Muntergang and other Cheerful Downfalls!
Created and performed by Great Small Works members:
John Bell, Trudi Cohen, Stephen Kaplin, Jenny Romaine and Roberto Rossi
With puppeteers Joseph Therrien and Sam Wilson
Music by Jessica Lurie and Hannah Temple
Script by Jenny Romaine
Great Small Works revisits the work of radical 20th-century New York City puppeteers Zuni Maud and Yosl Cutler. In a bilingual Yiddish-English play that uses Maud and Cutler’s satirical puppet scripts and original graphics, together with Great Small Works’ own puppets and projections, as well as The Dybbuk and Mae West, Muntergang is a meditation on historical models for changing power relationships.
Part of the 2016 La MaMa Puppet Series
Great Small Works has a 20-year history of engagement in all aspects of puppet theatre. With roots in Bread and Puppet Theater, company members have created large-scale processions and spectacles involving hundreds of participants, written books and articles about puppet theatre, and taught workshops and classes in settings ranging from prisons and universities to opera houses and community centers.
La MaMa Puppet Festival
The La MaMa Puppet Festival showcases new contemporary puppet theatre by artists from around the world. Curated by Denise Greber, focusing on diversifying the voices, stories, and perspectives shared onstage, with the goal of uplifting marginalized identities within the puppet community.
Special Event
Opening night post show talk and reception with Dr. Edward Portnoy
Friday October 28th
Eddy Portnoy received his Ph.D. from the Jewish Theological Seminary. His dissertation was on cartoons of the Yiddish press. He also holds an M.A in Yiddish Studies from Columbia University, and is Senior Researcher and Exhibition Curator at the YIVO institute for Jewish Research. His articles on Jewish popular culture phenomena have appeared in The Drama Review, Polin, and The International Journal of Comic Art. His investigations into the lives and work of Zuni Maud and Yosl Cutler were the seed of this production.
Thursday November 3rd
Jews For Racial and Economic Justice night
Post show discussion with the scintillating and subtle Irena Klepfisz
Irena Klepfisz is a poet, Yiddish translator, and teacher of English literature, Yiddish language and literature, and Women’s Studies. She is the author of the poetry collection A Few Words in the Mother Tongue and Dreams of an Insomniac: Jewish Feminist Essays, Speeches, and Diatribes. Klepfisz is additionally a co-editor of The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology and Jewish Women’s Call for Peace: A Handbook for Jewish Women on the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict, and served for many years as Yiddish editor for Bridges magazine. She has been a long-time activist whose work has addressed homophobia in the Jewish community, women and peace in the Middle East, and secular Jewish identity. Klepfisz teaches at Barnard.