The 12th La MaMa Puppet Festival runs November 11 to December 6 in four La MaMa spaces on East 4th Street. Ten stage works are on the program, five of them world premieres, and a full-price ticket is $30.
La MaMa has programmed puppetry since 1962 and started its Puppet Series in 2004. This is the 12th festival to come out of it. Denise Greber curates and directs, and Federico Restrepo is producing director. Every show plays at 66 or 74A East 4th Street, and all ages are welcome.
Greber links this edition to La MaMa’s 65th season, which runs under the title ONENESS. “Puppet theatre – with its ability to transform objects, bodies and imagination – offers a particularly powerful space for that exploration,” she said.
Here is the program, in date order.
Endless Forms, Downstairs Theatre, November 11–14
The festival opens with the world premiere of Endless Forms, five performances starting Wednesday, November 11 at 8:30pm. Monica Lerch directs and leads the puppet build, from a script by Jeshua Bratman. It is science fiction: Syx, whose body is failing in a society that bans changing the body, rebuilds herself in secret and follows the trail to a commune of changed humans living under the sea. Tabletop puppets, shadow play, projection and electronic music all share the stage.
New Weird Future, The Club, November 12–15
Tiresias wrote, directed and composed Tiresias Presents New Weird Future – A Work In Process, an eco-opera and puppet pageant set on a future Earth where many species thrive in the wreckage of this one. Tom Lee leads the puppet design. Six performances, all at The Club, 74A East 4th Street.
La MaMa Kids: The Dandelion’s Wish, Community Arts Space, November 14–15
The family slot goes to The Dandelion’s Wish, a tabletop show by Fatima Sambo Schoenfelder built from her own picture book about a dandelion that wants to see the world but cannot leave its patch of ground. Kervin Peralta directs. It first played La MaMa in 2023 and won a 2024 Henson Grant Award. Two performances only: Saturday at 11am and Sunday at noon.
The Undercity, Downstairs Theatre, November 14–16
Spooky Action Theater brings The Undercity, a rat puppet pageant set in a neon city under the streets, modeled on 1970s New York. Rat Girl stumbles on a conspiracy while the rat empire around her heads for collapse. Gaby FeBland wrote it, designed the puppets and performs; Sammy Zeisel directs. The pair made Cat at Rattlestick and Gooey’s Toxic Aquatic Adventure at the Bushwick Starr. This one was developed in a 2024 residency at Culture Lab LIC with a Jim Henson Foundation production grant. Four performances.
Everything That Follows, La MaMa Building, November 19–23
Loco7 Dance Puppet Theatre Company, which Federico Restrepo founded in 1986 and which is now in its 40th season, premieres Everything That Follows. Restrepo and Denise Greber created and co-direct it. Restrepo also choreographs and designs the lights, set and puppets, and dances in it with Manuela Agudelo, Braulio Basilio, Maria Camia, Katie Leffern and Ursula Tinoco. Juan Sebastian Monsalve wrote the score and plays it live with Lina Silva. Bodies and puppets merge with animals and landscape in an immersive hour about staying human. It runs 60 minutes, at 74A East 4th Street.
Where Did You Go, Connie?, Downstairs Theatre, November 19–22
Amanda Card (she/they) is lead artist on Where Did You Go, Connie?, a world premiere about Connie Converse, the songwriter who recorded in New York in the 1950s and disappeared in 1974. Shadow puppets, toy theater and live-feed video try to bring her back into the room. Rowan Magee directs and Aya Ogawa is dramaturg. Four performances.
Mirrored Pool, Downstairs Theatre, November 27–29
Puppet artist Tom Lee and Lisa Kaplan and Matthew Duvall of Eighth Blackbird, the four-time Grammy-winning new-music sextet, make and perform Mirrored Pool, here in its New York premiere. The starting point is Carl Sagan and the Voyager Golden Record, the most distant sound humans have sent from Earth. Jaerin Son made the puppets and masks. It is an Eighth Blackbird production in association with Yara Arts Group. Lee got his start at La MaMa, so this is a return. Four performances.
Jump Start 2026, The Club, November 27–29
La MaMa’s yearly work-in-progress showcase has five artists this time: Justin Perkins (Swan Lake Variation), William Carter (Not Yet Buried), Marcella Murray (Other Atlantas: Something Out The Mud), Torry Bend (Coat and Coyote) and Andrew Murdock (Beacon). Three presentations.
Husks from Iran, The Club, December 3–6
Tehran-born Deniz Khateri writes, directs and designs the puppets for Husks from Iran, a world premiere about an artist from Iran whose English keeps slipping out of shape. Looking for a way across, she turns to exiled Iranian poets, and their translated lines play out as shadow puppets drawn from Persian calligraphy. Siobhan Carroll co-directs and Bahar Royaee composes. Four performances.
En Mer Avec Louise Bourgeois, Community Arts Space, December 3–6
The festival closes with Michelle Beshaw’s found-object piece about the sculptor, which we covered in full here. Four performances.
Also at the festival
Assortment, a program of stop-motion and digital animated films by Avery Vang and Paige Vang, plays in the lobby at 74A East 4th Street from November 12 to December 6. Two workshops round it out: From Concept to Ask, a one-day budgeting and pitching intensive with producer and puppeteer Jean Marie Keevins on November 21 at Great Jones Studio, 35 Great Jones Street ($100), and Intuitive Hand Puppets with J Hann on November 28 ($25, ages 10 and up).
Tickets
Every show is $30, or $25 for students and seniors and $10 for La MaMa members. The first ten tickets to each performance are $10, two per person. Packages bring the price down: two shows for $50, three for $75, five for $120. Schedules and booking are on the La MaMa festival page, and the festival trailer is on Vimeo. The lineup is subject to change.
