Profile and Video: Trouble Puppet's RIDDLEY WALKER, a Work in Progress

by Michael Meigs
Published on January 21, 2011

Hopkins warned us that Hoban writes the tale in an imagined future jargon that initially may appear obscure. "Read it out loud," he suggested. "And after the first five pages or so, you'll have no trouble at all."

Connor Hopkins and the gang at Trouble Puppet Theatre Company invited their e-list followers over to the Salvage Vanguard Theatre studio on two Saturday nights, January 8 and 15, to get a look at their works in progress.  The evening began with The Red Tree, one of several pieces developed in Caroline Reck's "Object Theatre Workshop"  and moved to several scenes the company has roughed out for the production of Riddley Walker scheduled for September - October of …

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Review: The Jungle by Trouble Puppet Theatre Company

by Michael Meigs
Published on September 21, 2009

Central to the story is the rite of slaughter that takes place at center stage, a repeated dance of death. It's a haunting image and an intimidating act of virtuoso puppetry, and it comes again and again throughout this piece.

Connor Hopkins' The Jungle is a deeply serious work using high craft to dramatize the worst days of American industry.  Upton Sinclair's 1906 piece, 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 …

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