The Apathetic Anarchists
Empire and Election is a political and gorilla street performance class taught this fall at Chatham University by Tavia La Follette. Director Tavia La Follette is Founder and Director of ArtUp, a non-profit gallery/performance space based in the Cultural District of Pittsburgh. Tavia and her work have toured all over the United States, Europe, Eastern Europe, South America and Asia.

Another Bloomin' Puppet Company
Another Bloomin' Puppet Company provides age-appropriate shows that intertwine fun storylines with easily-understood life lessons. We are a group of people who are passionate about performing and creating, and who are concerned about the quality of entertainment being offered to children. We have different shows for different audiences, ranging from kindergarten to high school. All plays are written remembering the adult as an audience member, so you will also be entertained along with your children. Read more at bloominpuppets.com.

Rose Clancy and Debbie Bobeck
"The Rainbow Ride - In Toy Theatre Style" is a collaborative effort by Pittsburgh based artists Rose Clancy and Debbie Bobeck. Both Rose and Debbie work in a variety of mediums and tend to be inspired by everything around them.

Mike Cuccaro
A volunteer at the Black Sheep Puppet Festival since 2000, Mike Cuccaro soon begain collaborating with Tom Sarver in the Puppet Express to create and perform Big Fish Eat Little Fish, Djuha Stories, Perseus, Medusa, and the Magic Frisbee, Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear, Cookie and Mott in 'Snot Natural, and The Know-It-All Bird. Their partnership has headed the organization of the Black Sheep Puppet Festival since 2005. Many people, including Tom's grandmother, think that he is Tom.

Clare Dolan
CLARE DOLAN is a performer, director, and cheap artist based in Vermont. As a puppeteer for twelve years with the Bread and Puppet Theater, she has performed in cities and towns throughout the United States, South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. While currently living a secret double life as a nurse in her small Vermont town, she lectures and leads workshops in a wide range of arenas from small town community centers to mountain villages in Mexico to inner city schools. She also creates, performs, and participates in collaborative projects in puppet theater, cantastoria and toy theater. She is a stilt dancer and instructor, and also the founder and chief curator of The Museum of Everyday Life, an ongoing multifaceted museum experiment based in Glover, Vermont, website forthcoming.

DreamWeaver Productions
For over twenty years, DreamWeaver Productions has been entertaining children and adults around the country. Their shows - Dragon Scales and Faerie Tales, and The Enchanted Wagon, and The Snow Queen's Magic Trunk Show have been seen at state and county fairs, schools and zoos, as well as private parties and other functions. Read more at ibelieveinfaeries.com.

Fare Feather Family
Fare Feather Family is made up of Pete LaRussa and Ange Tuulaupua.

Fuzzy Boundary Productions
Cheryl Capezzuti and Kellee Van Aken have been collaborating for almost a decade. In fact, their first collaboration together, Mismatched Pair, appeared in one of the earliest Black Sheep Puppet Festivals. Their most significant piece to date, Colorfast, was an original musical performed as part of the Pittsburgh International Children's Festival's 2004 season. The artistic vision of Fuzzy Boundary Productions is inspired by the rich imaginary world of Cheryl Capezzuti and her well-recognized, community-interactive work, The National Lint Project. The National Lint Project is a community art making inquiry that began in 1994 as a sculptural lark for visual artist Capezzuti. Through collaboration, the Project has grown to include critically noted exhibits, installations of human-sized figures, contemporary puppetry and performance events. Writer Kellee Van Aken finds inspiration in this imaginary world and brings Capezzuti's visual work and concepts to life through her original plays. Both artists believe that the creation and viewing of art, visual and theatrical, can and should be connected to the lives of regular people beyond a traditional art audience. To this end, their work explores every day experience through the populist form of puppetry with the goal of inspiring inquiry, contemplation and delight. Collaboration with other professional artists and arts organizations to fulfill the company's mission is critical to the work of Fuzzy Boundary Productions.

