Chicago Puppet Fest to Present Living Room Tour Benefit Shows

Hot on the heels of the 5th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, its largest and most successful ever, the Chicago Puppet Fest is pulling strings again this spring, dangling two delightful opportunities for Chicago audiences to enjoy the art and craft of contemporary puppetry.

Chicago Puppet Festival's Spring Living Room Tour

Thursday, April 27 through Saturday, April 29

In January 2023, huge, spectacle productions played to packed houses in the spacious Studebaker Theater on Michigan Avenue and a variety of other shows stunned at 14 other venues throughout the city for the 5th edition of Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival.

This April, the Chicago Puppet Fest pivots to small, intimate spaces around the city with its Spring Living Room Tour. Always a wonderful time, supporters gather in a private setting for unique food and drink, and a live, up close performance by Alex and Olmsted, an internationally acclaimed puppet theater and filmmaking company based in Maryland.

The Spring Living Room Tour runs April 27-29, on three consecutive nights, in three different parts of the city:

Thursday, April 27, 6:30 p.m.
Glessner House in Chicago's Prairie District neighborhood

Designed to be a departure from Victorian architecture, the Glessner House inspired a new wave of domestic design and remains an architectural treasure in Chicago.

Friday, April 28, 6:30 p.m.
A Prohibition-era "French Eclectic" estate home in River Forest

Originally built by the renowned Buurma Brothers, this home features the steep asymmetrical roofs and dominant tower bay typical of the architecture style as well as the original, deep red ceramic-tiled roof and original fixtures. If you're lucky, the owners just might take you down to see the tavern in the basement.

Saturday, April 29, 6:30 p.m.
Manual Cinema Studios in Chicago's West Pilsen community

Once a machine shop, now a refurbished, heavy timber industrial building, this location is home to Manual Cinema, Chicago's shadow puppetry masters, creators of the Frankenstein performance seen in the January 2023 Festival.
Tickets to each Living Room Tour benefit performance are $150-$250. Purchase tickets online at chicagopuppetfest.org. Reserve early as space is limited. Proceeds benefit the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival and the Free Neighborhood Tour.

Chicago Puppet Lab Showcase
June 2-11
Chopin Theatre Basement, 1543 W. Division St., Chicago

Ten incredible Chicago artists are creating new, original puppet theater work in residence at the Chicago Puppet Lab, the Festival's developmental lab dedicated to incubating more works of boundary-breaking puppetry in Chicago, expanding equity in the field of puppetry, and encouraging interdisciplinary experimentation in puppet theater.

Co-directors Tom Lee and Grace Needlman have mentored the Lab's talented year two cohort over an eight-month period. Their residency culminates with the Chicago Puppet Lab Showcase, a mini-festival of two rotating group shows of works-in-progress, June 2-11 at the Chopin Theatre Basement,
1543 W. Division St., Chicago:

Program A, featuring works by Rachel Singer, Gretchen Hasse, Jacqueline Wade, August Boyne and Jacky Kelsey

Friday, June 2 at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, June 3 at 2 p.m.; Sunday, June 4 at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, June 8 at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, June 10 at 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday, June 11 at 2 p.m.

Program B, featuring works by Chio Cabrera-Coz, Claude Fethiere, Sion Silva, Collective SUMM (Kevin Michael Wesson and Jaerin Son)

Thursday, June 1 at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, June 3 at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, June 4 at 2 p.m.; Friday, June 9 at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, June 10 at 2 p.m.; and Sunday, June 11 at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets to each program are $20 regular/$15 student and seniors. Tickets go on sale April 15 at chicagopuppetfest.org.

The 5th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival "blew it right out of the water"

The 5th edition of the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, January 18-29, 2023, was a great return and the inaugural year of the Festival becoming an annual event. Chicago's appetite for puppetry was proven yet again with more sold out shows than ever before and a delicious variety of international performances.

