I love puppetry. It takes the ego out of the performer because as a puppeteer you’re supposed to disappear in favor of the puppet. They’re not human, but they try to be and that’s always moving. Below are some of my puppetry projects.
Pukwudgie Power at The Berkshires NewT
In July of 2026 I had the honor and the pleasure of directing and performing at the Berkshires New Theatre Festival (The Berkshires NewT), produced by Salt Tree Art in the heart of The Berkshire Mountains. The occasion, of course, couldn’t go without a puppet show, and Brian Soliwoda, Cherie Chalouhi and myself teamed up to create “Pukwudgie Power”, where two of the mythical creatures of Appalachia: A Pukwudgie and a Giant, square up on the importance of things big and small.
The creation process was a blast. We got to use the resources of The Carriage House, Jim Henson’s old puppet workshop, in the Upper East Side. The master puppeteers there were extremely helpful, the place is plagued with Muppets memorabilia, and —if you know where to look— you may find a filming location of Little Shop of Horrors.
You can see the middle result of our Pukwudgie, made mostly of cardboard, padding and gruel.
As always, working with Brian was incredible. “Pukwudgie Power” served as the perfect opening of what would be an incredible edition of The Berkshires NewT. I personally can’t wait to do it again come the summer of 2027. If you’d like to know more about the Festival or Salt Tree Art, you can visit their website here.
It’s not a terrible idea to also donate to them. They do incredible work and a little money goes a long way (although a lot goes a lot longer).
A Boat of Hope: Un Barco de Papel with USE
In October of 2025 I was cast by the Underground Skills Exchange to become part of their mainstage devised piece. Together with Mayah Lourdes Burke, Samia Omari and Lour -and with the direction of Zeynep Akca- we created “Boat of Hope: Un Barco de Papel”.
The show was largely inspired the poem “Un Barco de Papel”, written by Dylan López, a New York City High School student that was taken by ICE during a routing immigration appointment.
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The poem was written during a workshop Dylan attended as part of The Campfire Project’s programming. The Campfire Project is an organization that works with refugees and asylum seekers. I volunteer with them occasionally as a translator and Spanish facilitator. It was actually my task to translate his poetry (among many others) to English and I got to know the incredible young man and his artistry.
I brought Dylan’s poetry to the table and the whole team agreed on making it a central part of the process and to end the piece with a call to action to both donate to help Dylan’s family and create postcards to send to him at the detention center.
Puppetry was in the epicenter of the work, where I brought Gire and Gimble’s paper puppet creation technique. Thus, Pip, our paper protagonist was born.
The story does have a happy ending, after 10 months in captivity, Dylan was released. In an interview he thanked all the support and the correspondence he received.
Teatro SEA
Teatro SEA has been at the forefront of the art of puppetry for four decades. They created The Puppet Fringe Festival and have earned numerous Henson Foundation grants to continue their work.
I count myself lucky to be a company member of Teatro SEA and to have performed in many of their puppet productions.
“Los Grises/The Gray Ones” has a special place in my heart. Yes, the puppets were beautiful, but beyond that, we got to take the show on tour throughout city parks as “pop up” performances. We visited parts of the city that were famously underserved and we got so many comments from parents thanking us and saying “no one comes here”, and even more importantly we got comments from kids saying “I had never seen a play before!” or “thank you so much for the movie!”.
The latter one was my favorite. We brought theater to kids who don’t even have a word for it.
Circle in the Square Theatre School
As the Mask and Devised Works Teacher at The Circle in the Square Theatre School, I have been able to sneak in puppetry in several of the productions I’ve got to direct.
The first of these was “I Am” a reflection that used a paper puppet nicknamed Elsie to show the “pulls” from society to show ourselves as someone else.
The second one was “Bathroom Break”, a hilarious sketch about a group of actresses at an award show. One of these actresses was “Friggy”, the puppet daughter of Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, who inherited all of her mother’s divaisms, but somehow less of her graces.
