Center for Puppetry Arts

Performances: in its first full theatrical season in the post-covid era, the Center offered over 400 performances391 family series and 23 new directions series for adults and teensacross fifteen fully-staged theatrical productions. Family series productions included Center productions like rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, click clack moo: cows that type, and pete the cat and new directions series productions included the ghastly dreadfuls, xperimental Puppetry theater, nick lehanes chimpanzee, and tarish jeghetto pipkins 5pin0k10. The Center also completed a ten-month long refresh of the mainstage theaterthe oldest and largest of the organizations two performance venuesenabling patrons to have a more enjoyable theatrical experience in a space thats easier to clean and sanitize.

Education: in addition to offering over 1,000 hours of the centers signature create-a-puppet workshops, staff reached over 4,200 children and adults with outreach programming and over 3,600 students of all ages and abilities with special workshops. This included presenting literacy-focused workshops to over 650 students in 27 elementary classrooms in cobb county and working with over 2,750 theater students and teachers at state-level thespian festivals. Meanwhile, the digital learning team used zoom to share workshops and puppet shows with nearly 24,000 audience members. Digital learning also began offering free programming to room bound patients at childrens healthcare of atlanta and won another pinnacle award from the Center for interactive learning and collaborations (cilc).

Museum: in addition to welcoming over 70,000 visitors into the museums two permanent exhibition galleries, the Center offered a variety of pop-up and special exhibitions and programming. Special exhibitions included masterpiece of Puppetry: the dark crystal: age of resistance, which explored the jim henson companys work for the 2019 netflix series; christmas town, which highlighted the history of rudolph the red-nosed reindeer and featured stop motion puppets from the 1964 rankin/bass television special; and a Puppetry now exhibition showcasing the work of tarish jeghetto pipkins, a ground-breaking artist who uses salvaged and recycled materials to create afro-futuristic puppets in a post-apocalyptic world.