Details & Tickets
Feb 7 (Wed): 7:00 pm EST
Location: Online
A Zoom link will be emailed to registrants on the day of the event.
Suggested Donation: $5-$25
You will be redirected to our ticketing service website to complete your purchase.
How do we talk with children about social justice?
How do you transform a personal story into a children's book, and a children’s book into a puppet show?
Can a puppet show help us make sense of difficulty, colonialism, dictatorship, and dissent?
Join us for an intimate conversation with the creative team of My Night in the Planetarium — Tanya Nixon-Silberg, Innosanto Nagara, Sarah Nolen, and Roxanna Myhrum — hosted by Puppet Showplace Theater’s Executive Artistic Director Veronica Barron and Visiting Artistic Associate Ash Winkfield.
This online conversation is free to attend, with a suggested contribution of $5-25 to support Puppet Showplace Theater’s New Works programs:
The Incubator has launched 18 world premieres in 11 years — including My Night in the Planetarium — reaching tens of thousands of audience members in half a dozen countries.
The Creative Residency for Black Puppeteers has invested in new works by 20 Black creators with the goal of building community and support for new works at their earliest stages.
About the Panelists:
Tanya Nixon-Silberg (creator / puppeteer) is a Black mother, puppeteer, educator, facilitator and founder of Little Uprisings, an organization focused on centering racial justice and liberation with kids and their caregiving allies. The My Night in the Planetarium puppet show was co-created while Tanya was an artist in Puppet Showplace Theater’s Incubator program. She also participated in the first cohort of the Creative Residency for Black Puppeteers, and served as the Community Curator for the program in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Little Uprisings’ mission — be it in schools with teachers developing culturally relevant curricula, in a community center with children talking about gentrification, or helping parents develop their own values about racial justice — is actively anti-racist, joyful, and Black-affirming; steadfastly focused on our collective liberation. You will mostly find Tanya playing with and learning from her 11 year old kid, dreaming up fun ways to engage children in racial justice through puppetry, and radically imagining how we all get free together.
Tanya was featured in the Boston Globe in 2023!
Innosanto Nagara (book author & illustrator / voice-over narrator) was born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia, and moved to the U.S. in 1988 to study zoology at UC Davis. Now an activist and a graphic designer based in California, he writes and illustrates social justice-themed children's books for all ages, including the best-selling board book A is for Activist and its companion Counting on Community. Those publications were followed by picture books My Night in the Planetarium, and The Wedding Portrait. His newest works are Oh, The Things We’re For! and M is for Movement.
Sarah Nolen (production designer / lead builder / co-writer / sound editor) is a puppeteer and filmmaker originally from Austin, Texas. As Puppet Showplace Theater’s resident artist, she performs regularly for youth and family audiences and teaches puppetry in camps, workshops, residencies, and evening adult classes. Her three original productions, Lisa the Wise, Judy Saves the Day, and The Fairy Tailor have all toured extensively in the Northeast and beyond. In addition to her own shows, Sarah has done puppet builds for Netflix, Suffolk University, Boston College, and more. Sarah earned her BFA in film from Southern Methodist University, and an MFA in Puppet Arts from the University of Connecticut.
Roxanna Myhrum (producer / stage director / dramaturg) is an award-winning director of opera, theater, and puppetry. From 2010 - 2021 she was the Artistic Director of Puppet Showplace Theater where she curated multiple year-round performance series, oversaw all-ages educational programs, and cultivated new work by local artists. A sought-after puppetry coach and director, she has credits at the Huntington Theatre Company, SpeakEasy Stage (Eliott Norton Award, Hand to God), Company One, the Lyric Stage Company of Boston (IRNE Award, Avenue Q), Wheelock Family Theater, New Repertory Theatre, and Gloucester Stage Company. Her work has been supported by the Boston Foundation’s Live Arts Boston Grant and the New England Foundation for the Arts’ Creative City Grant.
About the Show
My Night in the Planetarium is the culmination of a multi-year partnership between Tanya Nixon-Silberg and Puppet Showplace Theater that explored the power of puppetry to translate complex, difficult realities of colonialism, dictatorship, and dissent into kid-centered stories and scenes
This dynamic pop-up puppet show brings to life a true story of art and social protest, based on the children’s book by bestselling author Innosanto Nagara. Created and performed by fellow artivist (artist/activist) Tanya Nixon-Silberg, the show transports audiences to Jakarta, Indonesia in the 1970s, where 7-year-old Inno learns firsthand how a play has the power to spark a resistance movement. Featuring designs by Puppet Showplace Theater’s Resident Artist Sarah Nolen, the story is brought to life with a rich soundscape, visual transformations, and kid-centered lessons about social justice.
My Night in the Planetarium was created with support from Puppet Showplace Theater’s Incubator program, the Jim Henson Foundation, and the Boston Foundation.