Though the Festival did coordinate a wonderful restart in the middle of Omicron in 2022, the 2023 Festival blew it right out of the water. Audiences returned to venues all over the city for the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, the Chicago Reader's 2022 Best of Chicago Poll "Best Performing Arts Festival" runner-up, second only to Ravinia.

Over 105 performances and events astonished and delighted attendees. Artists came from Chicago, the nation and internationally from Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Iceland, Norway, South Africa, and Spain. From bunraku, to shadow, to crankie scroll, pageant-style puppets and more, puppets took over for 12 amazing days and nights of inspiration and invention.

For 14,000+ national and international guests, the 5th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival presented a substantial, in-person puppet festival, an oasis of fascination and artistry representing a breadth of style, quality of work and spectacular depth of artistic achievement from the U.S. The Festival boasted many new events this year notably a Puppet Hub at the Fine Arts Building complete with photography exhibitions, art installation and Pop Up Spoke & Bird Cafe. Although only in its 5th edition, the Festival was again the largest festival of its kind in the nation and remains celebrated for consistently excellent and unforgettable puppetry experiences.

Mark your calendar: Plan to come to Chicago for the 6th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, January 18-28, 2024!

Behind the Scenes: the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival

Originally founded as a project of Blair Thomas & Co., the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival has evolved to become an organization in its own right, presenting four biennial, multi-week, citywide festivals in 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2022. Already, the Chicago Puppet Festival has grown to be the largest of its kind in North America, attracting more than 14,000 audience members every edition to dozens of Chicago venues large and small to enjoy an entertaining and eclectic array of puppet styles from around the world.

In 2022, the festival tripled its footprint in Chicago's historic Fine Arts Building, moved into an expanded office suite, opened the Chicago Puppet Studio, which designs and fabricates puppets for theaters and special events around the U.S., launched online and in-person education programs, and inaugurated the new Chicago Puppet Lab, an education space and developmental residency and incubator for Chicago artists creating new, original puppetry work.

Expanded operations are being overseen by Artistic Director and Festival Founder Blair Thomas, Executive Director Sandy Smith Gerding, with Cameron Heinze, Business Manager; Taylor Bibat, Festival Coordinator; Zachary Sun, Studio Coordinator; Tom Lee, Co-Director, Chicago Puppet Lab and Studio; and Grace Needlman, Coordinator, Chicago Puppet Lab.

The 2023 Living Room Tour Committee Co-Chairs are Liz Aviles, Alicia Bird* and Jackie Zydeck. Committee members include Elizabeth Basile, Gary Benz, Sophia Biller, Leah Bohannon, Matthew Braun, Cheryl Lynn Bruce* and Kerry James Marshall, Irena Čajková, Amber Creger, Scott Golas, Mary Jane Maharry, Maureen Mizwicki*, Klára Moldová, Julie Moller*, Kristy Moran*, Kim Ohms* and Joe Novelli, Theodore Phillips, Jes* and Leesa Sherborne, Jordan Shields*, Eva Silverman, Steven Widerman, Deb and Andy Wolkstein, Pat Yuzawa-Rubin* and Theodore Phillips. *denotes board member

The Chicago Puppet Lab receives special funding from Kristy and Brandon Moran, and Pritzker Family Foundation.

Festival funders include Alphawood Foundation, American-Scandinavian Foundation, DCASE CityArts, FACE Foundation, Ferdi Foundation, Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Illinois Arts Council Agency, Jentes Family Foundation, The Jim Henson Foundation, MacArthur Fund for Culture, Equity, and the Arts at Prince, the Manaaki Foundation, Marshall Frankel Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, Pritzker Family Foundation, The Reva and David Logan Foundation, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and Walder Foundation. Individuals include Ginger Farley and Robert Shapiro, Justine Jentes and Dan Karuna, Elizabeth Liebman, Cheryl Lynn Bruce and Kerry James Marshall, Julie Moller, Kristy and Brandon Moran, Nina and Steven Schroeder, David and Beatrice "Bici" Pritzker and Cheryl Henson.

For more information, visit chicagopuppetfest.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.