About the Rough House

The Rough House is an interdisciplinary puppet and object-based theater company based in Chicago. We believe that theater should be wild, beautiful, brutal and always sincere.

While the empathetic nature and imaginative possibilities of puppets enable us to relate stories in a way that human actors never could, we embrace visible human players on stage rather than hide them behind mask or curtain.  After all, a puppet without a performer is a little more than an inert object. This visibly intimate interaction symbolizes our fight for the enduring humanity that resides within the analog and the low-fi amidst a world of ubiquitous digitization. In utilizing found and recycled objects, we seek to bring new life to the old artifacts that society is quick to dispose of and eager to forget. Our work balances the Elegant with the Rough.

After headlining the 2011 National Puppetry Festival with Ichthyodyssey: a Fish Puppet Rock Opera, which performed in a 1200 seat venue, we desired a return to small-scale theater. Premiering in March 2012, our newest production, Murder Ballads, is an intensely intimate penny arcade of five musical tales of murder. Through peepshow-like detail, Murder Ballads provides a harrowing, humorous and heartbreaking close-up of our most basic fears, and our basest urges.