Kayfabe explores how the ritual of performance bleeds into reality & how reality bleeds into performance. Philosopher Roland Barthes wrote, “the function of the wrestler is not to win; it is to go through the motions that are expected of him.”

Expect the unexpected when form meets function, when reality & fantasy collide, when lines between real & fake blur—this is Kayfabe.

Kayfabe is made possible, in part, with support from the Jim Henson Foundation; Jerome Foundation; Shake on the Lake Inc; the NYC Dept of Cultural Affairs w/the City Council; and New York State Council on the Arts w/the support of Governor Hochul & the NY State Legislature.

Josh Rice is a multidisciplinary theatre artist specializing in puppetry & improvisation. He makes work that is playful, absurd, and tragic, incorporating simple performer-driven spectacle, puppetry, live music, improvisation, and audience interaction. Heavily influenced by his life-long fandom of professional wrestling, comedy, and his training as an improviser, Rice is the recipient of a ’24 Jim Henson Foundation Production Grant, a ’23 Jim Henson Foundation Workshop Grant, a ’23 Arts Council for Wyoming County (ACWC) Flash Grant, a ’22 NY State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Grant, and ’22 ACWC Community Arts Grant. Original puppetry work includes The Marooned (New York State Puppet Festival); The VaudeVillains and Composite Portrait (La MaMa Puppet Slam); The Tempest (Shake on the Lake & Sarah Lawrence College). He adapted, designed & directed Shake on the Lake’s puppet-infused A Christmas Carol.

Puppetry Performance Credits: Chimpanzee by Nick Lehane (Flipside Festival, Singapore); Akutugawa by Tom Lee & Koryu Nishikawa V (Japan Society NYC, Chicago Puppet Festival, U.S. Tour, Japan Tour); Dan Hurlin’s Demolishing Everything with Amazing Speed (Bard SummerScape, Holland Festival); Shank’s Mare by Tom Lee & Koryu Nishikawa V (NYSPF, Paris, Chicago Puppet Festival, La MaMa, Japan tour, Hawaii tour, U.S. tour); Petrushka w/the NY Philharmonic Orchestra (The Barbican); The Scarlet Ibis (Prototype, HERE Arts); Janie Geiser’s Reptile Under the Flowers (St. Ann’s Warehouse). As Founder & Producing Artistic Director of the New York State Puppet Festival, a biennial festival of puppetry in Perry, NY since 2019, Josh has programmed performances, exhibitions, film screenings, & workshops with Bread & Puppet Theater, Dan Hurlin, Koryu Nishikawa V, Tom Lee, Jeghetto, Sifiso Mabena, Leah Ogawa, Concrete Temple Theatre, among others. Add’l curating credits: NYSPF@Home Streaming Puppetry Series and Puppet BloK at Dixon Place. He is the founder & host of The Puppet Pod! an interview-based podcast w/puppetry artists and is on faculty at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, MFA, Sarah Lawrence College.