“A quirky, unconventional hour of theater, Mine sparkles like one of the diamonds whose commodification it critiques.” – Thinking Theater NYC

A mountain, mined of her insides, collapses into rubble. Near the wreckage, a marriage ends and the home grieves the loss of the family it once housed. Underground, a groundhog hoards an enormous collection of the family’s discarded sentimental items. As the Rubble, the Home, and the Groundhog attempt to reassemble the remnants of their crumbled histories, their worlds begin to merge and intertwine.

Directed and Performed by Shayna Strype, MINE uses a variety of puppetry styles, live-feed projections, stop-motion animation, wearable sculptures, and humor to weave together themes of nostalgia, excess, and the destructive human urge to colonize land, bodies, and minds.

Director/Performer: Shayna Strype is a theater, film, and puppetry artist based in Brooklyn. Her latest film, Our Mine, was commissioned by Heather Henson and Handmade Puppet Dreams. She received a Jim Henson Foundation Workshop Grant in 2020 to create MINE, a solo puppetry performance. Her short film Pink Fluffy Hope was awarded Best NY Film in the LA Puppetry Guild’s 48 hour Film Festival in 2020. Her films have been screened at various international festivals including Tacoma, The Festival of Moving Objects, and Los Angeles Women in Film. In 2019, she was Director of Puppetry for Pig Iron Theater Company and Mimi Lien’s Superterranean. Shayna was an Artist in Residence at the Object Movement Puppetry Festival in 2018 where she created a multimedia puppetry piece called Antrak. She holds an MFA in Theater from Sarah Lawrence College. For more on Shayna, visit http://shaynastrype.com/, follow her on Instagram @woosieparty, or check her out on Facebook here.

Producer: Ruth Lichtman is a multidisciplinary artist, producer, and director whose video work has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Huffington Post. She art-directed “Animated Life”, an Emmy-nominated science puppet video series and has produced podcasts for Two-Up, Crooked Media, and The Lasker Foundation. She is a director of audiobooks for Penguin Random House.
RFLichtman.com

Stage Manager: Caren Celine Morris is a multidisciplinary theatre artist from The Bronx. She aims to promote inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in all of her projects. Caren has worked on projects at The Tank, Quill Entertainment Company, The Cradle Theatre Company, the New York Musical Festival, Derek Fordjour Studios and The Bushwick Starr. She is very proud to represent The Bronx.

Production Designer: Nehprii Amenii Nehprii Amenii is a director, writer, puppeteer and educator. She has worked with and created puppetry for Bread and Puppet Theatre, In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Foundation, La Mama Theatre, The New York Phil Harmonic, and more. She has enjoyed 20 years of teaching and Curriculum Development, and uses arts integration to help newly arrived immigrants share their own stories. She mentors NY DOE teachers in cross curricular uses of puppetry and storytelling. Nehprii is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors lab and the Stage Directors and Choreographer’s Society. She has served as advisor for Ballard Institute and Museum of puppetry, and is recipient of the Lipkin Prize for playwriting for her original stage Play Food for the Gods. She has been awarded from the Puffin foundation and the LMCC. She is recipient of 2020 The Puppet showplace Theatre’s Black Empowerment Grant , and is most recently a 2021 grant recipient of the Jim Henson foundation. Nehprii is author and Illustrator of Memories of the Little Elephant, and is the artistic director of Khunum Productions.

Projection Designer: Britt Mosely is a New York City based multidisciplinary artist from Denver, CO. who works in performance, video, ceramics, painting, and audio. He has shown and workshopped the performance Buena Vista (also with Sean Petell) at the St. Ann’s Warehouse (NY), Dixon Place (NY), and the IEA at Alfred University (NY). Other works have been shown at the Hammer Museum (CA), LaMama ETC.(NY), Rochester Contemporary Arts Center (NY), Three Four Three Four (solo exhibition) (NY), Phipps Conservatory (PA), Special Special (NY), Silas Marder Gallery (NY), the Long Island Nature Conservancy (NY), Pratt Institute (NY), Jane Hartsook Gallery(NY), Dekalb Gallery(NY), among others.

Lighting Designer: Paige Seber is a Lighting Designer for Theatre, Dance, Opera, Music, Immersive Events, and now Puppetry. Her work has been seen onstage at Minetta Lane, the Skirball Center, the Joyce, Dixon Place, Theatre For a New City, and The Havana Theatre Festival. In the past year her work has been seen on screen with the ChamberQueer QUEERantine Festival, International Contemporary Ensemble’s TUES@7 series, and George Mason University’s Mason Arts at Home series. Paige holds a BFA in Lighting Design from The Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Webster University and is a proud member of United Scenic Artists USA-829. For more information and a few videos of Paige’s work visit seberlighting.com

Live Feed Camera Operator: Desiree Mitton is a performer and writer. She is currently pursuing her doctorate degree at New York University.

Composer: Jordan John Parker is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and sound designer. He has scored a wide variety of projects, including feature-length indie films, advertising and online marketing content. His shoegaze band Vivienne Eastwood has performed throughout NYC and the Northeast, Northside Festival, and was most recently featured on Thrasher.com. In December 2020 he debuted a new solo project, Pleajure.

This Dixon Place Commissioned Production is made possible with private support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Cheryl Henson & the Jim Henson Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Scherman Foundation, and Shubert Foundation; public funds from the NYC Dept of Cultural Affairs w/the City Council, and the NY State Council on the Arts w/the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo & the NY State Legislature; and generous donors like you!

Check out all 4 shows here.
Watch a short trailer for the 4 shows here.