Puppets Gone Wild, Starting Tomorrow

I love puppets. Seriously, I do; they’re simultaneously creepy as hell and really, really neat, especially when they’re done well — one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen was this elaborate Elizabethan puppet stage I saw at the V&A Museum of Childhood in London, partly because of the insane amount of detail that went into the damn thing.

All of which is to say that this weekend marks the start of the seventh annual Bobbindoctrin Puppet Festival, put on by (duh) the good people of the Bobbindoctrin Puppet Theatre and featuring a bunch of cool-sounding puppetry performers/performances, including some names you might recognize from H-town scenes gone by (Mike Switzer, for one). Plus, there’s new stuff from folks like Joel Orr, Kevin Taylor, & Paedarchy Puppets (which includes SCR‘s own Robin Babb; yay!).

This sounds pretty awesome to me, at least. The event invite promises all different kinds of puppets, from shadow puppets to hand puppets and beyond; some of the performances will be live, but others are short films, it looks like.

The thing’s at the Midtown Arts Center (3414 LaBranch), starting tomorrow, Friday, March 4th, at 8PM. The festival runs March 4-7, then March 11-13, with shows at 8PM all days except the 6th & the 13th, which are “Fambly Days” and have performances the early-sleepers in the family can probably make it out to, at 2PM (and yes, that apparently also means the performances will be tailored specifically for the kids; some of the stuff in the nighttime shows may not be suitable for wee ones). The tickets are “pay-what-you-will,” in true Houston-art fashion, with a suggested donation of $12.