Upcoming: The Jungle, based on Upton Sinclair's novel, Trouble Puppet Theatre Company at the Salvage Vanguard, March 16 - April 3

Received directly:

brings back

The Jungle

based on Upton Sinclair's novel about 1906 Chicago

March 16 - April 3

Wednesdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 6 p.m.

Tickets on-line: $16.52 general admission, $11.34 students & seniors, tickets + donation at $32.04 & $47.57

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The Trouble Puppet Theater Company returns with a fully realized production of its award-winning adaptation The Jungle. Funded by a Jim Henson Foundation Project Grant, this season’s production promises to outshine the earlier version that received such accolades as these:

• B. Iden Payne Awards for Award for Outstanding Director of a Drama, Outstanding Original Script, Outstanding Sound Design, and Special Certificate for Puppetry.
• Places on three “Best of 2009” lists in the Austin Chronicle.
• Reviewer Robert Faires said “[Artistic Director] Connor Hopkins distilled Upton Sinclair's novel of immigrants ground up by the meatpacking industry into a sepia-tinted tone poem, made hauntingly human by puppets of paper and string.”

The Trouble Puppet Theater Company’s production of The Jungle is an adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s 1906 muckraking novel about immigrant laborers in Chicago. The novel’s portrayal of the unsanitary and inhumane practices of the meat-packing industry, as well as the brutality of working conditions in turn-of-the-century America, shocked the nation.

Click for reviews by ALT and others of the September 2009 premiere production of The Jungle

Click to read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

The Jungle, Trouble Puppet Theatre Company at the Salvage Vanguard, September 17 - October 4

Connor Hopkins' The Jungle is a deeply serious work using high craft to dramatize the worst days of American industry.

Upton Sinclair's 1906 work, first published in serialization and then as a novel, caused a tremendous stir. He tells the story of an penniless immigrant family, crushed by corrupt exploitation, indifference, and unsanitary conditions of the Chicago meat packing industry. Sinclair's ambition had been to shake the American public into awareness of the inhumanity to the workers practiced by management and by capitalists -- an aim mirrored in Trouble Puppet's tag from the work, "They were slaughtering men there, as surely as we were slaughtering animals."

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Jungle, Trouble Puppet Theatre, September 17 - October 4

Click for ALT review, September 21

UPDATE: Elizabeth Cobbe's pre-opening feature interview of Connor Hopkin in the Austin Chronicle, September 17

UPDATE: Jeanne Claire van Ryzin's pre-opening feature interview of Connor Hopkins in the Austin Stateman's 360 XL Arts weekly supplement, September 17

Found on-line:

Trouble Puppet Theater

presents

The Jungle
Based on Upton Sinclair’s novel
Adapted by Connor Hopkins

A work of puppet theater based on Upton Sinclair’s groundbreaking novel about the conditions faced by immigrant workers in Chicago’s meatpacking industry, The Jungle uses a form of puppetry inspired by the Japanese Bunraku style. It includes human choreography, tabletop puppets, life sized , two and three dimensional, and shadow puppetry, as well as imagery by LettuceTurnip Media Services, graphic animation by Leah Sharpe (Tongue & Groove’s Red Balloon), and music by Justin Sherburn (Okkervill River).

Originally conceived at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Puppetry Conference in 2007, Trouble Puppet’s The Jungle received a workshop performance at the 2009 Conference. It was also awarded a Jim Henson Foundation Seed Grant for development the same year. The production is written and designed by Connor Hopkins.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .