Drawing on folk, avant-garde, and popular theater traditions to address contemporary issues, you'll love their miniature “toy theater” spectacles

THE ARTISTS

GREAT SMALL WORKS was founded in 1995 as a collective of artists with the goal of keeping theater at the heart of social life. Drawing on folk, avant-garde, and popular theater traditions to address contemporary issues, the company performs in theaters, clubs, schools, galleries, streets, and other community centers. Based in New York City, they produce performance works on a wide variety of scales, from outdoor pageants with giant puppets and hundreds of collaborators, to miniature “toy theater” spectacles.  The company continues its tradition of Monthly Spaghetti Dinners, variety evenings founded in the late 70's which include music, live performance, and vegetarian spaghetti. GREAT SMALL WORKS productions consistently reinvent ancient, popular theater techniques: toy theater (Papiertheater), mask and object theater, circus, sideshow, and picture-show (cantastoria) to name a few. On any scale, GREAT SMALL WORKS productions seek to renew, cultivate, and strengthen the spirits of their audiences, promoting theater as a model for participating in democracy.

GREAT SMALL WORKS has received a 1997 Village Voice OBIE Award grant, a 1997 UNIMA Citation for excellence in puppetry, a 1998 NYFA Community Assets Grant, and the 2005 Puppeteers of America Jim Henson Award for innovation in puppetry. Great Small Works is a non-profit corporation, whose members are: John Bell, Trudi Cohen, Stephen Kaplin, Jenny Romaine, Roberto Rossi, and Mark Sussman.