Artist Statement

My earliest performances, in the late 70's, featured objects which were masks or costume extensions of my own body. Dresses and skirts of unusual materials-- 3,000 walnut shells, 90 lbs. of glass, dozens of fresh fish--became an integral part of my autobiographical performances. After a while, I felt alone onstage in these solo works, and I began to create small likenesses of myself to take on certain supporting roles. These were my first puppets. Soon, there were so many "little Theodoras" onstage, that I was able to exit the performing arena and take over the director's role outside the frame. My works expanded out from autobiography, to consider large-scale subjects, such as the history of American invention, genetics, food and famine, incarcerated women and medicine. I have always felt that puppet figures have an innocence and a purity that make them especially effective in illuminating social and political issues. Those qualities, in addition to their ability to express deeply felt emotions to an audience, have led me to incorporate a wide variety of puppets into my performance and installation works for the past four decades.

Biography

Theodora Skipitares is a visual artist and theater director, who has been creating her works for more than 40 years. Born in San Francisco of Greek parents, she moved to New York in 1970. Trained as a sculptor and theater designer, she worked briefly as a designer for groups such as Richard Schechner's THE PERFORMANCE GROUP, Omar Shapli's SECTION TEN, and Andrea Balis' THE CUTTING EDGE. She began creating personal solo performances in the mid 1970's. Gradually, she moved away from autobiography, and began to examine social and historical themes. Realistic, life-size puppet figures, as well as miniature ones, became the performers in large-scale works that included live music, film, video and documentary texts. These works were often collaborations with prominent composers such as Virgil Moorefield, Bobby Previte, Scott Johnson, Pat Irwin, Barry Greenhut, David First, Tim Schellenbaum, Arnold Dreyblatt, and most recently LaFrae Sci, Mazz Swift, and Sxip Shirey. These works include THE AGE OF INVENTION, an examination of 3 centuries of American ingenuity featuring 300 puppets, DEFENDERS OF THE CODE, a history of eugenics, and THE RADIANT CITY, a music-theater work based on the life of Robert Moses. More recent projects include UNDER THE KNIFE, a site-specific story of medicine which took an audience to twelve different theater environments, and BODY OF CRIME, a history of women in prison. In 1998 she premiered A HARLOT'S PROGRESS, a chamber opera with life-size puppet figures based on the engraving series by William Hogarth; in 2001 she completed OPTIC FEVER, an exploration of Renaissance artists and their new way of seeing. She has received a UNIMA Citation for Excellence in Puppetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, a McKnight Playwriting Fellowship, and a Helen Merrill Award for Playwriting. DEFENDERS OF THE CODE was named one of the 10 Best Plays by the New York Times. A HARLOT'S PROGRESS is one of the Burns Mantle 10 Best Plays of the 1997-8 season. A HARLOT'S PROGRESS is also the winner of the American Theater Wing's Hewes Design Award.

Her visual work has been exhibited widely in the U.S., Europe and South America. She traveled to Vietnam and Cambodia and created opera works in collaboration with Ellen Stewart (founder of La MaMa Theater) and national puppet theaters. She also directed and designed a production of Charles Ludlam's THE ENCHANTED PIG of Sundance Theater. Three times in the past 20 years, Ms. Skipitares has been a Fulbright Fellow in India, where she has worked with Indian puppeteers and choreographers to create new projects.

When the Iraq War began in 2003, Ms. Skipitares returned to the ancient Greek playwrights for inspiration and created 3 works about the long and bloody Trojan War: HELEN, QUEEN OF SPARTA; ODYSSEY: THE HOMECOMING; and IPHIGENIA. The cycle, called TRILOGY, was completed in 2006. She continues to work with Greek themes and authors, especially Euripides. In 2009, she presented THE TRAVELING PLAYERS PRESENT THE WOMEN OF TROY, which connected the characters from the Euripides play to 4 contemporary female activists.

In 2014, Skipitares left the plays of ancient Greece and created an original work which is a "disruption" of Ionesco's play THE CHAIRS. In this production, 24 animated chairs become the heroes of the play. In 2016, with a nod to Pirandello, she created SIX CHARACTERS (A Family Album). Her next three plays addressed racial justice: THERE'S BLOOD AT THE WEDDING (2018) is set within giant-scale book constructions, through which we reflect on the lives and deaths of six victims of police violence in the U.S., such as Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, and Eric Garner. In 2020, she worked with high school students and their Brooklyn marching band to create THE TRANSFIGURATION OF BENJAMIN BANNEKER, an outdoor/indoor spectacle. In 2022, she presented GRAND PANORAMA, which focused on Frederick Douglass' obsession with photography. Douglass believed that this new technology of the mid-19th century could help destroy slavery.

She has led workshops frequently in India, as well as in Vietnam, Cambodia. Korea, Greece, Iran and the West Bank, Palestine. Skipitares is Professor of Art and Design Education at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

2023, Micropolis: Views from the Miniature City. In 2023, 15 Orient exhibited the ground-breaking 1981 MICROPOLIS in Bushwick. Reviewing the installation, the New York Times calls the show "a marvel which argues for the power of puppetry" as a contemporary art medium.