The Puppet Pod!
…is an hour (-ish) long podcast about the niche world of puppetry, particularly the world of contemporary puppetry for adults. Puppetry has been around in various forms for thousands of years, and yet, when someone asks a puppetry artist what they do, the answer is not so straightforward. What is puppetry? Why puppetry? What does it even mean to be Puppeteer/Puppet Artist? So, you work with kids??? Host/puppeteer/human Josh Rice takes a deep dive into this weird and wild world of puppet theatre, and through interviews with these incredible multidisciplinary artists, attempts to unpack these answers, and discover why puppetry is so hard.
Listen to The Puppet Pod! on Spotify!
Credits
Hosted by Josh Rice and Sara Stabley
Produced & Engineered by Sara Stabley
Additional Editing by Josh Marcks
Theme Song & Incidental Music by Seth Faergolzia **Listen to the full Puppet Pod! theme HERE**
Additional Music: “Take Me Higher" by Jahzzar and “Our Big Adventure” by Scott Holmes
Produced by the New York State Puppet Festival, a program of Shake on the Lake and JoshRiceProjects, in collaboration with Dixon Place
Support is provided by Dixon Place, the Jim Henson Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the Arts Council for Wyoming County Community Arts Grant, a Decentralization Program made possible in part with funds from New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature administered in Wyoming County by the Arts Council for Wyoming County.
About our hosts
Josh Rice (he/him) thinks puppetry is one of the last forms of magic that still exists. Josh is a theater and teaching artist specializing in puppetry and improvisation. He the co-founder and Producing Artistic Director of Shake on the Lake, a not-for-profit professional theatre based in his hometown of Perry, NY. He is the founder and Producing Artistic Director of the New York State Puppet Festival, a biennial festival of puppetry, also based in Perry. In addition to making his own work, Josh has been a curator for Puppet Blok! at Dixon Place, and has collaborated on puppet projects with Dan Hurlin, Lake Simons, Tom Lee, Koryu Nishikawa V, Doug Fitch, and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Find out more at joshriceprojects.com
Photo: Ryan Fitzsimmons
Sara Stabley (she/her) thinks puppetry is a comfy abyss into which she has stumbled. Don’t know what that means? Neither does she! But it sounds right. Sara is a theatre technician, creator, and producer. After the lockdown, Sara will continue her work as the Stage Operations Manager at Geva Theatre Center in Rochester, NY and as co-producer and creator for Shake on the Lake and the New York State Puppet Festival in Perry, NY.