Puppet Lab, are just the beginning of a bold, exciting new growth cycle for our organization. All of this, and more exciting news to come, will only strengthen our mission to establish Chicago as a prominent center for the art of puppetry and advance the form."

Expanded operations will still be overseen by Artistic Director/Festival Founder Blair Thomas and Managing Director Sandy Gerding. To meet the demands of the expanded operations, Tom Lee joins Thomas as Co-Director of the Puppet Lab. Acclaimed Chicago puppet artist Grace Needlman will coordinate pursuit of the Chicago Puppet Lab's mission: incubating more works of boundary-breaking puppetry in Chicago, expanding equity in the field of puppetry, and encouraging interdisciplinary experimentation in puppet theater.

Committee members who contributed their time and talents to the festival's strategic planning process include Christy Uchida, Strategic Planning Chair, President, The Brinson Foundation; Michelle T. Boone, President, The Poetry Foundation; Marcia Festen, Director, Arts Work Fund for Organizational Development; Robin Frohardt, Artist; Esther Grisham Grimm, Executive Director, 3Arts; Justine Jentes, Community Engagement, Exelon; Louise Lapointe, Co-General Manager and Artistic Director, Casteliers; Tom Lee, Artist & Co-Director, Chicago Puppet Studio; Ydalmi Noriega, Community and Foundation Relations Director, The Poetry Foundation; Kim Ohms, Board Chair and President of Ohms Designs, Inc.; Paulette Richards, Atlanta-based Independent Scholar/Curator; Jes Sherborne, Chief Technology Officer, Truss; Myra Su, Puppeteer; Maria Tri Sulistyani, Co-Director, Paper Moon Theater, Indonesia; and, Omar Torres-Kortright, Executive Director, Segundo Belvis Ruiz Cultural Center. The strategic planning initiative was led by Boston-based consultants, Strategy Matters.

Originally founded as a project of Blair Thomas & Co., the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival has now evolved to become an organization in its own right, bringing three biennial, multi-week, citywide festivals in 2015, 2017 and 2019. Already, Chicago's puppet festival has grown to be the largest of its kind in North America, attracting more than 14,000 audience members every two years to dozens of Chicago venues large and small to enjoy an entertaining and eclectic array of puppet styles from around the world.

For more information, visit chicagopuppetfest.org.

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