Laura Heit
Laura Heit received her MA from Royal College of Art in London where she made the puppet film "The Amazing, Mysterious and True Story of Mary Anning and her Monsters". She recently completed a new animated film "Look for me" about an invisible girl, commissioned by Channel 4 Television London. She has worked with Redmond Theater, En Fuego and was seen in puppet festivals performing her one-woman piece "The Match Box Shows". She Currently teaches Experimental Animation at CalArts.

Joann Kielar
I have been working as a puppeteer/storyteller and Art instructor for about 20 years. My puppets are simple vehicles for telling stories that I love. I make my own puppets, sets, and props and either adapt favorite stories or write my own stories.

Gregory Knipling
Pittsburgh puppeteer and puppetry historian Gregory Knipling will be presenting a lecture on the history of puppetry. Gregory has performed and lectured at many Black Sheep Puppet Festivals. He was an apprentice to nationally recognized Pittsburgh puppeteer Margo Lovelace. Stop in to hear stories and puppet history from the city's #1 puppetry enthusiast.

Lalka Theater
Olivia Hibel *LALKA THEATER* has been a writer, translater, conceptual artist, and crafts artist -- exhibited in her native NYC. She has adopted Pittsburgh as her home, and merged all her crafts into a whole: Puppetry! Olivia's "puppet-operated-by-robot" was shown at The Mattress Factory this summer as part of ROBOT 250. She recently had the exhausting and enriching experience of studying at University of CT with the artistic directors of The Sandglass Theater of Vermont. Olivia is working on founding the bilingual traveling "LALKA THEATER".

Major Arcana
Mikey Denis is a theatre artist and choreographer from Long Island, New York. He received a B.F.A. in Drama from Carnegie Mellon University. As a student of the School of Drama's directing option he also made scene design and choreography areas of focus. His most recent work as director was 36 Views by Naomi Iizuka, his thesis production. He has also been a dancer since childhood, a teacher of dance as well as an apprentice for The Bread and Puppet Theatre.
Colin Fisher is an artist from New York City who has worked in children's theater as a costume designer for six years before relocating to Pittsburgh in the fall of 2005. Thru exploring the local music scene, Colin along with Amy K. Rappa and Mr. Marcus, formed Kill the Unicorn, a music project that focuses on the multicultural roots of traditional and modern American music.

Beth Nixon
Beth Nixon, the human behind Ramshackle Enterprises (www.ramshackleenterprises.net), has been involved in seven Black Sheep Puppet Festivals performing eight different original puppet shows of her own as well as performing collaboratively with Morgan Andrews of Shoddy Puppet Company. In 2006, with the help of many Pittsburgers, she built an interactive magical land in the Brew House Gallery. Beth is a puppeteer, a frequent snacker, and Rhode Islander, living in West Philadelphia, and sometimes traveling all over to perform shows, and/or work with groups of children and adults to build their own puppets, parades, and pageants.

Janaki Ranpura
Janaki Ranpura of J-J Trinket's has been staging puppet pieces since graduating from Yale University in 1998. The current series, Operations Theater, explores ways to make scientific facts viscerally available to an audience. The work combines physical theater dynamics as developed in Paris by Jacques Lecoq with light play based on Larry Reed's reinvention of Balinese wayang kulit. The series uses contemporary cultural themes to comment on our world. J-J Trinket's Series is Janaki's production company. See more at web.mac.com/jjtrinket/iWeb.

Tom Sarver
An organizer since the inception of Black Sheep, Tom Sarver is the curator of this year's festival. His performance company, The Tom Sarver Puppet Express, has performed throughout the region, and has been featured at five Black Sheep Puppet Festivals. Tom's paintings, sculptures and installations have been featured at The Mattress Factory, The Three Rivers Arts Festival, The Warhol Museum, Artists Upstairs, Art All Night, and other galleries and events throughout the region. Tom is a member of the Brew House Association. Until its closing in the spring of 2008, Tom was curator of the Tom Museum, an ever-changing performance/installation piece and residency.

