Music – Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky
Story by Blair Thomas created in collaboration with the puppeteers
Conceived, directed and designed by Blair Thomas
Technical Director – Chris Wooten
Puppet Design & Construction – Jesse Mooney-Bullock, Andrea Everman, Blair Thomas, Shoshanna Utchenik, Elizabeth Wislar, Chris Wooten
Additional Construction – Mike O’Neill
Crew – Lizi Britt

Pianist
Mary Rose Norell

Puppeteers
Sam Deutsch
Sarah Fornace
Dan Kerr-Hobert
Julia Miller

Artistic Director Blair Thomas is a theater artist at the mid-point of his career. As founder of the highly successful Redmoon Theater, he spent a decade leading a vision to create large-scale Spectacle Theater. He was the principal creator behind productions such as Frankie & Johnny, Moby Dick, Frankenstein, the Winter Pageant, and All Hallow's Eve halloween parade until he left in 1998. Blair then served as co-curator for both of Chicago's International Puppet Festivals in 2000 and 2001 and became an Associate Adjunct Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 2002, Blair founded this new organization to create a distinctive Chamber Puppet Theater. With the company, Blair has toured to Boston, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Tampa, Atlanta, Phoenix, Madison, Bloomington, Mexico, and Spain, and has built a repertoire of work for adults and for children. He was awarded the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for New Performance in 2002 and 2004, and was hand-picked to serve in the inaugural position of Jim Henson Artist-in-Residence at the University of Maryland in College Park for the 2006-07 academic year. He is a graduate of Oberlin College.

Blair Thomas has been running his own company since 2002.  Some of the productions have been Hard Headed Heart, a collection of solo puppet theater works, The Ox-Herder’s Tale, a Buddhist parable presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cabaret of Desire, a staging of 6 short works by Federico Garcia Lorca, Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with the grammy award-winning chamber music group eighth blackbird. An earlier version of A Kite’s Tale was entitled A Rabbit’s Tale and performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as well as a run with the solo piano score at the Pritzker Stage in Millennium Park. In 1989 Blair had started Chicago’s Redmoon Theater and served as the artistic director and co-artistic director until leaving in 1998, during which time he was principal in the creation of all its productions, parades and pageants. Since then he has received the international UNIMA awards for excellence in the art of puppetry and twice awarded the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship awards.  He was the first artist to fill the Jim Henson Artist-in-Residence position at the University of Maryland and is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a graduate of Oberlin College. He and singer/songwriter Michael Smith and percussionist Michael Zerang are creating a new adaptation of Moby-Dick and he is also designing and directing a new adaptation of Brian Selznick’s The Houdini Box for Chicago Children’s Theater which will open in January 2012.

Mary Rose Norell is currently completing her doctorate in piano performance with James Giles at Northwestern University, having received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Indiana University with Emile Naoumoff. Her performances of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with Blair Thomas Productions in Chicago’s Millennium Park earned her this Chicago Tribune review: “…Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, played live and beautifully by Mary Rose Jordan on a Steinway in the center of the stage of the Jay Pritzker Pavilion...” As a lecturer-performer for Ravinia’s “Guest Artist in the Classroom” program, Norell has presented Pictures and other works at local underprivileged schools. A competition prizewinner, Norell has soloed with the Elkhart, Ft. Wayne, and Manchester Symphonies, among others. This July she will be joining conductor Dr. Robert Hasty for the Grieg piano concerto with the Northwestern University Summer Orchestra. Norell has presented recitals at home and abroad, appearing in Oxford, England; Vienna, Austria; and Klaipeda, Lithuania.

Sam Deutsch - Recent puppetry credits include Mistakes Were Made (World Premiere: A Red Orchid Theatre, Chicago/ Off-B'way Premiere: Barrow Street Theatre, NYC), the world premiere of The Astronaut's Birthday (Redmoon/MCA, Chicago), The Cabinet 2010 (Redmoon and subsequent Brazilian Tour),  world premieres of Erik Ehn's Invisible Glass (REDCAT, Los Angeles/ Dir. Janie Geiser), and The Saint Plays (Son of Semele, Los Angeles; Open Eye Figure Theatre, Minneapolis), he also appeared in David Cromer's Cherrywood (Mary-Archie Theatre Company, Chicago). He is a company member of The Inconvenience, an artistic syndicate in Chicago. He received his BFA from California Institute of the Arts.

Sarah Fornace is a performer, choreographer, and narrative theorist based in Chicago. She has a B.A. and an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Chicago and the University of Toronto, respectively. She has performed and/or devised with Lookingglass Theatre Co., Redmoon, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Collaboraction, and Babes with Blades. Her fight choreography has been seen at Court Theatre, Red Orchid Theatre, Steppenwolf’s Garage Rep. series, The New Colony, and elsewhere. She is a founding member of Manual Cinema (an experimental shadow puppetry company) and Boum Twa (a clown group devoted to exploring important issues through ladder acrobatics).

Dan Kerr-Hobert works as an arts educator in town, and as a Resident Artist at Children’s Memorial Hospital. He has been seen with the neo-futurists as a creator and performer in Crisis the Musical Gameshow and Mr Fluxus, as well as Director of the Site-Specific Puppet Rock Opera BEER. His work has been seen at the New York Fringe Festival,The Actors Theatre of Louisville, Dad’s Garage in Atlanta, and regularly here in Chicago with the Neofuturist’s and Blair Thomas and Co. He’d like to thank his friends.

Julia Miller specializes in the tactile and movement arts. She is a director, performer, puppeteer, choreographer, and graphic designer. Her love of puppetry stems from a lifelong interest in breathing life into the inanimate and holding conversations with her hands.  Her training has focused on developing work through physical exploration and improvisation and image and object based performance. She has studied mask, clown, acrobatics, ensemble performance, and Commedia dell’Arte with Teatro Punto (Arezzo, Italy), Double Edge Theatre (Ashfield, MA), and at Accademia dell’Arte (Arezzo, Italy) and holds a BFA in Theatre Arts from Boston University.  In Chicago she has performed in association with Redmoon Theatre, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Links Hall, The Hyde Park Arts Center, and The Building Stage.  To check out her contemporary shadow puppet work visit www.manualcinema.com.