Apply for the 2025 – 2026 PUPPET LAB Artist Residency!
ROLLING SUBMISSION: Application closes Monday, September 22, 2025
NOTIFICATION: Monday, September 29, 2025
ABOUT PUPPET LAB
What Puppet Lab is: Puppet Lab is an intensive 6-month developmental laboratory for emerging puppet and mask theater artists to advance their artistic development while creating new work in a supportive and challenging workshop environment. Lab activity will be focused on the design/fabrication of puppets and the writing/development of the physical performance. Artists meet monthly as a cohort to test ideas, learn from others, and receive and respond to critical feedback. The lab culminates with each artist creating and performing an original short (30-40 minutes) work which is presented in a two week festival at Open Eye Theatre, supported with professional marketing, lights, sound, and documentation.
What Puppet Lab is not: Puppet Lab is not a beginner or skillshare class for learning how to make puppets or perform, or for those whose primary interest is filmmaking or playwriting. Rather, this program is intended for early-career artists who have some foundational puppetry skills in both making and performance, are self-motivated, and open to intensive group critiques to help refine their skills and puppetry aesthetics to take their work to the next level.
WHAT YOU GIVE:
Participate in cohort lab sessions twice a month from October 2025 to April, 2026
Participate in two Saturday “super sessions”, which are held on Sundays (12-5 pm) in January and March.
Perform your show in the festival in Aril 2026 (either 4/10,11,12 or 4/17,18,19)
Meet with a mentor director for at least 20 hours for 1-on-1 rehearsal and feedback
Commit the outside time necessary to fully develop your show - creating puppets, sets, script, and workshopping/rehearsing your performance
Contribute generous critical feedback to your cohort artists
WHAT YOU GET:
$2,600 honorarium
$500 materials budget
Generous critical feedback from your cohort artists
Workshops to strengthen skills needed for the creation of a new work
Guidance of a mentor director you help select
Program support and feedback from Lab Artistic Directors
Production support from Open Eye Theatre (lights, sound, marketing and box office)
Professional photo & video documentation
Comp tickets to other shows during the festival
ELIGIBILITY
YOU ARE ELIGIBLE IF:
You have been a Minnesota resident for at least one year
You are available to participate in all Puppet Lab activities between October, 2025 - May, 2026.
You consider yourself an emerging artist*
* HOW DOES PUPPET LAB DEFINE AN "EMERGING ARTIST"?
Emerging artists are those who have some track record of creating and presenting puppetry work, but who are NOT at a point in their careers where they receive consistent development and production opportunities or significant recognition. Examples of recognition include: exhibitions, critical reviews, commissions, performances, grant awards, residencies, fellowships, publications, and productions.
YOU ARE NOT ELIGIBLE IF:
You are a full time student.
You intend to create a work of puppetry that is solely intended for youth.
You are a Puppet Lab selection panelist (this year).
You are a former Puppet Lab Artist.
You are an employee at Open Eye Theatre (contracted artists ARE welcome to apply).
You are not comfortable giving and receiving critical feedback.
Questions?
If you have any questions about eligibility or are interested in reviewing past successful applications please contact PUPPET LAB Co-Artistic Directors, Oanh Vu & Sofia Padilla.
Puppet Lab Co-Artistic Directors
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OANH VU (she/her)
Oanh is an artist and educator who first encountered puppetry through Monkeybear's Harmolodic Workshop’s puppetry intensive and mentorship program. Since then, puppetry has become her passion as she transitioned into a career as a puppeteer. Oanh has trained with master puppeteers through the Chicago Puppet Festival,Tom Lee, Rough House Puppets, the O'Neill National Puppetry Conference and Manual Cinema. Locally, Oanh has created and collaborated on a wealth of new puppet works that have been shown across the Twin Cities. As an educator, Oanh has worked for 13 years with the Science Museum of Minnesota.
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SOFIA PADILLA (she/her)
Sofia Padilla is a Mexican Theater Artist, Director, Designer and Puppeteer who has participated in over forty national and international theater productions. For television, she was the First Assistant Director of Sesame Street in Mexico City for the 2016 season “Listos a Jugar”. Currently, she works as a touring member of Bread and Puppet Theater and as the Artistic Co-Director of Paradox Teatro, which she founded in 2017 with Davey T Steinman. Paradox Teatro has received three grants from The Jim Henson Foundation to develop two different projects: "Migraciones / Migrations" (2019 Production Grant) and “Speechless / Sin Palabras" (2021 Workshop Grant and 2023 Production Grant).
