Archives: Events

Imagine U: Doctor De Soto

Award-winning playwright Idris Goodwin brings William Steig’s tale of wit, wisdom, and whimsy to the stage with an eye-popping blend of live-action, puppetry, music, and rhyme. Despite the sign outside stating that they do not treat predators, the De Soto family dentist practice takes pity on a suffering fox with a rotten tooth. But once he opens his jaws and they must step inside, they begin to rethink their decision. Full of excitement and laughter, this modern-day fable proves that even the smallest creatures can make a big difference with kindness and a little quick thinking.

The Magic of Light

“There are those who cannot see and who are not seen. But their music can open our eyes. Light pours in, like magic, and we are brought home…”

Yara Arts Group’s “The Magic of Light” interweaves puppetry, language, music and poetry to illustrate the cultural and spiritual awakening of an artist in the 1870s. Inspired by the haunting epic songs of Ukrainian blind bards (kobzari), a young man embarks on a lifelong quest to record, preserve and illuminate Ukrainian traditions against the tremendous pressures of history. The production is performed with an intimate, transforming puppet stage by puppeteer Tom Lee and features musician Julian Kytasty, a third-generation master of the bandura, a traditional Ukrainian plucked-stringed folk instrument.

The Addams Family – A New Musical Comedy

Eccentric, morbid, spooky and more than a little bit kooky – the far from normal Addams family faces a normal family challenge when their macabre daughter, Wednesday, falls in love with Lucas, a sweet young man from a respectable family who her parents have never met. Worried her family might not approve of this all-too-normal match, Wednesday confides in her father and begs him not to tell her mother. Now, Gomez Addams must do something he’s never done before – keep a secret from his beloved wife, Morticia. Things take a hilarious turn when the Addams family hosts a dinner for Lucas and his unsuspecting parents. On that fateful evening, relationships are tested, secrets are revealed, and the Addams family tackles both love and change by embracing the wackiness that resides in every family.

MFA Collaboration Series: Among the Dead

Ana, a Korean American, travels to Seoul in 1975 to retrieve her recently deceased father’s ashes. When a bellboy named JC shows up at Ana’s hotel with a package containing her father’s WW2 diary, three separate time periods collide in the small hotel room. We meet Luke, a young American soldier fighting in the jungles of Myanmar in 1944 and Number Four, a Korean comfort woman camping out on a bridge in Seoul in 1950, waiting for the return of the young American soldier who fathered her daughter. Time, space, and Ana’s own origin story are connected by a shape-shifting Jesus in this dark comedy about a family broken apart by betrayed promises and how they find each other again through SPAM, journals, and Jesus. Mostly Jesus.

MFA Collaboration Series: Hand to God

After the death of his father, meek Jason finds an outlet for his anxiety at the Christian Puppet Ministry, in the devoutly religious, relatively quiet small town of Cypress, Texas. Jason’s complicated relationships with the town pastor, the school bully, the girl next door, and—most especially—his mother are thrown into upheaval when Jason’s puppet, Tyrone, takes on a shocking and dangerously irreverent personality all its own. Hand to God explores the startlingly fragile nature of faith, morality, and the ties that bind us.