Toy Theater Festivals

Toy Theater Revival Movement!

Sparking what has become a full-scale revival movement, GREAT SMALL WORKS has produced ten International Toy Theater Festivals, which have featured the work of hundreds of local and international theater and visual artists. A crucial component of these festivals has been The Temporary Toy Theater Museum. Festivals and exhibits have taken place at Theater for the New City (1993, 1994), Los Kabayitos Puppet Theater at the Clemente Soto Velez Community Center (1996, 1998), HERE Arts Center (2000, 2003) and St. Ann’s Warehouse (2005, 2008, 2010 and 2013) and four “Isolating Together” on-line festival evenings in 2020. Programs from Great Small Works International Toy Theater Festivals and Temporary Museums are archived here.

Report and photos of 2005 festival by Rainer Sennewald.

En dos dimensiones: A Penny Plain & Two Pence Colored

A New film about Toy Theater in Mexico, featuring Great Small Works and many of our queridos colegas Mexicanos! Filmmaker Abigail Espíndola credits us with sparking off the Toy Theater revival movement in Mexico!!!

Isolating Together: Great Small Works’ Online International Toy Theater Festival

During the crisis of Covid-19, six evenings of Toy Theater plays were presented via Facebook Live. More than 100 different productions were performed, by puppeteers and visual artists from around the globe. Hosted live by Great Small Works members, some shows were presented as pre-recorded videos and some were performed live. The Toy Theater form has proven to be surprisingly well-suited to the digital realm — quarantined puppeteers could make a show on their kitchen tables, the Toy Theater frame fits perfectly in the frame of the personal screen, and hundreds of people could have an intimate viewing experience at the same time.