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UPCOMING AS OF DECEMBER 3, 2019

December 19, 2019 to January 5, 2020
Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave. (at E. 10th Street)
Presented by Theater for the New City
Schedule: Dec. 19, 20, 21, 22, 26, 27, Jan. 2, 3, 4, 5.
Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00 PM, matinees Saturdays & Sundays at 3:00 PM.
Tickets $18 gen. adm., $12 seniors/students/kids
Come dressed as character of Dickens' Christmas Carol or any seasonal holiday and use discount code SCROOGE for $2 off all tickets (advance sale and box office).
Box office 212-254-1109
Running time 75 minutes.

For the delight of audiences aged 5 to 105, Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave., will present Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre (CAMT) in "A Christmas Carol, Oy! Hanukkah, Merry Kwanzaa" from December 19 to January 5. The show is an adaptation of Dickens' classic with Old World accents and New World inclusiveness. Adapted, directed and reinvented by Vit Horejs, it features over 30 puppets by Milos Kasal including a quartet of Rockettes in Slovak, Moravian and Ruthenian folk costumes and holiday songs in Czech, English, Hebrew, Slovak, Spanish and Swahili.

(L) Vit Horejs and Scrooge puppet.(C) Scrooge and Marley, (R) Judith Barnes and Hayden DeWitt as chorus in 2014 production.

This toy-puppet theater extravaganza is a new take on Charles Dickens' classic with a few twists and digressions. Into the familiar story is woven a surprising and delightful blend of English, Jewish, African, American and Czech winter rituals and customs, all performed by over three dozen marionettes ranging in size from four to twenty-four inches as well as found objects and toys. Mr. Horejs operates the whole cast of puppets, backed up by a live chorus: an "a capella monumentale" choir of Katarina Vizina (a transplant from Slovakia) and Valois Mickens (West African/Celtic/Native American origin). The piece is still set in Old London, but with Czech accents.

JANUARY 23 TO FEBRUARY 2, 2020
LA MAMA
THE TRANSFIGURATION OF BENJAMIN BANNEKER
BY THEODORA SKIPITARES
This multi-disciplinary spectacle celebrates the life of Benjamin Banneker, a free black man living in Maryland from 1731 to 1806, who taught himself mathematics and astronomy, and made groundbreaking scientific discoveries. It features dance, live music, the Soul Tigers Marching Band, puppetry, and a multi-generational cast of Brooklynites. Music by LaFrae Sci, choreography by Edisa Weeks.

Photo by Jane Catherine Shaw.

Theodora Skipitares has created 26 of her puppet epics to-date. Her body of work includes productions on such subjects as scientists, surgeons, miners, eugenicists, renaissance artists and women in prison, all created with giant puppets, documentary material and assembled texts. She is a resident director at La MaMa and her work has been exhibited widely in the U.S., Europe and Asia, and recently at the Whitney Museum.

The occasion of The Dark Lady Players' performance of "Shakespeare's Anti-Christian satires: The Virgin Mary Parodies" gave us the opportunity to investigate how Elizabethan Meta-Theater could be enacted with contemporary puppet theater.

So we asked John Hudson, the theorist and dramaturg of The Dark Lady Players, to illuminate the possibilities. We learned, in short, that all puppetry is metatheatrical but not all metatheater is puppetry.

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