wild project presents
Special Effects Festival 2026
In Collaboration with Contemporary Performance
March 5-7, 2026
Founded by the visionary duo, Caden Manson and Jemma Nelson of Big Art Group, the Special Effects Festival (SFX) has championed groundbreaking, genre-defying work since 2014. After a hiatus due to the pandemic, the festival returned to rekindle the spirit of the avant-garde and create a shared space to gather for contemporary performance. Held every year in NYC, SFX celebrates the eclecticism of contemporary performance.
Thursday, March 5th – 7:30pm
The Object Has a Pulse – A Night of Puppetry Curated by Amanda Card
featuring Shayna Strype & Sarah Willis, Emily Batsford and Justin Otaki Perkins
Friday, March 6th at 7:30pm
Floorshow – Curated by Frank Barret
featuring Frank Barret and Mx Asa Metric
Saturday, March 7th – 7:30pm
Gray Spaces – Curated by Lisa Clair
featuring Delia Delia, Leonie Bell, & Kenneth Keng and Carlos Lising / Buong Buo Collective
March 5, 2026
7:30pm
The Object Has A Pulse –
A Night of Puppetry Curated by Amanda Card
Jerkwater
by Shayna Strype and Sarah Willis
A woman takes care of business, against all odds and intruding forces. Through use of live-feed puppetry, miniatures and wearable sculptures, Jerkwater exposes the hidden underbelly of suburbia.
Shayna Strype is a New York-based director and artist working in animation, film and puppetry performance. Her recent work includes Transitional Object, a 16mm stop motion short film that premiered at Slamdance film festival, Our Mine, a puppet film produced by Heather Henson’s Handmade Puppet Dreams available to watch on Roku in the Takes of the Earth Collection, and Mine, a multimedia puppet show that premiered at Dixon Place with support of a Jim Henson Workshop Grant. Shayna is a 2026 MacDowell Fellow. @woosieparty
Sarah Willis is a performer and playwright. She is a founding member of Sibyl Kempson’s 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co. Recent work with the company includes performing in SASQUATCH RITUALS (The Kitchen), 12 SHOUTS TO THE TEN FORGOTTEN HEAVENS (Whitney Museum of American Art) and Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag (Abrons Arts Center). Other recent performances include Elevator Repair Service’s Fondly, Collette Richland (New York Theatre Workshop) and Playground by Derek Spaldo (The Brick). Sarah’s play VULTURES premiered at Dixon Place. Recent film work includes her roles in CRISIS (winner of Best Short at Eastern Oregon Film Festival) and JACQUELINE (ARGENTINE), written and directed by Bernardo Britto. sarahbyrdwillis.com
Emily Batsford
featuring Esme Roszel
Emily & Esme are deep in the trenches of devising this new work, which is based on video game mechanics and their ever-growing feelings of existential dissatisfaction and dread. Fun! Silly! Scary! At least, they hope so.
Emily Batsford (they/them) is a theater maker and educator living in Brooklyn, NY. Their artistry prioritizes inclusion and accessibility, and includes immersive and physical theater practices, puppetry, & experimental forms. 2025 Emergence Artist Resident at Culture Lab LIC – CUMULO. NYSCA Support for Artists Grant recipient – CUMULO. 2026 Jim Henson Foundation Production Grant – CUMULO.
Emily has an extensive performance history, traveling internationally and across the United States. True to their passion for devising new work, Emily has also participated in countless work-in-progress showings at theatrical incubators across the five boroughs. Their full-length, nonverbal puppet piece, CUMULO, is set to premiere in NYC April 2026 as part of Theater Mitu’s Artists-at-Home program. www.cumuloshow.com IG: @efcbatsford
The Stone Baby in “Companionship”
by Justin Otaki Perkins
An ancient being, eternally naive, the primordial incarnation of curiosity and innocence, makes a friend.
Justin Otaki Perkins is a puppeteer and designer. Theater puppetry: Becoming Eve (NYTW), Madama Butterfly (Met Opera cover), Florencia en el Amazonas (Met Opera cover), See What I Wanna See (O-B puppetry director/puppeteer), Alaxsxa|Alaska (Ping Chong + Co, LaMama, tour), Shank’s Mare (Lee & Nishikawa, LaMama, tour), Hansel and Gretel (Michigan Opera). Winter/Spring 2026: Left Hand of Darkness by Tom Lee & Edward Einhorn, Cumulo by Emily Batsford.
