Learn to Build Reed Puppets with Grace Needlman
Learn to build giant reed puppets in this hands-on workshop offered live in person in Chicago. All material included with enrollment.
Puppets-in-Progress
PIPs is an informal gathering for testing out new puppet and object-based performances. Bring whatever you’re working on and get encouragement and feedback from other puppet-folks!
The Joy of Puppet Mechanisms LIVE
Join Rough House Co-Artistic Director Mike Oleon to learn how to make a mechanized puppet! We’ll equip you with a prefab kit of puppet parts and teach you the secrets of building a puppet incorporating several basic mechanisms, including moving mouth, head, and limbs.
Nasty, Brutish & Short
Nasty, Brutish & Short is a late-night puppet cabaret happening on both Friday and Saturday night (Jan 26 & 27). Join for wild, innovative, and exceptional puppetry from local legends and out-of-town heros.
Nasty, Brutish & Short
Nasty, Brutish & Short is a late-night puppet cabaret happening on both Friday and Saturday night (Jan 26 & 27). Join for wild, innovative, and exceptional puppetry from local legends and out-of-town heros.
Puppets in Progress (PiPs)
PIPs is a FREE informal gathering for testing out new puppet and object-based performances. Bring whatever you’re working on and get encouragement and feedback from other puppet-folks!
Stay after from 5-9pm for a puppetry exhibit called Potential Energy! Celebrate material and formal invention, trace networks of collaboration, and discover some of the exciting questions and possibilities that are animating puppet art today.
Puppets in Progress (PiPs)
PIPs is a FREE informal gathering for testing out new puppet and object-based performances. Bring whatever you’re working on and get encouragement and feedback from other puppet-folks!
Are you new to puppetry and want a low stakes way to test the waters? Are you an old hand with a new project? Are you a dancer, comics artist, performance poet, teacher, lifeguard, engineer just curious about what puppetry looks like today?
Everyone is welcome! Bring a project, no matter how rough, or just come for the conversation.
House of the Exquisite Corpse
Rough House Theater's annual Halloween seasonal haunt, House of the Exquisite Corpse III, rises from the dead for its third reign of puppet theater terror.
This year's peep show/puppet theater anthology features 6 news acts inspired by the book “Our Homes and How to Keep Them Healthy,” published in 1883 by Robert Brudenell Carter.
Do you dare step into the shadows?
Nasty, Brutish & Short: A Puppet Cabaret, Sept 2023
Watch artists perform live on stage in-person or virtually. Rough House and Links Hall are pulling out all the stops to create a multi-camera puppet variety show. Combining the polish of network variety show and the rough magic of an experimental cabaret, we welcome you to the new abnormal!
Puppets in Progress (PiPs)
PIPs is a FREE informal gathering for testing out new puppet and object-based performances. Bring whatever you’re working on and get encouragement and feedback from other puppet-folks
!Are you new to puppetry and want a low stakes way to test the waters? Are you an old hand with a new project? Are you a dancer, comics artist, performance poet, teacher, lifeguard, engineer just curious about what puppetry looks like today?
Everyone is welcome! Bring a project, no matter how rough, or just come for the conversation.
We Missed the Train and Had to Wait
We Missed the Train and Had to Wait playfully re-envisions Anton Chekhov’s 1904 play The Cherry Orchard in a palette of clown, mime and found-object puppets. An exploration of property, progress and the places we call our own, We Missed the Train invites audiences to join in the party - before it’s too late.
Puppets In Progress
PIPs is an informal gathering for testing out new puppet and object-based performances. Bring whatever you’re working on and get encouragement and feedback from other Chicago puppet-folks!
House of the Exquisite Corpse 2022
Dare to enter the HOUSE OF THE EXQUISITE CORPSE, a horror peep-show puppet-theater anthology. Peer through keyholes, cracks, and hidden doors to discover surreal worlds that will terrify and amaze!
Nasty, Brutish & Short: A Puppet Cabaret
Let’s get ready to PUPPPPPPETTTTT. Join us online OR in-person for Nasty, Brutish & Short September. Strap in, hydrate, and brace yourself for one puppety ride.
Nasty, Brutish & Short: A Puppet Cabaret
Does your heart sing for strange and wondrous art? Join us online OR in-person for Nasty, Brutish & Short May 9th. Open your soul and let the good puppet vibes in!
Invitation to a Beheading
In collaboration with Michael Brown and the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, Rough House presents Invitation to a Beheading.
Nasty, Brutish & Short: Puppet Festival Edition
Jan 21,22,28,29. Get Tickets.
This is your chance to double or triple down on an evening of puppetry by hitting the late show to round out your puppetry day. The wild rumpus continues into the night with this special edition of Nasty, Brutish & Short, the quarterly cabaret curated by Rough House. This is home for raucous, raunchy, dark, sassy, sad and mostly hilarious puppet theater, featuring Chicago’s charming and furry host, Jamison. During the festival, the series will highlight the high flying out of towners, joining local legends in a night of revelry, followed by friendly unwinding at the Links Hall/Constellation Lounge afterward.