Workshops During the Festival
Festival Workshops
Register for hands-on workshops led by visiting festival artists. Workshops are designed for adult professional artists working in any discipline. Everyone welcome. No application required. Unless otherwise noted, all workshops during the Festival will be in an education space at the Fine Arts Building's 7th floor Little Studio.
Limited scholarships available upon request, BIPOC encouraged to apply.
Deadline is December 31st.
discounts
Register for Two Festival Workshops, Get the Third 1/2 off!
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Special Masterclasses with Festival Artists
Location: The Fine Arts Building Little Studio, 7th Floor
410 S. Michigan Ave. (unless otherwise noted)
Cost: $65
Duration: Three hours
9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. or 1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Ages: 18 and up (everyone welcome, working artists encouraged)
Schedule at a Glance:
Alva Rogers
(The Harlem Doll Palace)
Friday, January 23
9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Creating a Topsy-Turvy Puppet
Manual Cinema
(The 4th Witch)
Friday, January 23
9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Storytelling and “Live Cinema”
This hands-on workshop begins with an overview of how Manual Cinema creates their shows from initial story ideas to full production. You will will have a chance to get on your feet at the overhead projectors and behind the shadow screen to learn the puppetry techniques and cinematic language that the company has developed. You will devise short, narrative shows of your own using puppets pulled from Manual Cinema films and shows.
Taught by Manual Cinema Co-Artistic Director, Sarah Fornace.
NOTE: This workshop takes place at The Biograph Theater (2433 N. Lincoln Ave.)
Plexus Polaire
(A Doll’s House and Trust Me for a While)
Sunday, January 25
1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
The Art of “Chorus-Manipulation”
During the workshop you will learn to give life to the puppets through precision of gestures and movements, and how to “write” a theatrical situation through play and improvisations. The core of the workshop is exploration of the Bunraku-style manipulation as well as tools and themes that are at the heart of Yngvild Aspeli’s work with her company, Plexus Polaire. We will focus on the relation between actor and puppet, and look at how this relation can be a “dramaturgical key”. Why is it interesting using puppets to tell a story? What can the puppet allow us to express differently than an actor? A central part of the work will be how to combine being an actor and a puppeteer, and “chorus-manipulation”: how a group of actors together can make a theatrical situation and at the same time give life to the puppet.
Taught by Plexus Polaire’s Viktor Lukawski.
Michael Jean-Marain
(Roald Dahl’s The Enormous Crocodile)
Monday, January 26
9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Wakka Wakka
(Dead as a Dodo)
Tuesday, January 27
9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Friday, January 30
1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
The Joy of Creating New Worlds
Step into a space where the soft, the fuzzy, and the wonderfully impossible come alive. In this course, you’ll discover the magic of giving breath and intention to the inanimate—from humanoids and animals to a drifting ghost, a shimmering blob, or even a living color. Through hands-on exploration, you’ll learn the essential principles of puppetry: focus, weight, breath, rhythm, and teamwork as you animate characters, craft simple narratives, and begin shaping miniature universes with your own hands.
Join Wakka Wakka’s Kirjan Waage and Gwendolyn Warnock.
Linda Wingerter
(The Left Hand of Darkness)
Tuesday, January 27
1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Designing Mechanized Shadow Figures
Join Linda Wingerter from The Left Hand of Darkness. She will guide you through this shadow mechanics workshop with a focus on horizontally manipulated puppets. You will have the opportunity to get a pattern from prototype experiments and turn it into a final, performable puppet.
Anurupa Roy
(About Ram)
Wednesday, January 28
9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Thursday, January 29
9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Three-Person Puppetry
The workshop will focus on understanding human anatomy to transfer movement from the human body to the puppets body. You will build simple newspaper puppets and animate them in sets of three.
Mark Down
(The Sex Lives of Puppets)
Wednesday, January 28
1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Thursday, January 29
1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Improvising with Voice and Hands
An exploration of the puppetry techniques behind The Sex Lives of Puppets. You will improvise with voice, character, and gesture on a two person puppet, practicing leading with the hands, point of focus, working with “genre,” capturing and repeating the improvisations, and working toward a script.
Alex and Olmsted
(Happy Birthday, Mon Ami)
Friday, January 30
9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Cardboard Automata
Learn the basics of automata and kinetic sculpture design and prototyping. You will use simple materials like cardboard, tape, and bamboo skewers to create a working hand-cranked sculpture.
Taught by Alex Vernon and Sarah Olmsted Thomas.
Joshua Holden
(Closing Cabaret)
Saturday, January 31
1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Bringing Emotional Truth to Hand Puppets
Join Joshua Holden, host of this year’s Closing Night Cabaret. Working with puppets requires a mastery of nuance and fine detail acting skills. This workshop will cover the basics of hand and rod style puppeteering including technical skills, such as lip synch, focus, and emotional truth. Through group exercises and solo presentations, this workshop will give you the confidence you need to fully express yourself through a puppet and authentically connect to an audience. WARNING: If you are averse to feeling immense amounts of joy in a short amount of time, this workshop is NOT for you.
Dr. Paulette Richards
Monday, January 26
1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
AI Animation Seminar
In The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, Lewis Hyde says, “There is no technology, no time-saving device that can alter the rhythms of creative labor. When the worth of labor is expressed in terms of exchange value, therefore, creativity is automatically devalued every time there is an advance in the technology of work” (p. 65). Since Hyde published The Gift in 2007, Artificial Intelligence has upended creative labor. This seminar will review the history of AI, explain how large language models work in plain English, and present examples of artists like Refik Anadol, Sougwen Chung, and Linda Dounia who began using AI to create cutting edge visual artwork even before Open AI released DALL – E.
Participants will then move from theory to practice while considering the output of AI prompts generated in class and drawn from Dr. Richards’ experiments. The final hour of the seminar will be devoted to discussing the implications of AI animation for the field of puppetry:
• Since AI animation does not require direct manipulation by the human hand, can it be considered puppetry?
• Who owns the creative output of AI and does AI pose a significant threat to artists’ livelihoods?
• Given that animation has historically disseminated so many derogatory caricatures, how do we stop AI from perpetuating racial, ethnic, gender, and other stereotypes?
• AI data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity and water. Can the creative output of AI tools justify the ecological cost?
• As artists, can we imagine ways that AI can enhance our creativity?