Flora Shepherd
New Orleanian Flora Shepherd has been performing puppetry since age four. Since graduating from Bryn Mawr College, she continues to both create original puppet shows and work alongside other puppeteers. Her experiences with Basil Twist and Barbara Busackino of Tandem Otter Productions have been especially influential and inspiring. She is hugely grateful to her family for raising her as an active member of her mother's touring troupe: Calliope Puppet and Mast Theatre. With Calliope, Flora toured domestically and abroad performing and giving workshops in places as diverse as Ainsa, Spain and Nachitoches, Louisiana. Check out her brand new website: Highway Puppets.

Shoddy Puppet Company
Philadelphia's Shoddy Puppet Company has performed at five Black Sheep Puppet Festivals to date, often in conjunction with Beth Nixon and Ramshackle Enterprises. This year's Shoddy line-up features Michelle Posadas as The Boy Who Was Made Out Of Tin, and Leslie Rogers in the role of various chickens, with live music from Lucy Schneider, plus the lively narration of Morgan F.P. Andrews. To see what these and other Philly puppeteers are up to, visit www.puppetuprising.org.

Things That Stick
Things That Stick is a group of Pittsburgh-based artists who have merged their collective skills and quirky perspectives to stir up a little dust with their stage debut of "Shoe".

Tinkers Ball
Tinkers Ball is a collaboration between visual artist Kara Skylling and local rock musicians to create imaginative sound- and landscapes evoked by popular songs. The cast: Designer - Kara Skylling, Accordion/Octopus - Hille Frost, Trombone/Swordfish - Dominic Widdows, Drummers/Sea - Will Simmons and Kim Frost, Drummers/Eels - Doug Brünner and Dillon Smay, The Lost Singer - Mike Cuccaro.

Spica Wobbe
Spica Wobbe (Shu-yun Cheng) is an independent puppetry artist from Taiwan. Her work with Shiny Shoes Children's Theater in Taiwan has been seen in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Germany, and Holland. Now based in NYC, she has worked as a puppet/ mask designer, puppeteer and teaching artist with New Victory Theater, Chinese Theatre Works, Creative Arts Team, Theater for the New City and many other theater companies since she received her M.A. in Educational Theater from New York University in 2003. Spica is very proud to be part of the festival. Read more at spicawobbe.com.
Pei-yu Shih is a well known puppet designer, writer and puppeteer in Taiwan. She has worked with Shiny Shoes Children's Theater, Creative Society, Shakespeare's Wild Sisters Group, Theater De La Sardine and many other theater companies. Her work has been seen in China, Korea and Japan. She is the artistic director of Flying Group Theater Company. Her creations "Kitchen" and "Mr.D" were nominated for the Taishin Arts Awards in Taiwan.
Morgan Eckert is a teaching artist, puppet/set designer in NYC. She teaches puppetry and drama at Friends Seminary School and Marquis Studios. She has designed and built set/puppets for New Perspectives Theatre, Classical Theatre of Harlem, Provincetown Playhouse (NYU) and Ohio Northern University. Her work as puppeteer has been seen at McCarter Theater Center, Theater for the New City, Mum Puppettheater and Great Small Works. Morgan's educational background includes a MA in Educational Theater from NYU and a BA in theater from Marlboro College. She has studied with master puppeteers Eric Bass, Ralph Lee and Peter Schumann.

The Wobbly Bucket Brigade
Creator of the project Amy Trompetter, builds directs and performs puppet operas, outdoor pageants, indoor spectacles, and hand-puppet shows. She has led communities in making large outdoor pageants and small indoor shows in Italy, France, Nicaragua, Mexico, Japan, Botswana, Bangladesh, India and China. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Barnard/Columbia Theatre Department and lives in NYC and Rosendale, NY where she founded a performance space for Blackbird Theater. The Wobbly Bucket Brigade is an ongoing project that evolved from the Wobbly Bucket Manifesto. See portion below:
Reflect on current issues that are troublesome to the people. Produce the episodes from history that connect to the intolerable issues of today. Celebrate the resistance of the past that are our hopes for the future!