Performances will take place on the hour, at 11am, 12pm, 1pm and 2pm. View the PROGRAM for the show. 

Commissioned by Arts Brookfield, THE PUPPET CYCLE: Small World Stories is the latest from Phantom Limb Company, the New York City-based partnership known for its distinctive storytelling, social engagement, and sophisticated visual style. Guaranteed to transport and delight, these roving puppet performances feature a team of puppets and puppeteers who will bring to life two original short plays by Dipika Guha and Jen Silverman, as well as a musical number. This family-friendly bill of marionette plays will be performed on a solar powered movable stage—a specially adapted cargo bike—that will tour selected locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn. THE PUPPET CYCLE series features artist-created puppets and a team of renowned puppeteers Rowan Magee, Leah Ogawa, and Erik Sanko, and performer Matt Dallal. All performances are free, open to the public, and perfect for any age!

As in all of Phantom Limb’s productions, THE PUPPET CYCLE brings an environmental focus to bear, but in a departure from the scale of more recent work (such as the critically acclaimed Environmental Trilogy), the feeling strived for in these performances is intimate, interactive, and entirely local.

ABOUT THE PLAYS:

Each playlet is a snapshot of living in this precious, precarious moment. With characteristic humor and a tinge of darkness, THE PUPPET CYCLE: Small World Stories locates hope in the shadow of so much uncertainty.

 •  Jen Silverman’s Frown Town looks at the upside of feeling down.

 •  Dipika Guha’s Elephantasia features a pachyderm who dreams of flight.

ABOUT PHANTOM LIMB COMPANY:

Phantom Limb Company (PLC), New York City-based, creates iconic stories that are built on an intersection of innovation, social change and visual art, with a particular focus on the climate emergency and environmental injustice. Collaging puppetry, movement, multi-media storytelling and design, this unique integration of social impact and aesthetic is essential to their work. Phantom Limb has produced The Fortune Teller, Dear Mme., The Environmental Trilogy (69˚SOUTH, Memory Rings and Falling Out) and a work in progress 12 Angry Animals together with a large rotating cast of friends, collaborators, artists, dancers and puppeteers. They have collaborated with Lemony Snicket, Ping Chong, The Kronos Quartet, Jim Jarmusch, Danny Elfman, Dai Matsuoka from Sankai Juku, Henrik Vibskov Jeffrey Zeigler, Sophie Hunter and Tony Taccone. PLC has received generous support and grants from the Jim Henson Foundation, The Rubin Foundation, New England Foundation for Art (NEFA), Foundation for Contemporary Art, The Jerome Foundation, LMCC, the National Science Foundation Artist and Writers Program, The NYS Composer’s Grant, the MAP Fund, Edith Luytens and Norman Bel Geddes Design Enhancement Fund, New Music USA, the Asian Cultural Council and the Japan Foundation as well as being Hermitage Artist Residency Fellows, Robert Rauschenberg Residency Fellows and Recipients of the Bay Area Critics Circle Award.

Produced by Octopus Theatricals.