SINCE DECEMBER OF 2000 the city of Philadelphia has celebrated the end of the calendar year with a cabaret and art sale entrusted to the auspices of Puppet Uprising, a unique cultural phenomenon that brings local and touring puppet artists to perform together for a night or two in the back of the Rotunda at 40th and Walnut Streets. THE 2009 YEAR-END CABARET featured the talents of some half-dozen locals, many more from around the U.S., plus a pair of puppeteers from the city of Yogayakarta, Indonesia. The Cabaret proved to be our most risqué to date, with full-frontal puppet nudity, partial frontal human nudity, as well as puppets and wildlife being placed precariously into the mouths of medium-sized carnivores.

A web search for "underground puppets United States" led Iwan and Ria of PAPERMOON PUPPET THEATRE to land at Puppet Uprising where they debuted a short piece of suitcase theater. REBECCA NAGLE came from Baltimore with a mix of rhyming couplets, ashtanga yoga, striptease mimery, contortionist lapdances, and socialogical experiments on the audience in three excerpts from her one-woman variety show "A Dozen Things I Want To Do Onstage." New Orleanian OWEN BRIGHTMAN shared his swampy fantasy of anarchist prince Jean Lafitte, re-imagined as a hybrid man/beast in hot pursuit of a puppeteer's affections in "Centaurs Among Sagittarius." THE ROYAL FROG BALLET drove down from Massachusetts with "The Year of Wanting," an intimate hand-cranked, candlelit shadow puppet show based on the Greek myth of Persephone and a patchwork of other winter folktales set to the one-man-band magic of THE SUITCASE JUNKET, who also played music throughout the evening.

Local performers included: GEPPETTA (Adelaide Windsome of Puppelele/Flora Y Fauna fame) with "Freaks and Fortunes," the inner process of a young girl dealing with herself in a piece that comes to life through evolving landscapes, glittering fortunes and grotesque creatures. KESTREL PLUMP & BETH BLUM debuted an excerpt from their upcoming touring show "Imaginary Insides," enacted as an off-the-cuff bronchoscopy on a puppet corpse. LESLIE ROGERS screened three teensy weensy puppet shows in her mouth via live video feed, and THE GREAT QUENTINI brings down the house with his annual visitation to the Puppet Uprising stage with multiple botched attempts to catch a giant fly, slo-mo flag dance action, and a mixing bowl percussion solo entitled "Free Junk." As always, the Year-End Cabaret was officiated by various incarnations of MORGAN ANDREWS and BETH NIXON and preceded by the annual HOLIDAY CHEAP ART BAZAAR where many of the above artists offered snippets of their presence for others to take home. Other essential tokens and talismans handmade by local craftspeople and the JUST SEEDS ARTISTS' COOPERATIVE were also available for perusal.