stitching tentacles productions

Below is what some might call a newsletter. You can receive one directly to your mailbox by clicking here or just visit this page from time to time...

Dear snowflakes or, more appropriately, mud puppies,

Welcome to this (not-so) wintry edition of Stitching Tentacles Productions/ Geppetta quarterly update. Here is our agenda for this evening
:1. Leeway Art and Change grant and the weeping cabin film project
2. Femme Week of Action Reportback on WILD GENDER
3. Heels on Wheels Glitter Roadshow in the Northeast this April
4. Southeast Tour Plans
5. Another year without Facebook

1. Last December I received a Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant to produce a short film that utilizes magical realism and fantasy as tools to portray the hardships of depression, trauma, and suicide and the beauty of survival. Original artwork and puppets from the film will be submitted to the Sent(a)mental Project, a memorial to LGBTQ suicides curated by Dylan Scholinski (who I also must thank for making this project possible on multiple levels). 
  Thanks to the grant I was able to purchase some film equipment and gifted time to learn about film and animation. I also live in an amazing community full of people who are teaching me a thing or two. For the full project description please click here.
   Currently I am wrapping up the storyboard and starting with construction on the film the weeping cabin (working title). I am documenting some of this process here: http://stitchingtentacles.tumblr.com/. 

2. Last month was the Femme Week of Action - a week of events in cities across the United States and Canada to "illuminate and align" femme communities. It was organized to help promote the 2012 National Femme Conference that will be happening August 17th - 19th in Baltimore. 
   Shannon Windsor (Miss Mary Wanna) and I organized an evening of unplugged style performances and an artist talkback at Wooden Shoe Books in Philadelphia. You can read more about the week of action and what the artists had to say on art, politics, and femme identity on WILD GENDER , a newsblog that serves the gender-variant community. Check out the article and make WILD GENDER part of your daily internet repertoire! 

3. The Heels on Wheels Glitter Roadshow is back! Last year we spent over a week touring across the Midwest. Words cannot express how utterly inspiring this tour was, though I will say it ended with matching tattoos. Oh yes, and pictures. 
   This year we will bring our punk rock storytelling, liberation magic, glittery preaching, and whimsical theater to the Mid Atlantic and Northeast. Currently we are still piecing together dates so if you would like to bring us to your community ... please do. You won't regret it. In fact, I daresay you will feel all the more fabulous for it. Contact: heelsonwheelsroadshow at gmail.com

4. Something that is not at all pieced together are my plans for a Southeast tour this June. I would like to work my way down to Tennessee and back. I really love visiting and performing across the South. So please be in touch if have suggestions of places to perform or visit and people to perform with or meet:  stitchingtentacles at gmail.com
(p.s. I really like to visit and/or perform in gardens and haunted houses).
   I am working on a new series of work entitled De Motu Cordis, about out-of-body experiences in domestic situations. 

5. I have been off Facebook for over a year! It really didn't hurt that much. I still feel sufficiently connected by digital means though I would still prefer to interact in person. Be in touch and come see a show or invite me to perform ... or just watch some videos instead


For the love of snow and all things cold and silent.

  Heels on Wheels is a touring group of radical femme-spectrum performance artists based in New York and Philadelphia. Also we all have matching tattoos. Thats how rad we are.

  Last weekend we met up for a planning meeting (minus Amanda who is in Australia) to plan our April tour which will include stops in Richmond, DC, Boston, Providence, and other cities in the Northeast and Mid Atlantic. Needless to say I am quite excited.

Click the fabulous faces above to go to website to see performer bios, photos from last years tour, and to keep up with upcoming tour dates.

Above: (clockwise) Damien Luxe, Shomi Noise, Amanda Cheong, Adelaide Windsome, Heather Acs, and Lizxnn Disaster at Boxcar Books in Bloomington, IN

  This coming Friday and Saturday I will be performing a couple segments of BEWARE DISEMBODIED PHENOMENAS! at the Das Wunderkammer Puppet Kabarett at Cosmic Bicycle (196 Columbia St) in New York!
  Come out at 9pm to Red Hook for an evening of puppet theater for adults and other mature creatures with young hearts.

 p e d a l  t   o    t    h   e    m      e      t     a        l
 

 On Friday, January 20, 2012 at 8pm, the Wooden Shoe (704 South St.) will host Beyond Invisibility Philadelphia in honor of Femme Week of Action. 
  Organized by Adelaide Windsome (Geppetta) and Shannon Lee (Miss Mary Wanna), this free event will take place to celebrate Femme Visibility and a national call to action as the community raises awareness and funds for Femme Con 2012, being held in Boston in August.  Audience members can look forward to "unplugged" style performances from a delicious variety of Philadelphia's femme-identified performers featuring puppetry, music, burlesque, spoken word, and more.  Following the performances, there will be a panel during which performers will field questions from the audience as well as each other, to facilitate a dialogue about Femme identity, art, performing, and community building, with Rebecca Alvarez of ScrewSmart serving as our sparkling mediator.  Femmes and allies of all walks of glittergutterglamour are encouraged to join us for what is sure to be a night of femme-fabulosity in the raw. 

Happy New Year! Unlike a growing cult belief, I really do not think 2012 will be the end of the world though I would like to believe in a massive change in collective consciousness towards social justice and creative vitality. Here's hoping!

Here are some updates:

1. I moved into a studio space in late November. Its a little bit cold but still a wonderful place to sew together monsters and jump around like a banshee.

2. Site updates -
a. You may have noticed the title change from 'Geppetta' to 'Stitching Tentacles Productions.' This is to represent a broader range of work that I have been doing as opposed to strictly the cabaret puppetry. Though I am obviously still very much involved in cabaret puppetry.
b .In the next month I am going to change this site around a little bit. Mostly exchange the current computer made images for more handsewn crafty ones.

3. FOLKTOPIA at PhilaMOCA! If you are in Philly this Saturday please come out to this amazing multimedia event with Liz and the Lost Boys, the Something Society, and others! See the flier below for details.

4. If you would like quarterly updates please join my e-mail list by click HERE

 e a r t h q u   a   k   e        s

I have this inkling that this will be very g

    This past year has been incredibly busy and fulfilling. I had the opportunity to perform at numerous festivals such as Idapalooza Queer Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee and Let's Make a Ruckus! at Painted Bride in Philly, tour with some incredible performers such as the Heels on Wheels Glitter Roadshow, and debuted a full length performance at Blood from a Turnip in Providence. It feels so invigorating to participate in a range of multimedia extravagance with such talented people! Over 30 different shows!

Please check for updates soon. January will feature Folktopia at PhilaMOCA which will feature a collaboration with my self an experimental musician a stick and a stone and then performance/ panel discussion I am organizing with Miss Mary Wanna in honor of the Femme Week of Action on January 20th in Philly
See the upcoming performances page for more details!

I will also be commencing work on a yet-to-be titled short film which I received a Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant to create. More updates soon.

l e t  i t  s n  o  w    !


 

Come out to this event curated by SHARP TEETHS dance collective featuring Geppetta (with guests a stick and a stone and Briel Driscoll from Bodyfields), Benni E., Fatima Adamu, and others! plus a DANCE PARTY!
December 16th 9pm - 2am @ 3rd St Loft (meet @ 3rd St Septa stop at 9pm or call number on flier after)...