March 6, 2026
7:30pm
FLOORSHOW
Curated by Frank Barret
3 Songs 2 Dances
by Frank Barret
Frank Barret is a New York based performance maker, singer, and producer who creates absurd work in concert with the crumbling empire. They believe that art must be nimble in order to fulfill its essential function to make the revolution irresistible. frankbarret.com
Behave
by Mx. Asa Metric
Asa Metric is a lounge singer in a cabaret that regularly eats itself… you’re welcome to lounge with her, but behave yourself.
Mx. Asa Metric is a dumpster in search of a diver. A cabaret goblin honking her way through the underside of the American songbook. Mileage may Mary. She’s the alter egret of Evan Spigelman (they/them/the “gay ‘she’”), a theatermaker whose time is spent as an actor, cabaret artist, designer and light-bender.
March 7, 2026
7:30pm
GRAY SPACES –
Curated by Lisa Clair
Buong/Buo
by Kenneth Keng & Carlos Lising- Buong Buo Collective
“Buong-buo,” very roughly translated from Tagalog, means total completeness or wholeness—both in community and within one’s soul. The piece invites audiences to question what it means to belong while navigating intersecting cultural identities.When does one go from being Filipino to being part of the diaspora? How does that affect one’s art? In this latest iteration, Buong/Buo (read as Buong Buo Binali, translated literally to Buong Buo Broken) what does it mean to create absent collaborators, across oceans and imaginary borders?
Kenneth Keng is a New York-based Filipino-Chinese playwright and performer who makes work about falling in love with a culture devouring his own. Selected honors include: 2026 Artist-in-Residence at the North American Cultural Laboratory, 2026 New York State Council on the Arts/NYSCA Grantee, 2025/26 Artist-in-Residence at the cell theatre NYC, 2025 Princess Grace Fellowship (Semifinalist), 2024 Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature, 2024 The Civilians/Princeton Next Forever Initiative (Finalist), 2023/24 Artist-in-Residence at the University Settlement/Performance Project. In NYC, Kenneth’s plays have been selected for staging at the Target Margin, A.R.T. Mezzanine, Brick, Brick Aux, JACK, Life World, Chain, Tank, Maker’s Space and Speyer Hall theatres.
Kenneth is currently the Program Manager at the Obie-Award winning Oye Group, a Brooklyn based artistic community & creative incubator founded by Modesto ‘Flako’ Jimenez. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and attained his MFA in Theatre in 2023 from Sarah Lawrence College.
DeliaDelia! The Flat Chested Witch!
by DeliaDelia (Amando Houser)
Inspired by the “witch hunt” on trans rights in the United States, DeliaDelia is a flat-chested witch from the swamps who happens to be as nasty on the eyes as she is on the basketball court. On a quest to become a “real girl” and join a human basketball team, will she finally get her shot at greatness, or will she be cursed forever and turned into a serpent?
Amando Houser (DeliaDelia!; they/them) is a trans-masculine actor and clown born and based in NYC, hailed as “having talents that are otherworldly” (Brooklyn Rail) and a “tour de force” (Topical Cream). Their alter ego DeliaDelia! has played for sold-out crowds at Irving Plaza, Edinburgh Fringe, Soho Theatre, Union Hall, The Elysian, Philadelphia Fringe, and even the Staten Island Ferry. They appeared in Becca Blackwell’s Obie Award-winning Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month at Soho Rep—named one of Vulture’s Best Theatre of 2023, which cited Houser’s performance as “particularly funny.” A graduate of École Philippe Gaulier in France, Amando has also trained with Pig Iron Theatre Company and Julia Masli.
Morgen bin ich wieder da
(transl. I’ll be back tomorrow)
by Leonie Bell
Early mornings Belated mournings
Surprise house guests Little jigs Big drama
A series of theatrical vignettes
featuring looper songs
pocket projector play +
cassette tape sound
Leonie Bell is a German-American theater artist from Berlin, based in New York. In NYC, she has presented work at Target Margin Theater, BAM, Performance Space NY, BAM, The Brick, and other venues. Leonie produces much of her work through her free-form theater company LOCAL GRANDMA. Fall 2026: Im Dunkeln sieht man besser. leoniebell.org