Call for Presentations - Fishing Fresh: Fishing for Fresh Ideas

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Fishing Fresh: Fishing for Fresh Ideas

Part of the 24th UNIMA Congress & Chuncheon Puppet Festival

Do you have a puppet project you can’t wait to share? Are you seeking ideas or collaborators? Do you have innovations or creative breakthroughs that need to be told?


We want to hear from you!

We’re calling for short 3-minute presentations from UNIMA members and Korean puppetry practitioners to share fresh ideas, unique practices, and inspiring stories from the world of puppetry.

Whether you’re an artist, educator, researcher, or part of a theatre group, this is your chance to contribute to a global exchange of creativity.

 

What can you present?

Your 3-minute talk could include:

 

  • A unique performance or puppetry technique (including a work in progress coming close to launch)

  • The use of new technologies (including AI)

  • A puppetry project with positive social impact

  • A social or educational puppetry initiative

 

Deadline to apply: May 9th

Date: May 29th 

 

Who can apply?

  • UNIMA members (individuals, institutional or independent theatre groups)

  • Korean theatre makers, researchers, and institutions – whether or not you are a UNIMA member

 

Language & Presentation Guidelines

Presentations can be given in English, French, Spanish or Korean.

 

Speakers will be asked to:

  • Provide a summary of their presentation in all three languages

  • Submit their presentation slides in advance

 

Format:

There will be both in-person and online sessions, so members worldwide can participate.

 

Why join?

  • Share your work and ideas with an international audience

  • Celebrate innovation and creativity in puppetry

  • Connect with fellow artists, thinkers, and makers

  • Get inspired and inspire others!

This session will be held in a relaxed, fun, and creative atmosphere — a space to celebrate fresh thinking in puppetry together.

Application form: https://forms.gle/wSSZsNQEuBZ9CdKt7

Contact: youth@unima.org

 

@24th UNIMA Congress - Chuncheon 2025

Secrétariat Général de l’UNIMA | 10, Cours Aristide Briand – BP 402 | 08107 Charleville-Mézières – France | +33 (0)3 24 32 85 63

Hand-Crafted Dragon Puppet Takes Flight in Forked Web Series Premiering at New York CineFest

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New York, NY — Puppet artistry plays a pivotal role in the new indie web series Forked, making its world premiere at New York CineFest (April 26th at 4:30pm ET) with a three-episode screening that includes a standout fantasy sequence featuring a custom-built dragon puppet, brought to life by two acclaimed artists in the puppetry world: designer/builder Chris Palmieri and puppeteer Nick Lehane.

The series, created by and starring Sarah Goeke and directed by Julia Sears, is an intimate and irreverent story about sobriety, shame, and self-discovery—told through the lens of a woman narrating fantasy erotica from her childhood bedroom. But in one surreal sequence, the story escapes the confines of that room and soars into full fantasy, thanks to the presence of a mesmerizing dragon puppet.

Palmieri, known for his work on Disney’s Winnie the Pooh, Field Station: Dinosaurs, and Snug’s House (NBCUniversal), designed and built the puppet specifically for the Forked sequence. With a career spanning high-profile theatrical productions, national tours, and commercial puppetry design, Palmieri crafted a creature that captures both whimsy and emotional weight.

“We wanted the dragon to feel grounded in the world of fantasy erotica but still emotionally connected to our main character’s inner journey,” said Palmieri. “It had to be sexy, but also sincere.”

To bring the creature to life, the team brought in Nick Lehane, a world-renowned puppeteer celebrated for his original solo puppet piece Chimpanzee, as well as his work with War Horse and Avenue Q. Lehane’s ability to imbue breath and emotion into all his characters made him the ideal performer to embody the symbolic, dreamlike episode in Forked.

“The dragon represents what is underneath the surface,” said director Julia Sears.  “She is enticing, playful, and a little over the top. Nick immediately brought Chris’s creation to life which actualized a magical moment of self acceptance in the series.”

The sequence exemplifies what Forked does best: blending grounded emotional storytelling with surprising, theatrical visuals. The dragon becomes a symbol of desire, escape, and fantasy—an embodiment of the show's central tension between repression and freedom.

Shot over six days in Pittsburgh with a 16-person crew, Forked exemplifies the artistry and inventiveness of independent filmmaking. While three episodes will screen at CineFest—including the fantasy dragon sequence—the full seven-episode season is currently beginning its film festival run.

For puppet enthusiasts, practical effects lovers, and fans of character-driven fantasy, this is a rare chance to see expert hand puppetry featured in a deeply human story.

