For twenty years, Trouble Puppet has created dark, funny, thoughtful works of theater that elevate and honor the ancient practice of puppetry.  Our reverence for the form is matched only by our irreverence toward authority, whether social, political, economic, or otherwise.  The stories we tell, the historical fiction, the flights of fantasy, and the literary adaptations, all focus on the struggle for autonomy, dignity, and the rights of the underclasses.

And we hope to continue for another twenty years, paying our working artists at the fairest possible levels so that the dramatic exodus of the true (non-corporate) creative class from this city doesn’t take the last of us.  More than ever, we need your support, due to catastrophic changes in the funding of local arts.  Cut off from city funding, we have to call on you, who have given us so much, to do even more.

Your support will pay the performers, designers, stage managers, costumers, and all the other workers whose brilliance and dedication have created this company.  And in return we will screw our determination to the sticking place, to mangle a phrase, and make more shows like our most current production-  

- UNDARK: A Radioactive Puppet Play , about the young women whose jobs at United States Radium Corporation, Radium Dial Corporation, etc., brought them good pay, independence, and self-worth, only to ultimately poison them and make them the targets of vicious attacks on their character from those same companies and the U.S. government.  Their struggle led to the establishment of workers’ rights for women (and men, thank you) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

And others from our catalog:

• American Blood Song , the story of the Donner Party, migrants pursuing their Manifest Destiny with a hunger so great, they are consumed by it.  And each other.  A musical collaboration with Mother Falcon.
• The Jungle , adapted from Upton Sinclair’s novel about immigrant workers in the meatpacking industry.

• The Bomb in Haymarket Square , an original play about the persecution of labor leaders and violent subjugation of workers (again mostly immigrants) as Industrialization transformed the nation and world
• The Crapstall Street Boys , about children in a monster-infested city who are sold to the workhouses where they manufacture anti-monster technology, slowly to be turned, by intolerable conditions, into monsters themselves and unleashed upon the city. 
• Frankenstein , an adaptation that turned the classic into a tale not only of a Creator and a Creation mortally at odds, but placed it in the Terror of the French Revolution.
• How I Became a Catholic Suicide Bomber , the tale of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, involving deadly political intrigue, religious clashes, homeland security, and terrorism. Also with songs.
• Macbeth , Shakespeare’s play about the making of an unhinged dictator.