LIZ OAKLEY
I am a puppeteer, designer, performance-maker and teaching artist who brings unexpected locations and objects to life. I work with a wide range of puppetry and performance styles in order to create surprising and interactive performances that animate the inanimate. I seek to identify and challenge spatial rules and definitions, and to present narratives and imagery that name the unnamed, notice the unnoticed, celebrate the forgotten, and interrupt the everyday. I create puppets for theatrical productions, community events, and all the seemingly mundane moments & spaces in between. My puppets are everything from large deconstructed animals to tiny figurines made from found objects, to cast shadows.
In 2019 I completed the annual actor-puppeteer training at Théâtre Aux Mains Nues in Paris, France with the help of a scholarship from UNIMA-USA.
I hold a BA from Brown University in Spatial Studies, an independently-designed concentration which looks at how people subjectively experience physical space and how we collectively attribute meaning to places. I am interested in using puppetry to subvert and call attention to normative uses of our landscapes.
I have worked as teaching artist with Fleisher Art Memorial, Puppetry in Practice, Wingspan Arts, and the Children's Museum of the Arts. I have also worked as a puppeteer at the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre in Central Park. I have also worked with various community-built and communally-minded giant puppet theaters, including Processional Arts Workshop (NYC), In the Heart of the Beast (Minneapolis, MN), and Bread and Puppet Theatre (Glover, VT). I am currently based in Philadelphia, PA.
