Wild Works:
Puppetry on the Edge
May 6, 2026
7:00pm
Tickets $24.50 (including fees)
featuring performances from
Tristan Allen
Maiko Kikuchi
Marcella Murray
Purser and Amanda Card
Wild Works: Puppetry on the Edge is a new performance series spotlighting artists who are reinventing and expanding the language of puppetry today. Curated by Resident Curator Amanda Card, the series features bold, boundary-pushing work that experiments with form, embraces risk, and explores the emotional and imaginative power of the animated.
Maiko Kikuchi
Excerpt from Daydream Tutorial
Daydream Tutorial is a multidisciplinary performance piece by Maiko Kikuchi, blending puppetry, mask work, object manipulation, and projected animation. Composed of whimsical vignettes that explore surreal and introspective “tutorials” for everyday life, the work invites audiences into a playful space between the familiar and the uncanny. For this event, two vignettes from the full performance will be presented as excerpts.
Maiko Kikuchi is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York City, working across puppetry, collage, animation, performance, and sculpture. She creates surreal, handcrafted worlds that blur the line between reality and imagination—what she calls “visible daydreams.” Originally from Japan, Kikuchi moved to the United States to study at Pratt Institute, where she received her MFA in Theater. Her artistic language is deeply influenced by her early fascination with box gardens used in sandplay therapy, introduced by her father, a psychoanalyst. her work draws on miniature worlds, memory, and subconscious imagery. Her work has been presented at The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Japan Society, HERE Arts Center, and La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club.
Tristan Allen
Coat Act & Mary Was A Siren
These acts were created in contrast to my more expansive fantasy works, more immediate in form and construction, allowing puppetry to enter nightlife spaces. They explore the dynamic between puppet and puppeteer as a metaphor for power exchange.
Tristan Allen is a composer and puppeteer based in Brooklyn, NY. Tristan employs the narrative power of instrumental music and puppetry to create an imaginary world. With a background in piano, bass, electronic music, and marionette theater, Tristan applies an experimental mode of storytelling to create rich works of wordless fantasy. With support from RVNG Intl, La MaMa, and the Jim Henson Foundation, Tristan has created a series of creation myths spanning albums and puppet symphonies, including Tin Iso and the Dawn and Osni the Flare.
Marcella Murray
Let’s Pretend She’s Doing Well or We’ll Make Do
Cried so hard I flooded the neighborhood. Slipped, fell, and sank so far down I panicked.
You know what? Let’s not talk about it.
Marcella, here! Reporting live from The Nadir!
If you had to guess, would you say that I’m doing alright?
Oh, right. I’m not supposed to ask that.
Doing great down here with my shadows, Bob. Glad to be here(I think). Back to you!
Marcella Murray is a New York-based theater artist from Augusta, Georgia. She is a playwright, performer, collaborator, and puppeteer. Murray’s work is heavily inspired by the observed ways in which people tend to segregate and reconnect, themes of identity within a community, and forward momentum in the face of trauma.
Her work has been seen at Performance Space NY, Abrons Arts Center, Mabou Mines, Dixon Place, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Chez Bushwick, Detroit Institute of Art, The Brick, French Institute; Alliance Française, The Loading Dock, La MaMa, UNC Chapel Hill/Carolina Center for Performing Arts, UW Madison, MCA Chicago, and BAM. Murray is a co-curator of the Object Movement Puppetry Residency and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.
Purser and Amanda Card
IM MUCH FUNNIER NOW
A live performance of Purser’s song “IM MUCH FUNNIER NOW” with puppetry by Amanda Glynn Card.
Singer-songwriter Bobbie Purser (they/he) is a world builder.
Their polished blend of razor-sharp storytelling and experimental production has earned them featured performances with Olive Klug and Jake Wesley Rogers, selection for the 2024 Keychange U.S. artist development program, a Nashville Scene premiere for their live EP “3x,” and a featured single “Blue & Green” on John Mayer’s Sirius XM radio show Life With John. Purser’s immersive sound and intimate performances make them what Tuned Up Magazine calls “an emerging force.”
Amanda Card (she/they) is a Bushwick-based interdisciplinary artist and puppeteer whose work blends memory, disappearance, and handmade visual storytelling. Select Performance credits include Boy Crazy (Ars Nova), Our Bodies Like Dams (Mabou Mines), 9000 Paper Balloons (Japan Society), Daydream Tutorial (La MaMa), Small Acts of Daring Invention (Drama Desk Nominee – HERE), The Greedy Peasant’s All Saints’ Day Celebration, and Yuliya Tsukerman’s The Luminous Crow. She received the 2021 Lipkin Prize for Playwriting and holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.