Haverty Marionettes creates bold, dynamically sensorial theater. With innovative adaptations and original work, we seek to expand and explore the vocabulary of puppetry and the language of theater.

Artistic Director’s statement:

Each piece of theater is different, and is thus created differently, with different aims, methods, and inspirations. I do not put much faith into pre-written rules of how to make theater, or what theater is – its nature is expansive and uncontrollable. It comes from deep wells of feeling within. Today I am interested in expressionist movement, abstract linearity, and a combination of actors with performing objects that allows the audience to participate in many layers of meaning. I seek in my productions a fluid mood, a dynamic flow of visual, aural, and tonal information. My intent is to bring ideas together in a way that, at times, ridicules comprehension, eliminates the conscious will, and invites questioning of the subject matter and of the nature of perception. I want each audience member to experience their own journey through my productions, picking up pieces of information that are personal to them; constructing their own meaning to a large extent. The surreality of my productions mirrors the absurdity of our contemporary world.

I seek to make a play like an abstract painting. We stand in front of it and let it wash over us, the visual stimuli creates an atmosphere which we may then fill with our own personal feelings, memories, contemporary thoughts and concerns. I seek today to create an atmosphere like this. Also, as I always have, I seek to have fun, to provide an enjoyable experience that stimulates the mind. Humor is very important in my work - often black humor, or mad, absurd humor.

I am interested in theater that moves forward in form to address our contemporary experience of perception and existence. I seek to create something NEW, something wholly of this moment in form, motive, and content.