Jump Start -November 13-16
Works-in-Progress Series
Curated by Denise Greber
ABOUT
Puppet artists get a chance to showcase their works in progress in the La MaMa Puppet Series. Featuring works-in-progress from Deniz Khateri, Leah Ogawa, Sarah Finn, Amanda Card, William PK Carter.
Where Did You Go, Connie?
ABOUT
Where Did You Go, Connie? is an interdisciplinary puppetry performance that investigates the legacy and disappearance of cult musician Connie Converse. Blending shadow puppetry, toy theater, live-feed video, and live music, the piece evokes a dreamlike inquiry into visibility, memory, and the ache of making art in obscurity. Amanda Card becomes both detective and caretaker onstage, searching for Connie, fusing with her, and contemplating the cost of disappearing.
Amanda Card is a Brooklyn-based puppeteer and interdisciplinary artist whose intimate, handmade work weaves together themes of memory, disappearance, and care. Her performances have appeared at La MaMa ETC, Dixon Place, Object Movement, Japan Society, Ars Nova, and HERE. She is currently developing new work about memory, dreams, and visibility.
CREDITS
Created and performed by Amanda Card
Music by Connie Converse
Sound Design by Matthew Keim
BIOS
Amanda Card is a Brooklyn-based puppeteer and interdisciplinary artist whose intimate, handmade work weaves together themes of memory, disappearance, and care. Her performances have appeared at La MaMa ETC, Dixon Place, Object Movement, Japan Society, Ars Nova, and HERE. She is currently developing new work about memory, dreams, and visibility.
Husks from Iran
ABOUT
Husks from Iran is a shadow puppetry performance exploring resistance, exile, and artistic integrity through the story of a young Iranian artist navigating displacement and the role of art in the diaspora. The shadow puppets, inspired by Persian calligraphy and Iranian architecture, symbolize the fragility of immigrants and exiled artists. The play weaves an abstract collage of poetry by Iranian poets who were imprisoned or forced into exile for opposing dictatorship. The story, autobiographical of the playwright, reflects on the purpose of art and the challenge of preserving artistic integrity while questioning responsibility to her community in Iran and abroad. Her search leads her to explore the lives of four exiled poets, each facing similar struggles of survival and expression.
CREDITS
Writer, Director, puppet designer: Deniz Khateri
Sound Designer & Music composer: Bahar Royaee
Cast & Crew: TBD
BIOS
Born and raised in Tehran, Deniz Khateri is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York. Her work spans theater, experimental music-theater, contemporary opera, and animation exploring themes of memory, grief, immigration, and home.
Residencies include University Settlement’s Performance Project, New Perspectives Theatre, and the Center at West Park. In 2024, she received the Al-Bustan Award for a solo performance featuring a musical instrument as a puppet. She has also received the Nancy Staub Award from UNIMA-USA for excellence in writing for puppetry, as well as several awards and grants from NYFA, NYSCA and the Jim Henson foundation.Her Oscar-qualified animated documentary web series Diasporan, for which she serves as writer, director, animator, and singer, explores the daily lives and struggles of immigrants and has been nominated at many international festivals.
Deniz holds an MA from CUNY and has performed and collaborated with theater companies in Tehran, Boston, and New York. She teaches as an adjunct lecturer at Hunter College.
http://denizkhateri.com
Divine Generations–Moonflower
ABOUT
Divine Generations–Moonflower illuminates a moment when a delicate yet powerful white flower blossoms in the moonlight, highlighting the inherent cycle of nature that is full of beauty, challenges, and hope through the use of string puppetry.
CREDITS
Created by Leah Ogawa and John Tsung
Music by John Tsung
BIOS
LEAH OGAWA and John Tsung are multidisciplinary artists creating work based in memory, myth, and Asian American culture across different mediums.
Our bodies like dams
ABOUT
Our bodies like dams is a live cinematic, puppet performance following a woman’s unexpected metamorphosis in the face of romantic and coastal decay. Featuring puppetry, miniatures, live-feed cameras, and immersive sound.
CREDITS
Written & directed by Sarah Finn
Performed by Amanda Card, Marcella Murray, Tam Nguyen and Shayna Strype
Puppet Fabrication by Marcella Murray, Amanda Card, & Sarah Finn
Sound Design by Sid Diamond
Miniature Scenic Design by Karen Loewy Movilla
BIOS
SARAH FINN (she/they) makes theater and film. Their work plays with found and original text and media, puppetry, clown and movement, to realize multispecies imaginaries and neo-liberal freak-outs. Their performances & films have been presented in Canada, Czech Republic and Japan, and the US at Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (Risk/Reward Festival 2024), and in New York, including Anthology Film Archives, The Brick and Mabou Mines, where they received a Brooklyn Arts Council Grant, MAP Fund Microgrant, and were a resident-artist at Mabou Mines and Object Movement. As a collaborator, they work as a designer, dramaturg, and director. She trained at Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq and is pursuing an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at SFU.
