Puppeteers and other performers who have graced the Puppet Uprising stage:

BIKES ACROSS BORDERS CYCLE CIRCUS are a pedal-powered puppet circus that once rode to the Uprising from Missouri! Look at their website to see where their journeys take them.

BLACKBIRD THEATER is the outfit of puppet opera director Amy Trompetter. AMy also makes giant puppet parades and handpuppet shows ranging from a wearable Punch & Judy to adaptations of the historical writings of Howard Zinn.

BLACK CHERRY PUPPET THEATER are master marionette makers from Baltimore who presented Writer’s Block in 2002 and rerturned with Requiem for a Landfill and Sultan’s Review during the 2003 Fringe Festival. Their site details their community arts projects and roster of shows and workshops for kids and adults.

DRAMA OF WORKS has schlepped down to Philly from New York with On the Backs of Fishes, The Sid & Nancy Punch & Judy Show and a preview snippet of their big hit Warhol™. Their site details the many puppet pies that they have their fingers in, as well as all of the shows that they've produced for over ten years.

ERIK RUIN is a Michigan-raised, Philadelphia-based prinmaker who specializes in performing punk rock shadow theater extravaganzass. Contributions to Puppet Uprising have included The Other 9/11 (2003), Seams Like (2005), Going Nowhere (2007 collaboration with Shoddy Puppet Company) and The Nothing Factory (2007 collaboration with Reid Books). Erik performs psychedelic light shows with the space-punk band Lesser Known Neutrinos.

EVAN O'TELEVISION is a comedian from Boston who talks to a videotaped version of himself. Evan's suspension-of-belief performances conjure up the timeless questions: Who is the puppet? Who is the puppeteer?

THE GREAT QUENTINI is a giant space yeti who comes to Earth every December to work as a sculptor, instrument builder, musician, performance artist, and puppeteer at Puppet Uprising's Year-End Cabaret.

HANDMADE PUPPET DREAMS is a series of short film compilations curated by Heather Henson. These films focus primarily on real-time performed puppetry that runs the gamut from marionettes to finger puppets to paper cutouts created by contemporary artisans who weave the crafts of filmmaking and puppetry into their work.

KELLY NESBITT (a.k.a. "Barbara Cox," "The Skilled Dabbler" or "Ruby") brings her solo act all the way from Portland, (you know—Maine), and sometimes teams up with Beth Nixon under the name Urgent Insurgents.

LIBERTY CABBAGE THEATER REVIVAL brought us the smash hits Oiligarchy and An Olive on the Seder Plate. For a while the Cabbages called Philly their home, but have since scattered to New York and Massachusetts.

THE MISSOULA OBLONGATA took the us by storm in 2007 with The Wonders of the World: Recite and then The Most Mysterious Day of the Year. They also helped orchestrate Puppet Uprising's five-company production of THE TEMPEST.

MORE GARDENS is a coalition of gardeners and acticists who preserve community gardens in New York City. Sometimes they come to Philly with a puppet show.

THE MUSEUM OF EVERYDAY LIFE is the handiwork of puppeteer/musicians Clare Dolan and Gabe Levine from Vermont and Canada. See snippets of their tribute to Russian author Isaac Babel here.

PAPERHAND PUPPET INTERVENTION has brought three puppet shows to the Uprising so far and hosts an unbelievable giant puppet pageant at the end of each summer in their hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In 2006 they hosted the RadiCackaLacky Puppetry Convergence, and they are hard at work on bug-themed puppet festival for 2008.

PUPPET'S REVENGE are headed up by Spanish puppeteer Laia Dans and her Pennsylvanian husband Ron. They recently emigrated to New Mexico where they continue to perform mature puppet theater at the crossroads of tradition and outlandishness.

RAMSHACKLE ENTERPRISES is the company name of BETH NIXON, a puppeteer who took Philly by storm when she moved here in 2001 and began her prosperous career as an Uprising MC.

SPIRAL Q PUPPET THEATER is often mistaken as the producer of Puppet Uprising. It isn't, but it is Philly’s best-known puppet parade-and-pageant maker. Spiral Q leads workshops, provides space for activists to build props for demonstrations, and produces the all-city parade and pageant PEOPLEHOOD in West Philly every Octover. The site lists events and opportunities to tap into working with puppeteers in the area.

RYOGA KATSUMA "The Action Painter" came from Osaka, Japan by way of New York to bring us Invitation Card From Papa, an original work of traditional Kamishibai theater.

STRANGER THEATER from Toronto crossed the border with The Counterfeit Marquise for two hot shows in the summer of 2005 and returned again with and what Alice found there in 2006.

XANDER MARRO specializes in making 16mm marionette films with live soundtracks. She lives and works in a former public library in Providence, Rhode Island with an armada of amazing ladies and others who are changing the world with their subversive arts. Her most memorable performances included the 2001 puppet film Fine Dishes For Fine Bitches and 2002's Birdsongs of the Bauhauroque with co-star Becky Stark (a.k.a. Lavender Diamond).

