Public Performance
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K. Elizabeth Evans
Jeff Cleve
Johanna Dunphy
Lateisha Johnson
Terri Fayko
Margarita Ruiz
Bruce Brachman
Ryan Bunch
The mission of Renaissance Artist Puppet Company is to promote excellence in puppetry as a Theatrical art form and as an Educational tool.
We create Puppet theatre productions and Puppet theatre educational residencies, designed to challenge and inspire growth in our artists, our clients, and our community.
We provide the highest quality of design and construction for the performance arts.
About our Company members:
Our Artistic and Residency director and President is K. Elizabeth Evans. Renaissance Artist Puppet Company is an extension of her theatrical vision. She has been working in the Theatre Industry for 30 plus years. She is a veteran of classical and puppet theatre design and has also spent her share of time directing and teaching principles of theatre performance and design to the next generation. Although the core artistic vision of our company does come from Elizabeth,all of our members provide input and creative ideas for our work, and our company has been expanding.
Jeff Cleve has been on board for five years and brought with him a wonderful humorist insight. Jeff's ability to see humor in a scene where it is needed is only exceeded by his amazing ability to create character voices. His talent has served the company in many productions. However,in "Alice Through the Looking Glass" in which he manipulates eleven characters and gives each a uniquely different voice he truly exceeded all expectation. He is also a welcome addition to our production building team, acting as our primary carpenter.
Johanna Dunphy (Jo), Jo's background is as eclectic as the rest of us. She has a strong musical background, playing piano, singing,
and composing.
She is comfortable in the dancer's role as well. She Graduated from
Richmond, the American International University in London with a BA in Theatre Arts, minor in Art, Design, & Media. In addition to her performance work, Jo is also
the director of our Video Editing department.
We are very pleased to have her as a member of the Renaissance Artist Puppet Company family.
Lateisha Johnson , made her maiden flight into Puppetry with the production of “Irrepressible Araminta”. She brought a cultural authenticity to the difficult role of Harriet Tubman. Lateisha came to Renaissance Artist Puppet Co. with
a strong background in dance, experience in Theatre, Film, and TV commercial work. Having joined the company in January and with one major role under her belt Tei tackled her first multi-character production with “Alice Through the Looking Glass”. This was also her first Table top puppet production. She stepped up to the plate and is making major strides in
her puppetry theatre performance work.
Lateisha is also becoming our inhouse Grant Writer.
Terri Fayko, Board Director, has performed in the puppetry world for over twelve years. She founded her own company Chinaberry puppet. Her company provided much entertainment and Puppetry education to the New Jersey state. She worked for Sadeky's Puppets as the head touring puppeteer. Terri joined Renaissance Artist Puppet Company in April of 2003 and has worked with us as a part time performer since. Her part time status does not reflect her talent, as she is a bundle of professional quality performance. There is no puppet that Terri has ever picked up that she did not bring to life with a true feeling of what that character or persona was. Terri holds a bachelor of life experience and on the job training. Our company would not trade it for all of the College degrees in the world.
Margarita Ruiz, Secretary, has taken a less active role at Renaissance Artist Puppet Company during the 2007-2008 year. She is still working with the company from the side lines and appearing in one of our Spring productions this year. Her outgoing spirit and tremendous singing voice will continue to compliment our ensemble. Margarita utilized her fluency in written and spoken Spanish in the production of Hispanic myths, "Colores del Agua, the Colors of Water". She is also pitching in with her stage management skills and helping with the vital research we do for each of our performances.
Bruce
Brachman, Vice President, has been supporter of the company for many
years. He has shared his expertise with computer graphic design and his
puppet building abilities on so many occations we can't even keep track.
We are always grateful that Bruce is willing to give of his time and energy
to help Renaissance Artist Puppet Company to continue to grow and evolve.
Ryan Bunch, Board Director, was our Music Director. Ryan brought his unique gift of music composition to our company. All of our full stage productions have musical scores or underscores, most of which he wrote. Our smaller productions have musical elements which heighten both production value and audience enjoyment. Ryan's ten plus years of experience in music composition and puppet theatre contribute to the high level of performance quality of our company's works. Ryan still works with the company on a peripheral basis, but is launching his own Music instruction company this year.