Just before midnight on a sticky Saturday in August, about two dozen spectators were squeezed into a makeshift theater in Bushwick, fixated on the inanimate objects dancing before us. We had just watched the baby from "Eraserhead," an alien-like plastic head swaddled in layers of medical tape, deliver a touching tribute to David Lynch, and now the spotlight was on a fuzzy blue and purple puppet promoting her OnlyFans. From a tiny stage fashioned from folding table and a cardboard box, Penelope Platypus—puppeteered by local performer Hailey Bendar—detailed her services ("I'll smash your balls with a hammer for $1,500!") and vented her frustrations ("How do you sell feet pics with no feet?") to a rapt, if noticeably intoxicated, audience.
We were at a secret "puppet slam" at the DIY venue Rubulad, a collaboration between proudly maximalist party producer Glitter Milk and puppet troupe We Wiggle Dolls. Noise from DJs and dancers outside piped into our secluded space as we watched a felt giraffe bomb his stand-up set and a pair of hands manipulate an "invisible" marionette. This "slam"—a showcase of short-form puppetry aimed at adults—is one of many that make up the thriving and thoroughly eclectic New York puppet community, whose underground has flourished in basements and black box theaters over the past five years. "I think people are hungry for novelty," We Wiggle Dolls co-director Jeremy Pryzby explained. He described a "slow boil" of momentum since founding the troupe in 2023, which he attributed to the "direct, immediate, holistic" nature of the form.
New York has long been a hub for children's puppet studios—Jim Henson moved his Creature Workshop to a Manhattan walkup in 1963; Puppet Works, which recently relocated from Park Slope to Industry City, has been entertaining children with marionettes since 1990. But a new crop of adult puppeteers, building on the city's rich network of DIY performance spaces, is embracing the racy and radical possibilities of puppetry. A break from the pacifying sameness of slop, puppets are immediate, specific, and material—each move a puppet makes requires careful coordination from the puppeteer and total buy-in from the audience. In creating these small perceptive leaps, puppet shows offer something like sorcery.