Cheap Artists who have hung around the puppets:

BREAD & PUPPET are Vermonters who literally wrote the book on cheap art. Access this site to obtain the address to write a letter to request a catalog to order books and prints from the puppet theater that has inspired us all for over 40 years.

BEEHIVE DESIGN COLLECTIVE are Maine-based stone mosaicists infamous for their portable murals that use insects to illustrate the complexities of Plan Colombia and the FTAA. Check their site to see the bees and find out more about upcoming posters about Palestine, Plan Puebla Panama and more.

BETH FERGUSON is a printmaker, illustrator and puppeteer who works with Bikes Across Borders in Texas, the Beehive Collective in Maine, Tropazancos Cubensi in Havana, and the Green Map System worldwide.

HOTTT OFF THE PRESS is a print collective based in West Philadelphia. Their printshop is an open space for anyone who wants to make their own buttons, posters, t-shirts and zines. HOTP is the producer of the annual collaborative Toolkit Organizer.

JUSTSEEDS Visual Resistance Artists' Cooperative is a decentralized community of artists who have banded together to sell their work online and to collaborate with and support each other and social movements. Find out about current events in radical art and culture and buy prints online at the JustSeeds website.

TRASH WORSHIP – What is it? Click here and see for yourself, or click here for an explanation from yanbuki Rolando Politi.

Music-Makers that have added ambiance to Puppet Uprising events:

CHARLES COHEN made cleeps and bloops for the John Cage-inspired Shoddy Puppet Company/Erik Ruin show Going Nowhere (2007).

JACK OHLY played a set of prison songs from around the world at an Uprising event at the Magic Cinema. He plays upright bass and bass drum in the West Philadelphia Orchestra, plus cavaquinho, violão and pandeiro in the Brazilian folk music group Old Goats.

THE STICK & RAG VILLAGE ORCHESTRA drove their veggie-oil-powered bus down from Boston to fill our 6th Annual Year-End Cabaret with frantic klezmer, circus and dub reggae tunes as only an 18-piece marching band can!

SWEETS & HOTS are an awesome neo-zydeco group that rocked the house at the Magic Cinema in 2006 and played Puppet Uprising's Year-End Cabaret in 2007.

THE WEST PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA – Philly's best Balkan string-and-brass dance band played one (two actually) of their first concerts to a packed house at Puppet Uprising's Year-End Cabaret in 2006.

Venues where Puppet Uprisings have occured: 

THE ROTUNDA – The old chapel of a former church near the corner of 40th and Walnut Streets in West Philadelphia that hosts free events for audiences of all ages. Check their website for a calendar of upcoming Uprisings and other amazing events.

BARTRAM'S GARDEN is the historic home and garden of naturalist botanist John Bartram situated on a 45-acre site on the banks of the Schuylkill River. Therein sits a 232-year-old barn that has been known to sport a puppet show now and then.

SPACE 1026 is Philly's amazing gallery in Chinatown that specializes in print and book arts. They have openings for new shows on the first Friday of most months – Check 'em out!

COMMUNITY EDUCATION CENTER – An old Quaker Meetinghouse in Powelton Village, the CEC has played host to classes and performances since the early 1970's and was instrumental in Puppet Uprising's creation.

CALVARY CENTER FOR CULTURE AND COMMUNITY - This beautiful multi-congregational church is home to a theater company, a concert series and several organizations in the heart of West Philadelphia.

MUM PUPPETTHEATRE – With puppets for adults and kids in their Old City Philadelphia venue, Mum offers workshops and performs shows year-round.

Resources that boost puppet culture:

PUPPETSLAM.COM is an online networking resource for puppet artists, venues and audiences to find each other. Visit them and find out about The New American Vaudeville!

THE GREATER PHILADELPHIA AREA PUPPETRY GUILD (GPAPG) serves a community of local puppeteers by providing a forum to share information and skills while to advancing and promoting the art of puppetry in and around Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Lancaster, Reading, Allentown, Delaware, and south Jersey. Puppet Uprising regularly teams up with the GPAPG to preseent workshops by touring artists.

UMINA-USA – The States' branch of Union Internationale de la Marionnetteis provides online resources, the Puppetry Yellow Pages, and publishes the absolutely essential magazine Puppetry International.

PUPPETEERS OF AMERICA (established in1937) provides information, encourages performances, and builds a community of professional puppeteers, puppet builders, teachers, librarians, therapists, youth leaders, hobbyists and audience members who are enthusiastic about puppetry.

THE PUPPETEERS' COOPERATIVE – Authors of the ever expanding booklet 68 Ways to Make Really Big Puppets, the Cooperative runs a puppet library in Boston where anyone can borrow giant puppets just like borrowing books from a public library—check 'em out.

HONK! is an annual festival of radical street bands that takes place in Boston (Somerville and Cambridge actually) every October. Their homepage is a great resource for finding out about street bands in cities around th globe.

Puppet Uprising also exists on MySpace and on flickr.