Workshop Details

In this exploration into the world of object-based performance, the artists start with simple household objects and bring them to life. Instead of constructing the puppets, "found object" puppetry channels the fantastical potential within familiar items on a tabletop. In the hands of a puppeteer, a tissue becomes a dog, a ribbon makes a river, a flashlight becomes the moon. Through hands-on creative exercises with everyday materials, this workshop leads participants to discover their inner puppeteers, culminating in short, miniature performances. Join this "theater of animated forms," where the mundane becomes extraordinary as we begin to perceive the magic hidden in the everyday objects that populate our world.

Instructions to Participants / Venue
Participants are welcome to bring common, basic household objects. Anything along the lines of flashlights, sticky notes, tape, string, pens, paper (printer and/or construction), etc... We can make use of anything!

Artist Biographies

Connor Lifson
Connor Lifson is a director and designer based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Chicago. He creates object-based performances, multimedia productions blending the stage and screen, and site-specific, immersive experiences. Through highly visual storytelling, abstraction, and fantasy, Connor seeks not to hold up a mirror to the world, but a shimmering looking glass — not to reflect our world’s reality, but its fantastic potential. He is a co-founder of Tide & Foam.

Sid Zhang
Sid Zhang is a director, dancer, and poet from Nanjing, China and currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She searches for space between words and their silence and creates visual poetry out of interdisciplinary, movement-based performances.