The next Festival is coming right up: January 19-29, 2023
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Over 100 performances at dozens of venues across Chicago
A guided experience of the Festival programming
In-person workshops at the Festival's new studio space
Civic partnerships make the Festival possible
Festival artists and scholars in conversation
Family-friendly shows around the city
Don't miss The Plastic Bag Store, an immersive experience
View show-specific program PDFs
Semi-annual benefit event series offering intimate performances, dinner, and conversation in private homes
Monthly series which offers direct access to local artists through performances and hands-on demonstrations
Providing puppeteers structured support and community context for the development of their work
Providing high-quality puppetry design, fabrication and innovation for the local and national theater community
A series of videos sharing insights from local, national, and international puppeteers and puppet builders
Links Hall, Rough House & Chicago Puppet Fest present:
This is your chance to double or triple down on an evening of puppetry by hitting the late show to round out your puppetry day. The wild rumpus continues into the night with this special edition of Nasty, Brutish & Short, the quarterly cabaret curated by Rough House. This is home for raucous, raunchy, dark, sassy, sad and mostly hilarious puppet theater, featuring Chicago’s charming and furry host, Jamison. During the festival, the series will highlight the high flying out of towners, joining local legends in a night of revelry, followed by friendly unwinding at the Links Hall/Constellation Lounge afterward.
Rough House Theater Co. connects individuals and communities through art that celebrates the weird things that make us unique and the weirder things that bring us together. Their shows use puppetry, music and human performance to tell intimate stories, as strange as they are sincere. roughhousetheater.com
Rough House connects individuals and communities through art that celebrates the weird things that make us unique, and the weirder things that bring us together. We create puppet art that captures the heart through the eye. Our work use puppetry, music, and human performance to tell stories that are intimate, strange, and sincere. Based in Chicago, Rough House has been presented at the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, The National Puppetry Festival, Physical Festival Chicago, and Open Eye Figure Theater’s Toy Theater After Dark. Rough House has toured across the United States, performing in auditoriums, lotion factories, funeral homes, basements, bars, galleries, punk houses and even the woods of Appalachia. Through Collaboration, Education, Art-making, Curating and Performance, Rough House seeks to make a bizarre and loving home for puppet makers and audiences alike. roughhousetheater.com
Links Hall encourages artistic innovation and public engagement by maintaining a facility and providing flexible programming for the research, development and presentation of new work in the performing arts. Through its residency programs, artist-curated festivals, co-presentations with self-producing artists, cabarets, performance series, workshops, and low-cost studio rentals, Links provides a home for artists across all performance disciplines, at all stages of their careers. Founded in 1978 by choreographers Bob Eisen, Carol Bobrow, and Charlie Vernon, Links Hall became a National Performance Network partner in 1998 and received a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions in 2016. In April 2013, Links and musician/presenter Mike Reed created a collaborative arts venue as the shared home of Constellation Arts and Links Hall. See Chicago Dance named Links Hall as the “Fearlessly Inspired” organization of 2020 noting the adaptive spirit and unfailing desire to support artists of all kinds. www.linkshall.org
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Fine Arts Building
410 S Michigan Ave
Studio 310
Chicago, IL 60605
Administrative Office:
312 753 3234
info@chicagopuppetfest.org