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.

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

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.

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

2015 LIVING ROOM TOUR HOSTS

2015 LIVING ROOM TOUR COMMITTEE MEMBERS

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.