Eight Chicago artists from diverse backgrounds and disciplines have spent the last eight months in residence at the Chicago Puppet Lab, a program of the Chicago Puppet International Puppet Theater Festival, where they have been expanding their skill sets by creating new, original puppet theater works.

On May 29 through June 1, the 2024-25 Chicago Puppet Lab cohort will present their emerging works at the Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center, 4046 W. Armitage Ave., Chicago.

The 2025 Chicago Puppet Lab Showcase includes two rotating group shows, each featuring diverse works in progress by Chicago artists. Program A features Irene Wa., madigan burke, Sam Lewis and Charlie Malavé. Program B showcases work by Ruby Que, Anthony-Michael Stokes, Robbie Lynn Hunsinger and Michele Stine.

Tickets to each program, $20 regular/$15 student and seniors, are now on sale at chicagopuppetfest.org.  Act fast to take advantage of a 20 percent early bird discount, or get 20 percent off with promo code LABAB when purchasing tickets to both programs. Follow the festival on Facebook, Instagram or Vimeo, hashtag #ChiPuppetFest. 

The Chicago Puppet Lab, led by co-directors Tom Lee and Grace Needlman, is the developmental arm of the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival. In addition to presenting the largest annual puppetry festival of its kind in North America, the Festival’s Puppet Lab is an education space that incubates new works of boundary-breaking puppetry in Chicago, expands equity in the field of puppetry, and encourages interdisciplinary experimentation in puppet theater. 

Program A – Friday, May 30 at 7 p.m.; Saturday, May 31 at 3 p.m.; and Sunday, June 1 at 7 p.m. – includes:

she is drying
By Irene Wa.

Two characters and an excess of strings come together in a dance that explores the restriction of movement and the tension of dependency. It delves into the inner self; an encounter, an appearance, a fantasy. Featuring a large scale marionette. Music by Kobe.

Irene Wa. is a Mexican interdisciplinary artist who works in drawing, sculpture, ceramics, video, and writing. She holds a Master’s in Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.

Operating Theater
By madigan burke


Join madigan and Harvey, two highly qualified medical puppet professionals, as they perform a surgery. Featuring figurative puppets and live feed video puppetry.

Burke (they/them) is a genderqueer ex-mechanical engineer turned multidisciplinary artist who likes to draw cartoons, make funny films, and sometimes create edgy and endearing puppet characters.

Black Episcopalian
By Sam Lewis


Sam asks his mom about their origins in the Episcopal Church. The incredible answer takes Sam on a journey back to his birthplace in rural Tennessee, uncovering a history he could have never imagined. Featuring live feed multiplane projection.

Sam Lewis is an actor, poet, vocalist, and recently, an “accidental puppeteer” because, in the early 2000s, he came across a vintage Black Americana marionette in an attic, which started him on an unexpected puppetry journey. Lewis explores racial issues and negative iconography with that marionette, renamed Jus Hambone.

A Suite of Dreams
By Charlie Malavé

Images, sounds and feelings pulled directly from the dream world into the shared waking world. A dream story told in the language of symbols. Puppetry styles include projected and manipulated shadows and puppet miniatures.

Charlie Malavé (he/him) is a musician, multi-instrumentalist, performing artist, and video maker whose body of work has produced an array of unique instruments, compositions, music videos, webisodes and theatrical productions. He’s also one of the leaders of the Chicago band, Mucca Pazza.

Program B - Thursday, May 29 at 7 p.m.; Saturday, May 31 at 7 p.m.; and Sunday,
June 1 at 3 p.m. - features:

Touch
By Ruby Que

Touch plays with constructed invisibility to propose new ways of seeing and communicating using object puppetry, live sensor input from a puppet microphone and ice puppetry.

Ruby Que (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus on site-specific intervention and expanded cinema performance. In their work they open portals and create hauntings.

Anansi - a Dispersal of Wisdom
By Anthony-Michael Stokes

The aspiring god of storytelling earns their title by being entrusted by the elder Sky God Nyame, with an impossible task of traveling the world and gathering all the stories and wisdom. A Griot storyteller, immersive, spiritual experience; his quest reveals that no one has more lessons to be learned than Anansi himself, a “Humanette” large scale solo puppet.

Anthony-Michael Stokes is a newly-arrived, Chicago-based multidisciplinary teaching artist and award-winning educator. Originally from El Paso, Stokes holds BFAs in music theater and dance and a masters in education. He has trained as a puppeteer with the Jim Henson Company and the Sesame Street Puppeteer workshop. He also presented The Scarecrow, his riff on The Wizard of Oz, at the 2025 Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival.

Shehnai Mist/Suona Flames
By Robbie Lynn Hunsinger
 
Transforming the moods and music of the Indian Shehnai and Chinese Suona into puppetry with translucent shadow puppetry, animations and wearable musical instrument puppets.

Robbie Lynn Hunsinger (she/her) is a professional classical oboist turned coder, multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, interactive installation artist and creative technologist. She specializes in live audiovisual performance and immersive interactive installations using motion, weight and sound activated triggers, robotics, responsive lights, custom circuits, multi-tracked audio and layered projections. 

AudioFile
By Michele Stine

A record player, a rotary phone, cassettes and ancient suitcases. The physical remnants of a life left behind, and the playground for someone to rediscover the joy of sound. Featuring object puppetry, crankie, figurative puppetry and solo.

Michele Stine (she/they) is an actor, clown and puppeteer. Stine spends time digging through trash alleys for materials, much to her mother’s dismay. They have performed with Rough House Theatre, Filament Theatre, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Theatre Unspeakable, Lifeline Theatre, Emerald City Theatre, Theatre SUMM, among others.

About the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival

Originally founded in 2015 as a project of Blair Thomas & Co., the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival has highlighted artists from nations including Belgium, Chile, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Mexico, Norway, Puerto Rico, Poland, Scotland and South Africa as well as from Chicago and across the U.S. with the goal of promoting peace, equality, and justice on a global scale. 

Already, the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival has grown to be the largest of its kind in North America. The seventh and most recent Festival in January 2025 spanned 12 days and dozens of Chicago venues, presenting an international pageant of puppet artists and more than 120 puppetry activities. This year’s Festival attracted a record 22,128 audience members from Chicago, the U.S. and around the world, and was named Best Performing Arts Festival by the Chicago Reader.

In 2022, under the leadership of Artistic Director and Festival Founder Blair Thomas and Executive Director Sandy Smith Gerding, the Festival moved from a biennial to an annual event, and tripled its footprint in Chicago’s historic Fine Arts Building. It opened an expanded office suite, debuted the Chicago Puppet Studio, which designs and fabricates puppets for theaters and events around the U.S., and launched the Chicago Puppet Lab, an education space and developmental residency designed to incubate more works of boundary-breaking puppetry in Chicago, expand equity in the field of puppetry, and encourage interdisciplinary experimentation in puppet theater.

The Chicago Puppet Lab and the Chicago Puppet Lab Showcase are generously supported by Kristy and Brandon Moran, the Pritzker Foundation and the Paul M. Angell Foundation.

For more information, visit chicagopuppetfest.org.