New Orleans Giant Puppet Festival
The Contemporary Arts Center is happy to announce our partnership with the New Orleans Giant Puppet Festival as they celebrate their 10th Anniversary!
The New Orleans Giant Puppet Fest hosts local, national, and international artists, with all-ages friendly and adult only performances, presented daily across multiple venues. The festival brings newcomers and master puppeteers alike to New Orleans to share the same stages, showcasing their array of skills, leading workshops, and participating in lively conversation during panel discussions.
With the generous support of the New Orleans Theatre Association, the CAC is proud to act as a partnering venue for the Giant Puppet Festival. Enjoy offering a weekend of shows in the Black Box Theater featuring work by nationally renown puppeteers Jeghetto (North Carolina), Leroy's Place (Louisiana), and NIGHT SHADE (Oregon).
Leroy’s Place - Doomscrolling
In "Doomscrolling” a 15 ft. tall puppet scrolls a monster universe on her giant cardboard cellphone that has been fashioned as a puppet theater!
Peek over the shoulder and into the mind of a giant swamp monster as she scrolls through a series of monster apps on her cardboard smartphone. Within the frame of her phone, a variety of puppeteered shenanigans come to life, offering a playful poke at how our cell phone use connects and distracts us.
Jeghetto - 5P1N0K10
Using music, video, and magical marionettes, 5P1N0K10 spins an Afrofuturist parable about a robot that longs to be a real B-boy in a post-apocalyptic future.
This Hip Hopera created by Jeghetto and co-written by Pierce Freelon was awarded grants from the Henson Foundation two years in a row. Performance attendees will be transported to an Afro-futuristic post-apocalyptic realm. With puppets by Jeghetto, 5P1N0K10 combines plywood marionettes, live music, emceeing and video with an original score by Hip Hop producer Hir-O.
Created by Tarish “Jeghetto” Pipkins, whose nickname is a play on Pinocchio’s woodcarver Geppetto, 5P1N0K10 is a family affair that features Pipkins’ sons, Divine, 19, and Tarin, 14, as puppeteers. In the show, the title character encounters various instances of racism, oppression and police brutality along his journey.
NIGHT SHADE - EXqUiSiTe CoRpSe
Necromancer Nadia used drug magick to resurrect her dead boyfriend Mike... and now they have a deth rock band “WHITE KNIVES” ...this is their love story.
Get lit and witness excerpts from Night Shade's illuminated ZINE EXqUiSiTe CoRpSe as 'Necromancer Nadia' & 'Dead Mike' rise from the grave and conjure their own brand of deth rock with their band WHITE KNIVES. Haunting imagery slices across the shadow screen to invoking an esoteric shadow show from the burial realm.
Please be advised: EXqUiSiTe CoRpSe contains mature themes and is recommended for teens and teens at heart.