🎬 World Premiere of Forked
📍 New York CineFest
🗓️ April 26, 2025 @ 4:30pm Block 17 - Shorts
🎟️ Tickets & Info: www.newyorkcinefest.com/tickets

📲 Follow @ForkedWebSeries on Instagram for release updates, festival news, and behind-the-scenes stories from the making of the series.

 

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Announcing the Garland Distinguished Fellowship for Puppetry

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The Hambidge Center in Rabun Gap, Georgia has announced a special Distinguished Fellowship opportunity specifically for a puppeteer! The Garland Distinguished Fellowship for Puppetry is an award given to an outstanding applicant in the field of puppetry. It is a a merit-based award that removes the fees for a two-week residency and provides a $700 stipend as well.

The oldest residency program in the Southeast, Hambidge provides a self-directed program that honors the creative process and trusts individuals to know what they need to cultivate their talent, whether it’s to work and produce, to think, to experiment or to rejuvenate. Residents’ time is their own; there are no workshops, critiques, nor required activities.

Each resident is given their own private studio which provides work and living space with a bathroom and full kitchen. The studios are designed to protect residents’ time, space and solitude.

Deadline for the FALL SESSION (September through December) is April 15, 2025.

For more information and/or to apply, visit the Hambidge Center's website: https://www.hambidge.org/guidelines-apply

Wishing the best of luck to all who apply! 

New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations

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The first presentation of its kind, New African Masquerades offers a rare look into contemporary West African masquerade by contextualizing the works of individual artists within a range of social, economic, and religious practices and examining their networks of viewership and exchange.

April 4th - August 10th, 2025 • NOMA (New Orleans Museum of Art)

Apply for the 2025 National Puppetry Conference

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Calling all puppet artists: Our friends at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, CT, are now accepting applications for the 2025 National Puppetry Conference! Apply now to grow your skills and develop exciting new works of puppet theater. This year’s renowned instructors include Alice Laloy, Noel MacNeal, Maiko Kikuchi, Chamindika Wanduragala, Liz Hara, Jim Kroupa, Kurt Hunter, Alice Gottschalk and more! Applications will be accepted until February 6, 2025, at 11:59pm PST.

Learn More: https://www.theoneill.org/pup

Apply Now: https://theoneill.submittable.com/submit.

Call for Papers - Theatralia: Journal of Theatre Studies

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Theatralia: Journal of Theatre Studies is inviting you to submit your proposals for the upcoming spring issue of 2026. 

Issue topic: Puppetry with(out) Classics

Issue Editors: Kateřina Dolenská (DAMU, Prague, Czech Republic, Editor-in-chief of Loutkář [Puppeteer]) and Gabriella Reuss (PPCU Budapest, Hungary, and KU Ružomberok, Slovakia)

We invite research articles (4,000‒7,000 words) that explore the tradition, theory, practice, and even the avoidance of adapting classical works to the puppet stage. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

  • the simplified classics – the repertoire and dramaturgy of the travelling puppeteers and their role in popularizing and disseminating classical plots and narratives

  • performances of classical drama that aim to elevate, emancipate and/or legitimize puppetry as a theatrical form equal in artistic power to actors’ theatre

  • the performance of classical texts with the meaningful co-presence and interplay between the puppet and the visible puppeteer, adding layers to the interpretation

  • references/allusions/traces of classical texts in puppet productions that play with the distance, the emergence of visuality, and give room for an increased role of object theatre and technology

  • reasons, examples and tendencies of avoiding performing classical /canonized dramatic texts

For the Events, Archive, and Review sections, we welcome contributions (1,000‒1,500 words) that highlight recent puppetry-related publications, festivals, conferences, performances, or report on projects/workshops/trainings or materials and techniques that should be preserved, or brought to focus, within the context of contemporary theatre studies.

Important dates

 Proposal/abstract submission deadline: 15 April 2025 – Decision: 25 April 2025

Manuscript submission deadline for peer-reviewed sections (Yorick, Spectrum): 25 July, 2025

Manuscript submission deadline for non-reviewed sections (Reviews, Archive, Events): 30 November 2025

Issue publication: Spring 2026

 

All issue-related enquiries as well as submissions should be sent to the issue editors: theatralia@phil.muni.cz.

General guidelines for submission, formal requirements, article template and citation style are available at the section for authors on the Theatralia website. 

Theatralia is a peer reviewed journal of theatre and performance history and theory, issued by Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, and indexed in SCOPUS, EBSCO and ERIH Plus and listed in the Ulrich’s web Global Serials Directory.