Rough House’s inaugural Expansion Residency reflects what we value most: meeting artists where they are, investing in process, and creating space for risk, rigor, and imagination. Whether expanding outward or building from the ground up, each artist will share work shaped by care, experimentation, and community. Over the course of the residency, the resident artists will deepen dramaturgy, refine design, and build toward richer, more fully realized performance experiences.
We can’t wait to gather for the showcase and celebrate six distinct puppet visions—each at a powerful turning point in its journey.
THE MEDIUM LENGTH WORKS RESIDENTS
Tanima's artistic practice encompasses clown, devised physical theatre, puppetry, choir, poetry, and most recently stop-motion video. Tanima has worked in street and professional theatre across India and in Chicago, and is currently exploring political aesthetics rooted in genre, ensemble, and the uncanny magic of puppets. The piece Tanima is developing is called 'Fireflies Dream.'
Casey Doe is a multidisciplinary Chicago artist, practicing tattoo, woodblock printmaking, and puppetry. Their puppets have been featured in Rough House’s House of the Exquisite Corpse and NBS Cabaret, as well as Shoestring and Puppetqueers puppet slams. Recurring interests include elements of body-horror, doll-like characters, and the interface of the human and natural world.
Steven Widerman is Artistic Director of The Puppet Company, a performing company that produces puppet theater for children and their families. He has been involved in the application of puppetry to entertainment, education, industry and advertising. With the assistance of artists, woodcarvers, painters and costumers, he has designed and built a remarkable variety of hundreds of puppets.
THE SHORT FORM WORK RESIDENTS
T. Jordan Christmas is a listener and storyteller. At the feet of her elders, she absorbed the rich and complex fragments of her family history. Through the generative power of puppetry, poetry, and prose, the goal of T. Jordan Christmas is to channel that ancestral wisdom, advocate with the marginalized for justice and peace, and to kindle within hearts and minds the desire to take part in those loving actions that shift the energy of our world.
Felix Mayes is a multidisciplinary storyteller and puppeteer in Chicago. Their work balances innocence and horror to create characters and narratives that feel both human and otherworldly. Sharing their experiences with mental illness, trans queerness, and being brown in America keeps their work unique and relatable.
Sion Silva is a non-binary, Chicago-based visual artist, puppet maker and performer whose personal work specializes in the philosophy of myth and the macabre. Outside of their personal work, they are a freelance art and puppetry fabricator, working alongside Chicago Puppet Studio, Rabbitfoot Puppetry, Rough House, Tom Lee, Whitesnake Productions, Drury Lane, and Kehoe Designs.