Join our international guest artists and local community leaders for three exciting panels that discuss the festival’s themes from the perspective of literature, local traditions and history, and social change. The Access Through the Arts forums are a meeting place between our guest artists, local leaders, and you, the audience.
The three panels will take place on three different days and are by donation to attend. All panels will take place at 118 Elliot.
All conversations will be live streamed through Howlround.
1. The Animacy of the More-Than-Human World
Friday, 4:30 PM
Featuring Tom Lee, Hobey Ford and Rich Holschuh
This panel explores materiality, ecology, and the metaphors of illumination through the work of artists who invite audiences to reconsider the boundaries between human and nonhuman worlds. Through light, shadow, and the transformation of objects and environments, the conversation examines how performance can reveal the animacy of matter and the shared breath between humans, animals, and objects.
Panelists reflect on ways cultural belief systems, rituals, and artistic practices imbue objects and landscapes with life, and what becomes possible when humans make space for the agency of the more-than-human world rather than imposing their own. With a focus on care, stewardship, and deep attention, the discussion considers how histories—human and beyond—are embedded in the environments around us, from rivers to forests, and how performance can help us perceive and honor these connections.
Tom Lee Bio
Tom Lee is a director, designer, and puppet artist whose work combines manipulated figures, objects, film techniques, and animation. He began his career at La MaMa Experimental Theater and is a student of Koryū Nishikawa V. Recent projects include a puppetry adaptation of The Left Hand of Darkness at the Chicago Puppet Festival and Mirrored Pool at Atlanta’s Center for Puppetry Arts, presented alongside Child of Wood, an exhibit of his puppet work. Lee was a member of the original Broadway cast of War Horse and has designed and performed puppetry for major opera and theater productions, including Florencia en el Amazonas and Madama Butterfly at the Metropolitan Opera. He is a 2025–2026 resident artist at Northwestern University, recipient of the 2025 3Arts Teaching Award, and co-director of Chicago Puppet Studio and Chicago Puppet Lab.
Hobey Ford Bio
Hobey Ford is an internationally recognized puppeteer, designer, and master storyteller known for his inventive performance style and craftsmanship. Winner of the UNIMA Citation of Excellence and a three-time recipient of grants from The Jim Henson Foundation, Ford blends Bunraku, rod puppetry, marionettes, shadow work, and his original puppet forms into performances that have toured worldwide. He is especially known for creating the expressive hand puppets called “Peepers” and the large-scale foam-carved animal puppets known as “Foamies,” engineered for remarkably lifelike movement. Drawing on studies at SUNY Purchase and UNC Asheville, Ford designs and constructs all of his puppets and scenic environments. His works, including Whale Walker and Turtle Island Tales, adapt global folk traditions through his distinctive “Golden Rod” storytelling style, combining original voices, sound effects, music, and movement.
Rich Holschuh Bio
Rich Holschuh is a resident of Wantastegok (Brattleboro, Vermont) whose work is deeply rooted in the stories, history, and living culture of the region. He served for seven years on the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs and continues to act as a public liaison and cultural relations representative among contemporary Native communities. Rich is the founder and director of the Atowi Project, an initiative focused on fostering deeper relationships with place through history, language, geography, and cultural understanding. His work brings together research, education, and community engagement to encourage more thoughtful and reciprocal ways of seeing and being in relationship with the land. Guided by the principle ibitta wlidaha — “only with a good heart” — Holschuh’s work emphasizes respect, stewardship, and cultural continuity across generations and communities.
2. Talking About Endings
Saturday, 12:30 PM
Featuring Federico Restrepo, Denise Greber, Nehprii Amenii and Abigail Mnookin
Artists and thinkers gather to explore what it means to live in a time shaped by ecological crisis, technological change, and cultural disconnection from processes of death and ending. This conversation asks how we might approach endings with responsibility, care, and reflection in a world saturated with information but often lacking space for grief.
Panelists consider the challenges of speaking about death, loss, and climate change—especially with younger generations—and reflect on how we hold, process, and release grief both individually and collectively. The discussion opens space for reimagining cultural relationships to endings, inviting more honest, compassionate, and generative ways of acknowledging transition, impermanence, and letting go.
Nehprii Amenii Bio
Nehprii Amenii is an award-winning Brooklyn-based director, playwright, production designer, and puppeteer whose work blends visual storytelling, performance, and audience interaction. She is the Artistic Director of Khunum Productions, a New York–based company dedicated to creating immersive narrative experiences that combine the personal, the social, and the magical. Her productions are known for dissolving the boundary between performers and audiences, inviting deeper emotional connection and participation. Through interdisciplinary performance and design, Amenii explores transformation, ritual, and collective imagination, creating work that seeks to inspire empathy and meaningful social change.
Federico Restrepo Bio
Federico Restrepo is a Colombian-born director, choreographer, puppet designer, and performer whose work merges dance, puppetry, and visual design. Born in Bogotá, he trained in mime and ballet before moving to New York in 1985 to study at the Merce Cunningham School. Since then, he has developed a distinctive puppetry style that treats sets and puppets as extensions of the dancer’s body, creating immersive and constantly transforming theatrical environments. Restrepo is the founder and artistic director of Loco7 Dance Puppet Theatre Company and a longtime resident artist at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, where he has premiered numerous original works and served as Producing Director of the La MaMa Puppet Festival. Deeply inspired by the history of the Americas, Colombian culture, and life in New York City, his work combines movement, visual spectacle, and storytelling in productions that have toured internationally.
