Chicago Puppet Lab
Please join us in welcoming the Puppet Lab cohort for 2025/26!
The Chicago Puppet Lab is a puppet theater incubator and residency program that supports artists in bringing to life new works of puppet theater. The Chicago Puppet Lab has 3 major goals: Incubating more works of inspiring, boundary-breaking puppetry in Chicago, expanding equity in the field of puppetry, and encouraging interdisciplinary experimentation in puppet theater. The program accepts 8 artists or artist groups for a 8-month, in person laboratory process led by Puppet Lab Co-Directors: Tom Lee and Grace Needlman. Lab artists participate in weekly meetings where artists share, discuss, meet deadlines, and learn from one-another’s work as well as from expert guest artists. Together all contribute to the advancement of the cohort’s work.
Supported by Kristy & Brandon Moran, the Pritzker Foundation, and the Paul M. Angell Foundation
“Building community—one puppet at a time”
The Chicago Puppet Lab supports diversity in styles and stories for emerging artists.
by Kimzyn Campbell
Artist Bios (2025-26)
Raven See (they/them)
Raven See is a gender non-comforming artist who follows their impulse to create. They are a spoken word poet, a contortionist, and member of the interdisciplinary movement collective Such Creatures. Raven is a graduate of Aloft Circus Arts’ professional training program and a member of the Board of Directors for the European Beat Studies Network. Their work embodies queer experience as they seek to explore new modes of expression and test the limits of their own body.
IG: @see.the.raven
Rachel Anne Healy (she/her)
Rachel Anne Healy is a Chicago-based theatre artist. Credits include: The Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Writers Theatre, Chicago Children’s Theatre, Northlight Theatre & Timeline Theatre. Regional Credits: American Players Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse, Alliance Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage, Huntington Theatre, & The Alley Theatre. International Credits: The Prague Quadrennial, Letni-Letna Festival in Prague and Galway Theatre Festival. Ms. Healy is a professor at Loyola University teaching theatre design.
IG: @healyrachelanne
Justin D’Acci
Justin D’Acci is a Chicago-based clown, artist, and puppeteer experimenting with found objects and techniques of automatism. His puppets often take the form of shadows and grotesque humanoids, appearing in Rough House’s, House of the Exquisite Corpse III, IV, & V; We Wiggle Dolls’, Midwest Tour; and Auricle’s, scrap !!! attak. Recent exhibitions of clown and art objects include Survey at Unda.m. 93; Tenebrae at Weatherproof; and Pressure Dome at SULK CHICAGO.
IG: @stevebuscemi
Abby Palen
Abby Palen is a director, designer, and performer. Abby’s fascination with spectacle puppetry fabrication and performance has taken them across North America. For Abby, puppets express ideas and emotions that transcend human form; a puppet can embody many anythings and anyones. Abby is the co-director of Rabbit Foot Puppetry and has worked with The Chicago International Puppet Festival, Paperhand Puppet Intervention, Bread and Puppet Theater, Heart of the Beast, Fox and Beggar, and more!
IG: @abbyart
Jerrell L. Henderson (he/him)
Jerrell L. Henderson (Director) is a director, puppeteer and Black theatre archivist. Past projects include the cinematic shadow play AmericanMYTH: Crossroads and directing projects with Virginia Stage Company, Raven Theatre, and Griffin Theatre. He co-developed and co-staged events with 12ft. Syrian puppet Little Amal in Chicago and NYC. Puppet short films include I Am The Bear with ChiPuppets, Hamlin: La Revue Sombre with Handmade Puppet Dreams, and Diamond’s Dream with Chicago Children’s Theatre.
IG: @directnu15, @black_theatre_vinyl_archive, @celebratingblacktheatrepod
Mikayla Wilson (she/her)
Mikayla Wilson (she/her) is a theater and puppetry artist from Asheville, North Carolina. Mikayla is a crafter, primarily a knitter and sewist, and would love to talk to you about the project(s) she’s currently working on. Mikayla uses puppetry to tell history by making the puppets the vessel for the horrifying and painful parts of black history and experiences, but also the levity and brightness inherit to the human spirit.
IG: @mikaylas_makes
Ashwaty Chennat
Ashwaty Chennat is an interdisciplinary artist and performance maker based in Chicago. Rooted in dance, Ashwaty’s training includes bharatanatyam with Sudha Chandrasekhar, studio dance practices, and heritage forms learned through her Amma and community artists. She has performed in and created works including Beaten Path with Alvin Cobb Jr., Moods of Nayika, with Abhijeet, and the ephemeral (ice) puppet show Anywhere by Théâtre de l’Entrouvert. Their practice begins with long conversations, meets the thresholds of cultural structures, and then reimagines inherited narratives.
IG: @shwatcat
Zachary Sun he/him
Zachary Sun is a China-born, Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist working across performance, installation, text, video, sound, and puppetry. His practice instrumentalizes observation and perception, dismantling relationships between body, identity, history, and material through weaving and collage. His recent work investigates personal experience, archaeological histories, and geopolitical transformations as structural expressions. His works have been presented internationally, and he currently works with the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival.
IG: @zzzzacharyyyy