Category: News

The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival Returns!

The Festival, returning to Chicago January 19-29, 2017, features over 90 performances by 20 different companies from around the world – Norway, Iran, Italy, Canada, South Korea, and, of course, your favorite artists from Chicago! The lineup includes renowned productions by: Hamid Rahmanian, Silencio Blanco,Michael Montenegro, Plexus Polaire, Teatro dei Piedi, Théâtre Puzzle, and Portmanteau.

Tickets on sale now!

Eager to learn more? Talented Columbia College student Cyrus Stowe spent the day with Blair Thomas at his studio barn where he got an exclusive behind–the-scenes look at Blair’s process and how he creates the magic behind his puppets.

January 18, 2017
Announcing the 2016 Living Room Tour

Blair Thomas & Co is thrilled to present Magali Chouinard, one our international artists from Montreal to perform a special preview performance for the Living Room Tours before returning for the full Festival in January. Her performance, The White Woman is a visual narrative, filled with arresting images and performed without words. Enjoy her performance at each stop and be able to discuss the performance with the artist.

Plus, Blair Thomas will be performing a toy theatre staging of Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies. This delightfully dark abecedarian tale told in rhyming couplets will be performed exclusively this season at the Living Room Tour.

Performances by Magali Chouinard and Blair Thomas & Co.

2016 LIVING ROOM TOUR HOSTS

November 11: Dorothy Zalewski, Dan Engh, and Rick Stoneham, Logan Square

November 12: Susan and Phil Hague, Liz Aviles and Colleen Sims. Bronzeville

November 13: Sidney Nagel, Young-Kee Kim and Michelle McClennan, Kenwood

2016 LIVING ROOM TOUR COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Barbara Abel | Liz Aviles | Susan Hague | Justine Jentes | Michelle McClennan | Jenny Shanks | Eva Silverman | Colleen Sims | Asheley Smith

October 4, 2016
Announcing the Living Room Tour

Blair Thomas & Co. presents the 2015 Living Room Tour, November 4 – 11, 2015. Each stop on the tour features a mini puppet theater festival, including an excerpt of Blair Thomas & Company’s Moby Dick along with performances by Mike Oleon and Adventure Sandwich. Enjoy dinner, drinks, and the opportunity to discuss the work with the artists.

To purchase tickets, select the desired performance date. The exact location of each event will be revealed on ticket purchase.

Buy Tickets!

Performances by Blair Thomas & Co., Mike Oleon, and Adventure Sandwich.

2015 LIVING ROOM TOUR HOSTS

November 4: Joanie Friedman & Jon Stoper, Kenwood (with support from Alyssa Berman-Cutler)

November 5: Scott Hughes, Edgewater

November 7: Sandi and Eric Tenfelde, Pilsen

November 8: Justine Jentes & Dan Kuruna, Wicker Park

November 9: Eva Niewiadomski at Catalyst Ranch, West Loop (with support from Big Delicious Planet)

November 11: Laura Botwinick, Bucktown/Wicker Park (with support from Liz Aviles and Eva Silverman)

2015 LIVING ROOM TOUR COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Liz Aviles
Alyssa Berman-Cutler
Joanie Friedman
Justine Jentes
Eva Niewiadomski
Eva Penar
Jill Potter
Mikalina Rabinsky
Eva Silverman
Colleen Sims
Patti Tuomey
Christy Uchida
Stephanie Whitlock

October 12, 2015
Chicago Puppet Festival in American Theatre

While contemplating the role of puppetry in today’s society, Scott T. Cummings gives his account of the first ever Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival:

The shows in Chicago ranged from the kind of traditional, family-friendly work often seen at schools, libraries and public fairs to edgy, experimental performances more common to galleries, lofts and tiny black-box theatres. Veteran Dave Herzog presented cute, colorful, well-crafted trick marionettes that can juggle, blow up a balloon, swing on a trapeze, or instantly transform from a magician into a fairy. His circus figures contrasted with the mesmerizing Le Petit Cirque of Laurent Bigot from France, who uses a table-top toy circus reminiscent of Alexander Calder, rigged with 16 tiny microphones to perform a concert of odd, cleverly generated sounds. New York’s Chinese Theatre Works (inspired by the pioneering work of Kansas-born Pauline Benton, who brought Chinese shadow puppetry to the West in the 1920s) performed a traditional Chinese shadow-puppet play in the halls of the Field Museum. Contrast this with the innovative shadow theatre of Chicago’s own Manual Cinema or Canadian artist-illustrator Daniel Barrow, both of whom use multiple overhead projectors (in very different ways) to create manual animation in real time.

