Puppet Uprising rounds out each year with its famed roster of quick and quirky antics from local and touring puppet artists: The Year-End Cabaret and Great Big Cheap Art Bazaar. Beth Nixon hosted the 2008 episode of a cabaret that gave us a glimpse into several possible futures...

Philly puppeteer Beth Nixon played host and gave us a gaze into the future with "Disaster Banana." Baltimore's Robot Neutron (a.k.a. Roby Newton, previously seen performing in KING LEAR) combined hand puppets, shadows, a noise soundtrack and live narration in "Interference," the story of a stranger from the mountains caught between an unfamiliar city and transmissions from another world. Boston's one-woman band Puppelele played a triad of short sea shanties on her uke while manipulating marionettes with her feet and knees. Eating The Other (local hero Michelle Posadas teaming up with musical prodigy Jailbird Thunderheart) debuted their newest bi-coastal projector-puppet collaboration. Young starlet Calamity Rose gave us her rendition of The Raven in honor of Edgar Allen Poe's upcoming 200th birthday, and The Great Quentini brings Philly's puppet year to a satisfying close with his annual visitation.