Martina Plag: Artist-in-Residence

Martina Plag creates puppetry for adult audiences to address contemporary issues and advocate social change and awareness. She is German and practiced architecture for ten years before pursuing her love of puppetry. Her masks, puppets, automata and experimental short films have been in juried exhibitions and have awarded her seven residencies. In 2008, she established her puppetry atelier: studium-praxis, which under her artistic direction has presented four original productions; two of which were invited to the Joyce SoHO New Dance Alliance Performance Festival and the Festival of Jewish Theatre and Ideas at Theater Three in NYC. Ms. Plag has designed puppets, sets and prototypes for Mum Puppettheatre, Enchantment Theatre Company, The University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Gas & Electric Arts, New City Stage Company, WHITE BOX THEATRE: Philadelphia; Slingback Productions, NYC, the Children's Theatre Company, Minneapolis, MN, Rowan University, Glassborough, NJ , People’s Light & Theater Co, Malvern, PA, and the International Opera Theater in Città della Pieve, Italy.

Beth Nixon: Artist-in-Residence

Beth Nixon is the human behind many Ramshackle Enterprises. She creates puppets, masks, piñatas, parades, pageants, clown acts, suitcase theaters, magical lands and other spectaculah, on her own, and in collaboration with other humans of all ages and abilities. She comes from Rhode Island, lives in West Philadelphia, and travels frequently to places where exciting building, performing, investigating or facilitating opportunities arise. Mostly she uses cardboard, science, and the imagination. Her performances and puppet installations occur in galleries, garages, street corners, and living rooms up and down the East Coast. She has been an artist-in-residence at dozens of schools, senior centers, addiction recovery and mental health programs. Beth believes in the power of bike helmets, cornstarch, tide pools, emancipatory pedagogy, utopian performatives, and snacks. She has an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College. She was awarded a 2010 Leeway Transformation Award for her art and social change work and a 2008 Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts. For more info on Beth’s endeavors please see www.ramshackleenterprises.net