The variety of work programmed by Thomas points to a question that is fascinating artists, audiences, and academics: What constitutes a puppet, exactly? What, in other words, is its nature and essence? How does it help us to explore and understand the larger world of what cultural anthropologist and folklorist Frank Proschan dubbed “performing objects”—puppets, masks, ritual and fetish objects, and other material things endowed with agency through display, manipulation, storytelling, or performance?

Click HERE to view the full article on the American Theatre website.

September 12, 2015
The Selfish Giant returns to Chicago Children’s Theatre!

January marks the return of the all-ages hit show The Selfish Giant, a musical spectacle created for CCT in 2008 by two Chicago theater icons – master puppeteer Blair Thomas and singer-songwriter Michael Smith– based on Oscar Wilde’s classic story about a grumpy giant who forbids children from playing in his garden.

After the children are locked out, the trees and flowers refuse to grow and the garden plunges into an eternal winter. Then one morning, the children sneak back into the garden, bringing with them the joyous rebirth of spring. Featuring original puppets and music, The Selfish Giant is enormously imaginative, gigantically whimsical, and is sure to thrill children and giants of all ages.

Performances January 23rd through 25th are presented as part of Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival closing festivities.

December 15, 2014
Announcing the Living Room Tour!

Blair Thomas & Co. presents the 2014 Living Room Tour, November 4 – 9, 2014, featuring a selection of artists performing at the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival. This annual fundraiser invites audiences into private homes for food, drink, and conversation—topped off by a set of intimate performances by Chicago’s best puppet theater artists.

Located in six distinctive Chicago homes, each stop on the tour includes food, drink, performances, and the opportunity to discuss the work with the artists. To purchase tickets, select the desired performance date. The exact location of each event will be revealed on ticket purchase.

Buy Tickets!

Performances by Blair Thomas & Co., Manual Cinema, and Michael Montenegro.

2014 LIVING ROOM TOUR HOSTS

November 4: Deanna Berman, Gold Coast (co-hosted by Ellen Stone Belic)

November 5: Justine Jentes & Dan Kuruna, Wicker Park

November 6: Susan Bachman-Rovner & Scott Rovner, North Center (with support from Claire & Mark Sutton)

November 7: Susan & Phil Hague, Groveland Park (with support from Liz Aviles & Angel Ysaguirre)

November 8: Joanie Friedman & Jon Stoper, Kenwood (with support from Christy Uchida & Eva Silverman)

November 9: Barbara Koenen & Tim Samuelson, Hyde Park

2014 LIVING ROOM TOUR COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Liz Aviles

Joanie Friedman

Justine Jentes

Barbara Koenen

Eva Penar

Veronda Pitchford

Eva Silverman

Claire Sutton

Patti Tuomey

Christy Uchida

September 29, 2014
A Piano With Three Tales in the Chicago Reader

Blair Thomas & Company’s latest, a one-hour program meant for kids ages four to 12, is “a classical piano recital masquerading as a puppet show.” Mary Rose Norrell begins with Chopin’s Scherzo in B-flat Minor, accompanying the wordless dance and movement of three puppets with outsize heads and hands as they attempt to sit, to sleep, to dream, and to leave. Set to the quicksilver music, this is more tragicomic than it sounds, but the second piece, set to a score for toy piano, is dead serious, romantic and dramatic. The last and longest puppet spectacle takes as inspiration Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, itself a creative response. The company has worked on this piece for many years, and this latest incarnation—featuring a girl, a rabbit, and bunraku jesters moving between playfulness and ominous frenzy—is a masterwork. —Suzanne Scanlon

Click HERE to view on the Chicago Reader.

April 3, 2014
Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival coming in 2015

“Chicago’s unofficial Puppeteer General, Blair Thomas, is spearheading a grand-scale new festival aiming to make the city a center for puppet arts. The inaugural Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival is set for January 16–25, 2015, with major institutions from the Art Institute to the Second City on board to present events.”

Read the full article here.

March 17, 2014
From the hand of the puppeteer: Blair Thomas on St. James Infirmary

Robert W. Harwood, author of the book “I Went Down To St. James Infirmary” and creator of the blog by the same title interviews Blair Thomas:

“St. James Infirmary” has a great untold story lurking in between its few short verses. . . . There is an intimate relationship between puppetry and death, and I see this song as a form of mourning or grief at the loss of a loved one. Continue to article.

December 10, 2013
Blair on WAMU

Listen to this great piece produced about the upcoming Puppets Take Strathmore! festival. Blair talks about the experience of puppets from the audience’s perspective.

Here’s the link.

July 28, 2013