Meet the Artists:

Lake Simons is a director, designer, puppeteer, physical performer, and a maker of things. She has collaborated with a wide range of artists creating theater productions that utilize puppetry, movement, and live music. Most importantly she relies on make-believe. Simons has received multiple Jim Henson Foundation grants in support of her original puppetry productions. She has created performances for various institutions including Miller Theater at Columbia University, Texas Woman’s University, and Dixon Place. Most recently, Simons assumed the role of managing artistic director for her family’s 46-year-old company, Hip Pocket Theatre in Fort Worth, Texas. For more than 25 years she has contributed to Hip Pocket as a director, performer, and designer. Simons is a co-director of the Puppet Lab at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. She teaches puppetry in the theater department at Sarah Lawrence College.

John Dyer (Papertrumpet) is a New York-based -songwriter, -composer, musician, theatre and visual artist. His primary instrument is guitar. He has been writing, recording, presenting, and performing original work since 1990. Dyer was the founder of the Texas-based rock group Drama Tiki (1992-1998) and served as music director for North Carolina’s Paperhand Puppet Intervention (1999-2001). In New York he has performed / presented at The Knitting Factory, Tonic, Living Room, American Folk Art Museum, St. Ann’s Warehouse, HERE, Dixon Place, La MaMa, St Marks Church, and Theatre For The New City. Independent album releases include One Among (2000), Phantom Fire (2003), and Independent Music Awards’ Best Album Finalist – GoStayPlay (2004). His song Hot Owl received an Honorable Mention (for Best Song/ Performance) in the International Songwriting Competition. He is the recipient of nine consecutive ASCAPlus Awards, two Meet The Composer grants and multiple Dallas Fort Worth Theatre Critic’s Forum Awards. Theatrical collaborations with physical theatre / puppetry artist Lake Simons, include Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (2003), White Elephant (2009), Wind Set-up (2011), Moby Dick (2012), A Tempest (2013), Tree Pop (2015), Don Quixote (2016), The Land Of Oz (2017), Loop The Loop (2018), Arcadia Darling (2019), and Pixie Posy (2021). Online at Facebook.com/Papertrumpet.

Marcella Murray is a New York-based theater artist from Augusta, Georgia. She is a playwright, performer, collaborator, and puppeteer. Murray’s work is heavily inspired by the observed ways in which people tend to segregate and reconnect. Her work tends to focus on themes of identity within a community and forward momentum in the face of trauma.

Performances include The Slow Room, a piece directed by Annie Dorsen at Performance Space New York; a workshop of Ocean Filibuster which was co-created by the team Pearl D’Amour (Lisa D’Amour and Katie Pearl) with composer Sxip Shirey at Abrons Arts Center; I Don’t Want to Interrupt You Guys which was created in collaboration with Leonie Bell and Hyung Seok Jeon during RAP at Mabou Mines; New Mony created by Maria Camia; and Shoot Don’t Talk at St. Ann’s Warehouse / Puppet Lab created by Andrew Murdock.

Along with David Neumann, she recently co-created Distances Smaller Than This Are Not Confirmed (Obie Special Citation for Creation and Performance) which opened at Abrons Arts Center, co-produced by Chocolate Factory, in January of 2020. She is currently one of four curators of the Object Movement Festival at the Center at West Park.