The wonderful Tatsu Aoki and Asian Improv aRts Midwest is helping me produce a show featuring the full repertoire of my work, including a preview of a new collaborative piece!

Shadow’s Play

Saturday (July 14) 2018  | 8:00pm
Elastic Arts, 3429 W Diversey Ave #208, Chicago IL 60647
Tickets: $10 regular

For the first time ever, Myra Su will be performing a full repertoire of original work along with a brand new collaborative piece with renown artist/creative musician Tatsu Aoki. Join us through a myriad of worlds and stories, into a city made out of paper, a boy on his first deer hunt, a journey through heartbreak, and an inky face-off between creator and creation. This body of work is mainly from Myra’s shadow puppetry repertoire, but the evening will also include genres outside her specialty, such as crankie and digital projection.

I am a featured artist at Links Hall’s benefit party, THAW, this year! This will be my Chicago debut of my crankie piece, INKED!.

The Chicago-Baltimore exchange continues! Emily Schubert invited me to present at the 2018 Baltimore Crankie Fest! I’ll be debuting a new piece that combines crankie with digital projections.

2018 Baltimore Crankie Fest

Friday (January 5) | 8:00pm
Saturday (January 6) | 4:30pm & 8:00pm
Tickets: $16 regular, $13 members (+$3 at door)

Baltimore’s beloved festival of scrolled panoramas, known as crankies, return for a 5th year of true fireside magic and puppetry wonder. As in previous years, new crankie’s are created for their festival debut and we line up musical surprises throughout the night.

Get tickets here: http://www.creativealliance.org/events/2017/2018-baltimore-crankie-fest

PHOTO UPDATE:

Creative Alliance entrance

INKED!

2018 Baltimore Crankie Fest curtain call

The wonderfully talented Emily Schubert and I met at the National Puppetry Slam last year, and we’re delighted to be part of Links Hall’s upcoming Midwest Nexus Touring Exchange program: Trade Routes!

Trade Routes

Thursday (November 30) – Sunday (December 10) 2017 | 7:00pm
Tickets: $12 online, $15 at door ($10 for Students/Seniors)

Five Chicago-based artists/companies have been selected to participate in TRADE ROUTES, a festival of artistic exchange. Each local artist will select an out of town partner they would like to host in Chicago and split a bill with during our festival, and each exchange project will be given a $1,500 travel stipend so that the Chicago artist can go touring to their partnering artist’s hometown.

Get tickets here: http://linkshall.ticketfly.com/search/?q=trade+routes
Interview: http://www.linkshall.org/2017/11/trade-routes-interview-myra-su-emily-schubert/

PHOTO UPDATE:

THROUGH THE LOOKINGGLASS

Emily Schubert’s HEART SPLINTERS

COPY & PASTE

Emily Schubert’s RESIST THE GLOOM

Trade Routes curtain call

With assistance from the Midwest Nexus Touring Exchange Grant, I will be bringing a few shadow puppet pieces, with Mitch Salm and Allyson Gonzalez, to the Black Cherry Puppet Theater in Baltimore, Maryland.

Chi-More Puppet Exchange

Saturday (December 2) 2017  | 6:30pm & 9:30pm
Tickets: $10 regular ($8 starving artists)

The Chi-More Puppet Exchange is the brain child of Chicago and Baltimore-based puppeteers who met at the 2016 National Puppet Slam. The Exchange aims to bridge the two cities, by bringing artists from Chicago to perform in Baltimore, and vice versa. Join us for a night of cabaret-style performances, featuring cantastoria, shadow, and crankie puppetry.

Get tickets here: https://blackcherry.ticketspice.com/chi-more

PHOTO UPDATE:

Trucker Talk opens the show

From Sam Grossman’s PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

From Emily Schubert’s RESIST THE GLOOM

Two kids with front row seats for COPY & PASTE

The team behind the Chi-More Puppet Exchange

I was invited to participate in a panel at the Museum of Contemporary Photography for their new exhibit, Viviane Sassen: UMBRA. Experts from a variety of disciplines were brought together to discuss the ways in which the idea of the shadow figures into their professional practice. The panel included Mary Dougherty, Jungian psychoanalyst and art psychotherapist; Dr. Andrew Johnson, Vice President of Astronomy and Collections at the Adler Planetarium; Chicago-based author of ‘Heartbreaker’ Maryse Meijer, Myra Su, a narrative artist specializing in storytelling through puppetry and theater, and Viviane Sassen.

I will be debuting a new piece, AN INTER-DIMENSIONAL LOVE STORY, at the 2017 Chicago International Puppet Festival, as part of the Immaculate, Poignant and Medium Length lineup! We will be performing at Links Hall on:

Mon, Jan 23 @ 7:30pm
Tue, Jan 24 @ 7:30pm
Wed, Jan 25 @ 7:30pm

http://www.chicagopuppetfest.org/event/immaculate-poignant-and-medium-length/

This piece is definitely on the more experimental side for me. The story has changed a little from its initial conception, so the synopsis on the website is outdated. AN INTER-DIMENSIONAL LOVE STORY tells the story of a², who is a square from Flatland, a 2D universe loosely based on the book ‘Flatland’ by Edwin A. Abbott. A² follows a monotonous, prescribed routine each day, but his life is turned upside down when he falls in love with a three-dimensional being, Charlotte. In order to reach her, he travels between the 2nd and 3rd dimension, wherein each dimension is represented by a different style of puppetry.

Now that’s a long distance relationship.

SPOT OF BOTHER opens tonight as part of the A-Squared Asian American Performing Arts Festival! We will be performing alongside an eclectic selection of performers, ranging from musicians, comedians, dancers, and installation artists.

The A-Squared Asian American Performing Arts Festival features four evenings of contemporary dance, music, performance art, puppetry, sound art, spoken word, and theatre by American artists of Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, and Vietnamese descent.

On Saturday October 22 at 5:15 pm, there will be a sight, sound and taste installation delving into the interaction of memory, rapid development and food inspired by Hoi An’s outdoor night culture and the diverse Vietnamese cuisine derived from China, France, America and the indigenous people of Vietnam.

We will be performing at Links Hall (3111 N. Western Ave) on the following dates:

Thursday, Oct 20 @ 7pm
Saturday, Oct 22 @ 7pm

For tickets and more information, please visit: http://www.a-stw.org/asquared-asian-american-performing-arts-festival.html

While we are in town for the National Puppet Slam, we will also be participating in Dragon Con programming:

The Shadow Cabaret, September 2 @ 11:30pm

• We will be performing SPOT OF BOTHER at this late-night shadow puppet cabaret.

Into the Shadows, September 3 @ 11:30pm

• I will be a panelist on this shadow puppeteer panel.

For the full puppetry track schedule at Dragon Con, please visit: http://puppetry.dragoncon.org/?page_id=281

PHOTO UPDATE:

Selling puppets at our merch table

Puppeteers at DragonCon! Photo Credit: Beau Brown

DragonCon puppet slam opening

Tryfuss’ BLIGHT performance

Not-for-kids puppetry 😉