Beth Nixon is the human behind Ramshackle Enterprises. She builds puppets, masks, piñatas, parades, pageants, magical lands and other spectaculah, on her own, and in collaboration with people of all ages. She has a zeal for facilitating groups of kids, adults and seniors in the creation of puppet performances of their own, often presented in parks, parking lots, and other non-traditional settings. She is an enthusiastic proponent of cardboard construction, a fan of old-school cornstarch paper mache and is often singing the praises of the Rapid 31 Staple-Plier. In her own, often solo, work Beth practices an imaginative form of theater sometimes more clown act than puppet show. The work that she writes, builds, and performs tends to be wryly comedic and often employs suitcase theater, cantestoria and layers of costumes. Beth tends to blend honest autobiography, social/political commentary, and scientific information together with manipulations of time and scale, usually resulting in work simultaneously profound, relevant and absurd. Beth's performances have explored a wide variety of topics: dust mites, gentrification, sloths, symbiosis, white supremacy, baleen whales, ATMs, anteaters, identity theft, pay phones, elections, Pterodactyls, pregnancy, eyeballs, disaster, canoeing... She is a regular host and performer at Philadelphia's Puppet UpRising, frequently collaborating with Morgan Andrews. She performs at The Black Sheep Puppet Festival in Pittsburgh and at other locations up and down the East Coast. An interactive installation of Beth's newest puppet work will be exhibited at the Manchester Craftsman's Guild in Pittsburgh from Oct. 2009-January 2010.
Please visit: www.ramshackleenterprises.net