PUPPET CYCLE:
Small World Stories
The latest from Phantom Limb Company, the New York City-based puppetry company known for their distinctive storytelling, social engagement, and sophisticated visual style.
Guaranteed to transport and delight, these roving puppet performances feature a team of puppets and puppeteers who will bring to life original short plays from our repertoire or newly commissioned in partnership with our presenting partners. This multi-generational bill of marionette plays are performed on a specially adapted cargo bike-movable stage that can tour multiple locations in one day.
As in all of Phantom Limb’s productions, THE PUPPET CYCLE: Small World Stories brings an environmental focus to bear, but in a departure from the scale of more recent work (such as the critically acclaimed Environmental Trilogy), the feeling strived for in these performances is intimate, interactive, and engaging.
Phantom Limb Company
Phantom Limb Company (PLC), based in New York City, is known for its work with marionette-puppetry and focus on collaborative, multi-media theatrical production and design. Co-founded in 2007 by installation artist, painter and set designer Jessica Grindstaff and composer and puppet maker Erik Sanko, Phantom Limb has been lauded for its unconventional approach to this venerable format. Phantom Limb includes a large rotating cast of friends, collaborators, artists, dancers and puppeteers. In their short career, Phantom Limb has produced The Fortune Teller, Dear Mme., The Devil You Know with Ping Chong, Lemony Snicket’s The Composer Is Dead with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 69 ˚S. with The Kronos Quartet, and Peer Gynt with Republique Theatre, Copenhagen, Denmark.
PLC is fiercely committed to working with puppetry, a fundamental element in all of their theatrical work. While the company’s founding ideals held realism as the highest attainable attribute in puppetry movement, they have since expanded their inquiry and discipline to include ways in which puppets can communicate in an imagistic and poetic language—much like the poets from the early part of the 19th century; the writings of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.
As artists they seek to convey more than the sheer joy of the theatrical spectacle and delve deeply into the content of their subject matter. They are meticulous researchers and use the conclusions drawn to inform their visual work. Presently they are exploring new ways of conveying concern around the topic of ecology. It is this combination of a deep love of performance production coupled with a deeper philosophical inquiry that distinguishes them from other theater makers.
Phantom Limb has been commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music and has received grants and awards from the Jim Henson Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the Manhattan Cultural Council, the National Science Foundation, New York State Composer’s Grant, MAP Fund, New Music USA and others.
Creative Team
Phantom Limb Company, Creators
Jessica Grindstaff, Direction & Set Design
Alayne Kaethler/Eckersley O’Callaghan, Pop Up Theatre Design
Erik Sanko, Original Music & Puppet Design
Dipika Guha, Playwright, ELEPHANTASIA
Jen Silverman, Playwright, FROWN TOWN
Darron L West, Sound Design
Charles Coes, Sound Engineer
Henrik Vibskov, Costume Designer
Zachary Fine, Artistic Consultant
Janice Paran, Dramaturg
Natalie Nicholas, Assistant Director
Performance History
Arts Brookfield, Manhattan West
Arts Brookfield, Brooklyn Commons
Arts Brookfield, Zucotti Park
Rowan University
What People Are Saying about Phantom Limb
“Inspired, enchanting puppet theater with a punch”
— Charles McNulty, LA Times
“Equally theatrical and visually stunning … ”
— American Theatre Magazine
“Erik Sanko’s puppet design is masterful; the small human effigies brim with life when they’re not moving.”
— Nashville Arts Critic
