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
BIO
Amanda Glynn Card (she/they) is a Bushwick-based interdisciplinary artist and puppeteer whose work blends memory, disappearance, and handmade visual storytelling. Using shadow puppetry, toy theater, and live-feed video, Amanda builds intimate performances that explore legacy, care, and the unseen.
They are the creator of Boy Crazy, a solo autobiographical puppet musical presented at Ars Nova’s ANT Fest, and the playwright of The Lil Amanda Show, which premiered with Verge Theater Company and Kindling Arts Festival.
Performance credits include Boy Crazy (Ars Nova), Our Bodies Like Dams (Mabou Mines), 9000 Paper Balloons (Japan Society), Daydream Tutorial (La MaMa), Small Acts of Daring Invention (Drama Desk Nominee – HERE), The Greedy Peasant’s All Saints’ Day Celebration, and Yuliya Tsukerman’s The Luminous Crow.
Amanda received the 2021 Lipkin Prize for Playwriting and holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.
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
BIO
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
BIOS
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.
BEAUTIFUL WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE
ABOUT
Beautiful Without Consequence is a fantastical puppet performance about removing the prey mentality from the Queer Black identity and founding community in its absence. Mimicking the life cycle of a butterfly, this show follows the main character as they change through many physical forms in search of an existence outside of the grasp of their oppressors- liberating their body and mind alike. Exploring themes of yearning, belonging, internalized homophobia/racism, and self-image, Beautiful Without Consequence forges an intimate connection between the viewer and the material and invites all to release the harmful expectations that they uphold within themselves and become more engaged within their own communities.
CREDITS
Created, Written, Composed, Designed, and Fabricated by William PK Carter
Performed by Maria Camia, William PK Carter & Thalya David
BIO
William PK Carter is a quilter and puppet artist based in Central Valley, New York, who bridges the puppet and fine art worlds by fabricating wondrous creatures that exist at the intersection of queerness and blackness. She received her Bachelor of Science in Studio Art from Skidmore College in 2023, and her work has been exhibited and performed in theaters, galleries, and museums across the east coast. Carter is the recipient of Skidmore College’s President’s Racial Justice Award, the Van Dewater Memorial Award, and the John P. Heins Award: Outstanding Senior Thesis Exhibition. She has just completed her time as part of the 2025 cohort of Puppet Showplace’s Creative Residency for Black Puppeteers, and is a current fellow at Ann Street Gallery’s Emerging Artist Fellowship. WilliamPKCarter.com
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