The Puppet Cycle
Project Description
Inspired by historical images of portable puppet stages, Phantom Limb Company is developing a nimble, roving puppet stage (2 performers, a bicycle and a puppet theater) for outdoor and indoor public spaces. The company will commission original playlets and adaptations of classics to be performed with puppets and created for multi-generational audiences. Distilling their trademark visual artistry and theatrical storytelling into a small puppet venue is an exciting, creative evolution for the company.
Vision
Inspired by Danish Cargo bikes, and small marionette stages (Punch and Judy etc.), Phantom Limb will create a roving puppet cycle that not only harnesses the mechanical power of a bike to bring a puppet stage to multiple venues, but seeks to run as energy efficient as possible.
The construction of the bike will explore solar energy and utilize mechanical energy provided by the pedals to make the power footprint as self sufficient as possible.
The Puppet Cycle will be a home for playwrights, film makers, visual artists and more to create large stories in our tiny space.
Photos by Argenis Apolinario, courtesy of Brookfield Properties
Photos by Argenis Apolinario, courtesy of Brookfield Properties
Photos by Argenis Apolinario, courtesy of Brookfield Properties
About Phantom Limb Company
Phantom Limb Company (PLC), based in New York City, is known for its work with marionette-puppetry and focus on collaborative, multi-media theatrical production and design. Co-founded in 2007 by installation artist, painter and set designer Jessica Grindstaff and composer and puppet maker Erik Sanko, Phantom Limb has been lauded for its unconventional approach to this venerable format. Phantom Limb includes a large rotating cast of friends, collaborators, artists, dancers and puppeteers. In their short career, Phantom Limb has produced The Fortune Teller, Dear Mme., The Devil You Know with Ping Chong, Lemony Snicket’s The Composer Is Dead with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 69 ˚S. with The Kronos Quartet, and Peer Gynt with Republique Theatre, Copenhagen, Denmark.
PLC is fiercely committed to working with puppetry, a fundamental element in all of their theatrical work. While the company’s founding ideals held realism as the highest attainable attribute in puppetry movement, they have since expanded their inquiry and discipline to include ways in which puppets can communicate in an imagistic and poetic language—much like the poets from the early part of the 19th century; the writings of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.
As artists they seek to convey more than the sheer joy of the theatrical spectacle and delve deeply into the content of their subject matter. They are meticulous researchers and use the conclusions drawn to inform their visual work. Presently they are exploring new ways of conveying concern around the topic of ecology. It is this combination of a deep love of performance production coupled with a deeper philosophical inquiry that distinguishes them from other theater makers.
Phantom Limb been commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music and has received grants and awards from the Jim Henson Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the Manhattan Cultural Council, the National Science Foundation, New York State Composer’s Grant, MAP Fund, New Music USA and others.