Marcus David
August 2026
The International Puppet Fringe Festival NYC 2026 celebrated its 4th Edition with a focus on women in puppetry, featuring 50 productions from a dozen countries at the newly renovated Clemente Center. The five-day event honored visionary artists Theodora Skipitares and Nancy Lohman Staub while showcasing outstanding multimedia and dialogue-free performances with two productions standing out, Champagne Dreams and One for Sorrow, Two for Joy, both featuring handcrafted puppets and exceptional charm.
Puppetry is an ancient art form originating roughly 4,000 years ago, with roots stretching back to early religious rituals, magical rites, and storytelling traditions in civilizations like Egypt, Greece, India, China, and later Europe. The immediate nature of puppetry and its ability to captivate our attention is what makes it so enduring. Almost anything can be brought to life with very little technology involved. As an act of creativity, bringing an inanimate object to life is simply magical. Audiences are quickly engaged, and the suspension of disbelief is immediate and wonderful.
Two productions from this year’s edition take all these prized elements of puppetry—both cutting-edge and traditional—and prove that puppet theater is alive and well.
Champagne Dreams is a contemporary, multi-media puppet performance created by 3 Sticks, an independent experimental theater company based in Auburn, Alabama, led by theatre artist Katie Melby and composer/sound designer Andrew Lynch. The production beautifully blends traditional object theater with live-feed video and green screen technology. It features a puppet named Eloise who wants to escapes a bleak, monotonous life in South Dakota through vivid, extravagant, and often absurd fantasies.
Set in the 1980s, the story puts the trademark excesses of the era—namely Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous—center stage in the superficial dreams of the times. Anthropomorphic dancing oysters on the half-shell add to the hilarity as Eloise slips into dreams that could easily be inspired by Sid and Marty Krofft’s cult classic television icon, Lidsville, a show famously responsible for many childhood traumas.
Next is One for Sorrow, Two for Joy, created by an all-female team from Long Glass Studio. This production combines handcrafted puppets with original live music to give the piece a folksy feel and unique charm.
It tells the bittersweet, dialogue-free tale of a fictional pioneer named Willow Mae O’Reilly, following her from an imaginative childhood through her service as a WWI nurse and her later life farming in Alberta, Canada.
The core creative team consists of Juanita Dawn, puppet creator, scenic designer, and master builder; Little Miss Higgins (Jolene Higgins), composer and live musician; Kyla Read, director; Jocelyn Mah, puppet manipulator and performer; and Stephanie Elgersma, creative builder and production support.
Relying heavily on a rich folk-blues musical score to convey emotion, the story features surreal puppet moments—such as a whack-a-mole game with popping gophers to represent the horrors of WWI trench warfare. The puppets are beautifully designed by Juanita Dawn, with masterclass attention paid to the physical aging of Willow Mae O’Reilly as she pursues her independence.
Choosing adventure over traditional homemaking on the wind-swept Canadian prairie does not come without a price; Willow suffers many hardships and traumas. Ultimately, the team brings immense tenderness and care to this wonderful production about the strength of an independent woman born at the turn of the 20th century in rural Canada.
With an amazing array of puppets occupying the galleries, theaters, and hallways of the newly renovated Clemente Center, it is with great pride that I declare that the building belongs to puppets—and that women rule the International Puppet Fringe Festival NYC 2026!
The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center is a multi-disciplinary, Puerto Rican and Latinx cultural institution located at 107 Suffolk Street in Manhattan.
To find out more about all the performers in the festival →