Woodcut and letterpress poster by Morgan F.P. Andrews

Space 1026 opened up the rear of its Chinatown gallery space for a Puppet Uprising Cheap Art Bazaar for Philly's First Friday in March of 2001. The Art Bazaar continued the next evening alongside a performance of Trash Dragons & The System, the second full-length touring show by Vermont's Insurrection Landscapers and the first full-length puppet show to be hosted by Puppet Uprising. RPM Puppet Conspiracy hopped on the Landscapers' tour in Philadelphia, and both groups presented snippets of their shows as aprt of a children's puppet cabaret on Sunday afternoon at the CEC in West Philly.

In the months leading up to giant anti-globalization protests in Quebec City, RPM Puppet Conspriracy and the Insurrection Landscapers' nationwide tour explored the issues around the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a governmental trade agreement that would give large corporations free economic reign over the Western Hemisphere. RPM's tabletop show, Attack of the Killer UCOs, spun the story of corporate-controlled "free trade" through the plight of a society of rats whose source of food and material goods (dumpsters) are taken away from them. The Insurrection Landscapers brought the FTAA and corporate globalization home by unpacking flat cardborad ideas and cantastoria banner manifestoes in the face of an absurdist toy theater puppet stage that occasionally opened its doors to spew the ideological garbage of capitalism. In the end, everything was set ablaze in glorious cardboard fire.

The children's matinee at the Community Education Center inserted snippets of these shows in between a retelling of The Brementown Musicians. Local puppeteers Steve Abrams also performed an asortment of his Aesop's Fables.

See RPM Puppet Conspiracy here.
Half of the Insurrection Landscapers are now The Dolly Wagglers.
Visit Space 1026 online here and read about the show in the InLiquid archive here.
Read about the FTAA through Wikipedia and Global Exchange.