Great Small Works

04/12/2026

"Radicality of the Puppet Theater Talk & Film Series" at Los Kabayitos Puppet Theater at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, in 1998! (Title stolen from Peter Schumann's manifesto "The Radicality of the Puppet Theater.") Curated by Jenny Romaine and John Bell...

04/01/2026

must see! https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1FGtZk7mwe/

03/31/2026

Let’s give a hand to this week’s Member Monday feature: Great Small Works! Great Small Works was founded in 1995 by a collective of six artists, all veterans of Bread and Puppet Theater, to create theater of high artistic quality and to keep theater at the heart of social life. The company draws on puppet, avant-garde, and popular theater traditions to tell contemporary stories. We perform in theaters, schools, parks, libraries, museums, prisons, street corners and other public spaces, producing work on many scales, from gigantic outdoor spectacles with scores of volunteers to miniature shows in living rooms. In curated festivals and decades-running Spaghetti Dinners, we collaborate with artists from varied traditions, provide performance opportunities for artists in diverse genres, and engage young artists in the process of finding their own voices. In community-based pageants and parades, we work with students, activists and artists to address issues of concern to them. On any scale, Great Small Works productions seek to renew, cultivate, and strengthen the spirits of their audiences, believing in theater as a model for participating in democracy. They are also a proud recipient of a UNIMA-USA Citation of Excellence. We thank Great Small Works for their powerful contributions and for being a valued member of UNIMA-USA!

01/27/2026

From the fruit department if GSW: Good Jewdy returns Sunday, Feb 1 at for Tu Bishvat aka the Birthday Bash for TREES! Join us for a fruity 😉🍑🍆 Q***r Jewish variety show where we will celebrate, feast on fruits, dance and raise funds for to plant olive trees in Palestine 🫒🌳🇵🇸
We will be raffling off another bedazzled kippah (duh!), a giftcard from , a book by and MORE all for a great cause. 💝🫶🫰 (DM .nyc or .ilify to donate an item!)
Harsh Babe and Chava Goodtime put together this stellar cast of their favorite Good Jewdies that you won’t want to miss! So grab a 🎟️ now before they’re gone! So honored to be among the fruits! And this flier!!!!!!!!!!

01/27/2026

01/11/2026

We really appreciate the friends of Great Small Works who came to the Henson Carriage House on East 67th Street in Manhattan this afternoon to watch and give us feedback on work we are doing for our new production "The Myceliad." Big thanks to Paul Bedard, Sam Wilson, Greg Corbino, Tom Cunningham, Ben Meyers, and Joe Therrien, from our Myceliad team: Roberto Rossi, Jenny Romaine, Gideon Crevoshay, Trudi Cohen, Mark Sussman, John Bell, Stephen Kaplin, and Amy Liou!!

01/08/2026

We are working on our new show, "The Myceliad", in a week-long residency at the Henson Carrriage House! Yay and thanks to the Carriage House!

12/29/2025

Celebrate the coming of the New Year with pasta, puppets, music, and each other this evening, at CALLING ALL GIANTS, a Great Small Works year-end Spaghetti Dinner at Judson Church!
Giant puppets from six different artists will participate in a Convergence of Giants to celebrate the ways that oversized puppets have performed festivals of resistance from the Middle Ages to the 1980 Women's Pentagon Action and the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement.
ALSO!:
- Music by FRANK LONDON and his Loisaida Fife & Drum Corps
Deconstructions of mid-19th-century American tunes
Frank London, trumpet
Reut Regev, trombone
Ron Caswell, tuba
Charles Burnham, violin
James Paul Nadien, drums
- A new dance by JENNIFER MILLER
performed by NOA RUI-PIIN WEISS and ZO WILLIAMS to Bach's "Sonata 1 in G Minor, Presto"
- Two crankies by ERIK RUIN with music accompaniment by ALI DINEEN:
"On Another's Sorrow," a poem by William Blake,
"Letter from Isolation" with text from Ulrike Meinhof's "Letter from a Prisoner in the Isolation Wing, June 16, 1972 to February 9, 1973."
- "Brother Bird", a film by MEREDITH HOLCH
- Cranky by BOXCUTTER COLLECTIVE
"Witches, Women and Witchcraft: The (Mostly) True Cranky of a Cranky Old Hag” a brief history of the medieval witch hunts, as told by… witches!
- Shadow puppets by SPICA WOBBE and MARGARET YUEN
"Prologue, Part II," a performance focusing on first-generation Chinese American immigrants.