Denise Greber Bio
Denise Greber is a director, designer, educator, and arts administrator who has served as Managing Director of Loco7 Dance Puppet Theatre Company since 2001. She has contributed to the development of numerous Loco7 productions as a writer, director, costume designer, and performer, including Urban Odyssey, Don Quixote Takes NY, Open Door, and The Bad Hearted, for which she received a nomination for Best Costume Design at the Innovative Theatre Awards. Greber is also Director of Artistic Operations at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, where she oversees programming, scheduling, international collaborations, touring, and special initiatives including the La MaMa Puppet Festival and Great Jones Repertory Company. With a background in acting and theatre performance from Brooklyn College, she has also worked extensively as a teaching artist, sharing her passion for theatre, dance, puppetry, and arts education with students of all ages.
Abigail Mnookin Bio
Abigail Mnookin has been enamored with birth since the birth of her first child in 2012. She supports families through liminal spaces and transformative times, working as a birth assistant for a home birth midwife as well as a professional birth and postpartum doula. With a background in Environmental Science, she also weaves webs of connection mentoring youth in a weekly outdoor program with the Vermont Wilderness School. Abby loves singing, community building, and spending time near water.
3. New Beginnings: Puppetry as Resistance and Reflection
Sunday, 12:30 PM
Featuring Jana Zeller, Anurupa Roy, Sofie Krøg, and Lissa Weinmann
This panel highlights puppetry’s enduring role as a tool of resistance and a mirror to systems of power. Bringing together artists working across traditional and contemporary forms, the conversation explores how satire, exaggeration, metaphor, and magical realism can challenge political, social, and cultural authority.
Moving between reverence and irreverence, panelists examine how puppetry creates space for dissent, critique, and reimagination. The discussion also considers the generative tension between endings and beginnings—how moments of rupture, revolution, and rebuilding demand creative vision. In these spaces of uncertainty, puppetry and performance offer powerful means to imagine and articulate new possibilities for collective futures.
Anurupa Roy Bio
Anurupa Roy is a puppeteer, director, and founder of the Delhi-based Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust, established in 1998. Katkatha takes its name from the Hindi words kat (wood, from katputli or puppetry) and katha (story), reflecting the company’s focus on storytelling through puppetry and visual theatre. Drawing from Indian epics, Shakespeare, community narratives, and stories from conflict zones, prisons, and children’s worlds, Katkatha creates work using fabric, papier-mâché, shadow puppetry, and found materials. Roy’s acclaimed production About Ram was developed with support from the India Foundation for the Arts in collaboration with animator Vishal Dar and master puppeteer S. Chidambara Rao. In addition to performance, Katkatha is dedicated to puppetry training and education, offering workshops, mentorship, and intensive programs to support the next generation of professional puppeteers in India.
Jana Zeller Bio
Jana Zeller is a second-generation puppeteer, performer, and educator whose work is deeply rooted in the European hand puppet tradition. As part of Sandglass Theater, she grew up painting puppets, sets, and props before developing her own career creating and performing original productions presented throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Germany, and India. Zeller has conducted extensive research into the 400-year history of hand puppetry, including interviews with Bread and Puppet founder Peter Schumann about traditional German fairground performance practices. She performs and teaches puppetry across New England and leads visual art classes for children from her studio in Brattleboro, Vermont. Sandglass Theater, founded in 1982, is internationally recognized for combining puppetry, music, actors, and visual imagery in original ensemble works that explore contemporary issues, inspire dialogue, and spark wonder.
Sofie Krøg Bio
Sofie Krøg is a Danish puppeteer, director, and founder of Sofie Krøg Teater, one of Denmark’s leading contemporary puppet theatre companies. Founded in 2003, the company is internationally recognized for its distinctive cartoon-inspired visual style, intricate puppetry, and magical mechanical scenographies that blend humor, illusion, and theatrical invention. Sofie Krøg Teater has toured in more than 32 countries, presenting acclaimed productions including DIVA (2004), THE HOUSE (2010), CIRCUS FUNESTUS (2016), and QUACKSALVER (2022). Known for creating imaginative performances that appeal to audiences of all ages, the company combines technical precision with playful storytelling to create immersive theatrical worlds that surprise, enchant, and challenge perceptions of contemporary puppetry.
Lissa Weinmann Bio
Lissa Weinmann is a producer, writer, and co-owner/manager of 118 Elliot, a Brattleboro arts and performance space promoting arts and education since 2017. She is co-founder and director of the NEH-funded Brattleboro Words Project, celebrating the town’s literary heritage through community storytelling, publications, podcasts, and exhibits. Lissa also serves on the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel, where she leads the Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee, and is board member emerita of the Windham World Affairs Council. Originally from Queens, New York, she moved to Brattleboro in 2008 with her partner, John Loggia, and their two children. She holds degrees from Columbia University and Syracuse University and has worked as a journalist and policy consultant. She enjoys yoga, biking, kayaking, and exploring Vermont’s history and landscape.