ALICE: Stranger Theatre popped the characters from Lewis Carroll’s two Alice novels to life with puppets, physical theater and stop-motion animation. In "and what Alice found there," Alice’s trek through the perilous and hallucinatory landscape of Wonderland runs parallel to Carroll’s personal narrative of Victorian times, illuminated by a montage of vintage photographs, shifting maps and bygone science. The spindly and neurotic creator tries to retain hold on his creation, while sketching out the troubling history of his century, as Alice struggles with the world he has put her in. Bizarre, dark, funny and absurd, and what Alice found there combined cartography with puppet theater to examine imperialism, madness, and the nature of creation.

FRANK: A lot has changed since Frankenstein's Monster was shunned, feared and attacked by mobs of angry villagers with torches. Gone is the rustic countryside dotted with barns, mills, castles and ignorant peasants. In its place stands the modern neighborhood, with its fitness centers, internet cafés, and citizens who are informed and enlightened to the wonders of the world. And when the Frankenstein Monster walks into this world, how do we react? Borrowing a smattering of text from the annals of Situationist philosophy (Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life) Using shadow puppets, masks and the improvised action of several audience "volunteers" (heh), Philadelphia's Shoddy Puppet Company dragged The Modern Prometheus from the pages of Mary Shelley's 19th century novel and thrust it into commonplace occurances, making the ordinary awkward, absurd, unsettling, unpredictable and uproarious.

Stranger Theatre hail from Toronto, Canada and they debuted in Philadelphia with their show The Counterfeit Marquise in 2005.
Shoddy Puppet Company is a collection of mad science experiemnts orchestrated by Puppet Uprising curator Morgan F.P. Andrews.
The two companies have performed together at Pittsburgh's Black Sheep Puppet Festival, at the RadiCackaLacky Puppetry Convergence in Chapel Hill, and at The Packet Palace in Montreal.