Great Small Works is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.
Additional thanks to: the Puppet Slam Network, the Scherman Foundation, and the Constance and Jarvis Doctorow Family Foundation.

More info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1373043490867574. Watch on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1577624343266027. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLE3oDaBKRs.

12/29/2025

"Calling All Giants" Spaghetti Dinner Spotlight: PUPPETEERS COOPERATIVE! Next Monday's 12/29 Great Small Works year-end event at Judson Church will feature giant puppet work by Sara Peattie's Puppeteers Cooperative. The Puppeteers' Cooperative is a group of artists and puppeteers working in cities around the nation to create giant puppet parades, pageants, and ceremonies of celebration and complaint, using simple materials and movements to build community cardboard extravaganzas. Puppeteers Cooperative has worked with groups around the US and Canada, and among other events creates an annual "Right of Spring" event at the Old Stone House in Brooklyn. Sara Peattie began her puppetry career in 1969 at the age of 18 when she studied under Peter Schumann, and travelled with his Bread and Puppet Theater to Europe. Peattie founded The Puppeteers Cooperative in 1976 with fellow puppeteer George Konnoff in San Francisco. She also founded and manages Boston's Puppet Free Library.

Join us for this spectacular event, which will also include works by Spica Wobbe, Boxcutter Collective, Frank London's Loisaida Fife & Drum Corps, Jennifer Miller, Erik Ruin, and a Convergence of Giants featuring puppets by Amy Trompetter, Peoples Puppets of Occupy Wall Street, Ronnie Asbell, Chinese Theater Works, Puppeteers Cooperative, and New Haven's Unidad Latina en Accion! More info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1373043490867574. Watch on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1577624343266027. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLE3oDaBKRs.

12/28/2025

"Calling All Giants" Spaghetti Dinner Spotlight: CHINESE THEATER WORKS! Next Monday's 12/29 Great Small Works year-end event at Judson Church will feature giant puppets and mirror puppets by Stephen Kaplin and Kuang-Yu Fong, the founders and directors of the award-winning company Chinese Theater Works (CTW). CTW was created in 2001 to bring traditional and innovative, contemporary Chinese performing arts to local New York City, national and international audiences. CTW's programs cut across ethnic and cultural boundaries, and aim at sparking interest in Chinese cultural traditions among the wider public as well as in Chinese Americans who have not had access to this part of their heritage. At "Calling All Giants" CTW will perform their giant puppet of Zhongkuai, the ancient Chinese Taoist Demon Queller and Ghostbuster; a giant version of Hamsa, the ancient symbol of divine power which brings luck and connects to the divine; and perform new mirror puppets.

Join us for this spectacular event, which will also include works by Spica Wobbe, Boxcutter Collective, Meredith Holch, Frank London's Loisaida Fife & Drum Corps, Jennifer Miller, Erik Ruin, and a Convergence of Giants featuring puppets by Amy Trompetter, Peoples Puppets of Occupy Wall Street, Ronnie Asbell, Chinese Theater Works, Puppeteers Cooperative, and New Haven's Unidad Latina en Accion! More info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1373043490867574. Watch on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1577624343266027. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLE3oDaBKRs.

12/28/2025

"Calling All Giants" Spaghetti Dinner Spotlight: MEREDITH HOLCH! Next Monday's 12/29 Great Small Works year-end event at Judson Church will feature Meredith Holch's award-winning stop-motion film "Brother Bird," which presents three real-life stories of dearly remembered loved ones who visit from the after-life in the form of birds or insects. An award-winning film maker specializing in stop-motion animation and video, Meredith’s work, which has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and PBS TV, centers on socially and politically relevant themes and local Vermont history. Her final film “Brother Bird,” a trilogy about death and reincarnation symbolized through birds and nature was named Best Animated Film at the Made Here Film Festival (MHFF). In her 20s and throughout her life, Meredith performed and toured with Bread & Puppet Theater in Glover, VT, thriving on its community of artists, musicians and performers, many of whom became lifelong friends and collaborators. She later settled in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, and was an active and charismatic presence in her community.

Join us for this spectacular event, which will also include works by Spica Wobbe, Boxcutter Collective, Frank London's Loisaida Fife & Drum Corps, Jennifer Miller, Erik Ruin, and a Convergence of Giants featuring puppets by Amy Trompetter, Peoples Puppets of Occupy Wall Street, Ronnie Asbell, Chinese Theater Works, Puppeteers Cooperative, and New Haven's Unidad Latina en Accion! More info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1373043490867574. Watch on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1577624343266027. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLE3oDaBKRs.