Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Mining the possibilities of puppet theater: PARCHED and THE MAGNIFICENT MS. PHAM at HERE, and FOOTNOTES at La MaMa

• By drediman
• March 9, 2026
• No Comments

Over the last week or so, I had the chance to take in a number of puppet theater pieces both at HERE and at La MaMa, two notable cultivators of puppetry that have sought to mine the art form’s prismatic possibilities. As per usual, read on for my thoughts on these imaginative flights of fancy.

PARCHED
HERE
Closed

One of the finest pieces of puppet theater I’ve come across since last year’s sensational Under the Radar’s presentation of Dead as a Dodo by Wakka Wakka was Parched (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), an offering of Puppetopia 2026, an excellent festival of new puppet theater which recently concluded at HERE. The latest creation of Official Puppet Business — the highly expert company that brought us the wonderful Bill’s 44th — the show depicts a dystopian future in which greed and water scarcity have rendered the world devoid of life, but not just quite. In this small glimmer of hope springs a “Hail Mary” sci-fi-cum-western adventure that’s been wrought with heart and ingenious visual flair. Atmospherically lit by a striking lighting design and in constant, beautifully synchronized choreographic motion, the production’s parade of stunning visual imagery is a masterful example of puppetry’s capacity for cinematic storytelling, showering audiences with a breathtaking array of perspectives from which to witness the adventure unfold. Despite being a wordless affair, the folks at Official Puppet Business have also managed to create a fully realized world — complete with fleshed out characters — and convey an impressive gamut of emotions and relatively complex concepts. Add to the mix the sonically soulful contributions of a live band, and you get what amounts to puppet theater of the highest order.

THE MAGNIFICENT MS. PHAM
HERE
Closed

The other Puppetopia 2026 offering that I was able to catch was The Magnificent Ms. Pham (RECOMMENDED) by the newly formed company Puppetual Motion. In short, the production is a gloriously chaotic hodgepodge that uses traditional Vietnamese water puppetry to tell the true multi-generational story of a boat person, the titular Kim Pham, and her tenuous journey from Vietnam to America, as guided by (at times ludicrously) by fantastical manifestations of two powerful women — one a Vietnamese literary figure, the other a legendary warrior. Careening between country musical, mythical re-enactment, and quirky downtown theater, the destabilizing and tonally wacky show has no business working, but it succeeds through its sheer insistence and undaunted belief in its craft and vision. At the center of the work are the songs by MUR (with additional music by Vietnamese composer Hao Le), which serve as the narrative spine of Pham’s stranger-than-fiction travels from one side of the world to the other. At once seemingly family-friendly and wickedly subversive — in other words, the show is decidedly for adults only — The Magnificent Ms. Pham‘s musical ditties are instantly catchy and emotionally incisive. Admittedly, in spite of its healthy sense of spectacle, the level of artful sophistication and precision of the actual puppetry don’t rise to the heights on display in Parched. Nevertheless, there is a giddy, child-like wonder to it all that’s just as disarming in its own right.

FOOTNOTES
La MaMa
Through March 12

Puppetry from the mythological, to the surreal, to the mundane — that’s Footnotes (RECOMMENDED), Theodora Skipitares and Skydiver Production’s elaborate contemplation on the human act of walking currently playing at La MaMa. In essence, in just about an hour across more than a dozen short scenes, Skipitares takes us through a history of walking. Although the whole thing amounts to little more than just a quirky collection of scurrying stage pictures augmented by evocative songs and spoken word — some more fully formed than others (as the show’s title implies, these are merely footnotes, after all) — there’s apparent craft poured into the wide range of puppetry on display. Indeed, a part of me wishes there was more dramatic cohesion and focus, but that isn’t the aim here. As a series of elaborate snapshots, I was impressed by the logistics and scale of the encompassing staging, which had its tentacles in almost every corner of the La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theater (the production asks audiences to leave their seats to venture to different locations of the expansive space). Be forewarned, although the topic du jour is walking, Skipitares isn’t afraid to stray away from the realm of humans, occasionally delving into more abstract renderings of subjects such as kangaroos, octopus, bodiless Greek gods, and even a giant mechanical ape that stands and towers over the audience. This may leave you either scratching your head / not quite fully satisfied, or tickling your inner child.