OPEN EYE MAINSTAGE
Open Eye Theatre presents PUPPET LAB: A 2-Week Festival of New Work, featuring performances by PUPPET LAB residency artists — Erica Warren, Felicia Cooper, David Hanzal, and the team of Fletcher Wolfe and Maggie Arbeiter.
PUPPET LAB is an artist incubator celebrating its 12th year of radical, genre-expanding, boundary–pushing puppet work. The residency artists are led by Co-Artistic Directors of PUPPET LAB Oanh Vu and Sofia Padilla.
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TICKETS
$18 — General Admission
$15 — Economic AccessibilityA limited number of $15 Economic Accessibility tickets are available online for all performances. If not sold out, a limited number of pay as able tickets will be available at the door. View our ticketing policy.
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PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
Week 1: Maggie Arbeiter & Fletcher Wolfe and Felicia Cooper
Fri, April 12, 7:30pm SOLD OUT!
Sat, April 13, 7:30pm SOLD OUT!
Sun, April 14, 2:00pm*Week 2: David Hanzal and Erica Warren
Fri, April 19, 7:30pm SOLD OUT!
Sat, April 20, 7:30pm SOLD OUT!
Sun, April 21, 2:00pm**All Sunday matinee performances are masking-required. All other shows are masking-optional.
Sunday performances also include a post-show panel discussion with the artists.
RUN TIME: 100 minutes w/ intermission
AGE RECOMMENDATION: 14 and up
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ACCESSIBILITY
Contact us at 612-874-6338 or boxoffice@openeyetheatre.org for accessibility information and requests. Learn more.
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COVID PRECAUTIONS
All audience members will be required to wear masks during our Sunday performances. All other shows are masking-optional.
Watch a preview of the PUPPET LAB Festival on Fox 9 Morning News! Sofia Padilla, Maggie Arbeiter, Fletcher Wolfe, and Felicia Cooper talk about our first weekend of shows in this clip!
Drs. Quirk and Quark Present: A Romantic Demonstration of Our Most Wonderful Machine
Maggie Arbeiter & Fletcher Wolfe (both they/them)
Your presence is requested at once! You control the destiny of Drs. Quirk and Quark, socially inept scientist twins, as they embark on a hilariously awkward journey to find love. Set in an incredibly sophisticated machine reminiscent of 90s and 2000s video games, the audience collectively guides the twins through a series of comedic encounters and romantic misadventures that shape the outcome of the twins' romantic escapades. Will they find love with their crush, or will they discover their soulmate in an unexpected place? Should they go on a date? Eat a hot dog? Discuss gardening at length? The decisions you make will determine their path and ultimately lead to multiple possible endings. (Featuring the musical stylings of Dr. Groove.).
Maggie and Fletcher have a dark, goofy, slightly improvisational style of puppetry. They like to make live action cartoons that play with well known tropes and conventions. Their PuppetLab residency will be used to develop a choose your own adventure puppet show. Harkening back to the 80s text based choose your own adventure video games, Maggie and Fletcher hope to make a show where (almost) anything can happen, bringing the unbridled and unhinged energy of “kid improv” to their work, while maintaining an aesthetic and humor that resonates with adults.
The Everywhere In Between
Felicia Cooper (she/her)
A woman waits for a train that she (mostly) knows isn't coming. In the meantime, she opens abandoned suitcases, asks questions of security cameras, and finds ways to pass the time. Employing a surreal and existential kind of whimsy, The Everywhere In Between explores the ways we survive this life and create our own happinesses.
Felicia Cooper is a puppeteer, researcher, and artist. She creates art experiences for communities to come together in curiosity and celebration surrounding the mundane miracles of life, like native mussels, model trains, and the anti ephemeral nature of puppetry. Her work has been supported by the Bell Museum's Resident Artist Research Project, the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, the Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance, the Minneapolis Parks Board, and more. She has recently performed at Lamama Puppet Festival, the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, and the Full Moon Puppet Show. Felicia holds an MFA from the University of Connecticut. Next up, she is curating a popup museum with the National Humanities Center called The Archive of Significant Objects, premiering as part of the 2024 Being Human Festival in late April. Learn more at feliciatmcooper.com.
Wishes in the Sand
David Hanzal (he/they)
Nine-year-old Bradley feels isolated and rejected at home and at school. After he makes a wish at the seashore, Bradley meets a mermaid who guides him in discovering — and accepting — his authentic self. A bittersweet story about identity, family, and the enduring power of magic. "Looking out at the sea, you’re no longer afraid. Instead of the waters pulling you down, you can just – float."
David Hanzal is a Minneapolis-based director, puppeteer, and teaching artist. They were the Artistic Director of Collective Unconscious Performance from 2014-2020. David completed their Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Directing at the University of Iowa, where they regularly developed and directed premieres of new plays and devised work with writers from the nationally recognized Iowa Playwrights’ Workshop. David has also trained with SITI Company, the Margolis Brown Adaptors Company, Czech master puppeteer Miroslav Trejtnar, the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, and the Wesley Balk Opera/Music-Theatre Institute.
The Chopping Block
Erica Warren (she/her)
Tofu, our chef barbarian, lives his humble life in the solace of the Northern Cocoa Mountains. Suddenly, he gets an unexpected visitor with an unexpected prophecy: The Ever-Hungry Lich will rise once more and bring HANGRY destruction in its wake! Gasp! Can Tofu rise to the challenge and race against time to cook the Lich a meal so hearty, so tasty and so mouth-wateringly delicious, the Lich will go back to sleep for another 10,000 years?
Erica Warren is a Black and Chamorro (CHmaru | Guam) graphic designer, visual artist and puppeteer. While earning her degree in graphic design at the University of Minnesota, Erica found her love of puppetry amidst the pandemic. Through shadow puppetry she explored mixing her illustrative and graphic design backgrounds to tell animated stories from warriors of stone to mystical journeys of self identity. Erica has performed in the Crankie Festival, Full Moon Puppet Show and cabarets around the Twin Cities. Keep a lookout for her next project, “The Lonely Lighthouse,” a multiplane Puppet Film Cohort project due to air in June of 2024.
All photos by Bruce Silcox.
Puppet Lab establishes a formalized process for emerging puppet and mask theater artists to advance their artistic development – to test and create new works within a supportive and challenging workshop environment. This program gives artists the time and space to test ideas, learn from others, and receive and respond to critical feedback.
This program is made possible by generous support from the Jerome Foundation.
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506 E. 24th Street
Minneapolis, MN
Free parking is available in the lot on the southeast corner of 24th Street and Portland Avenue, courtesy of Lutheran Social Services.