Description
Target Audience: All ages
Duration: 30 minutes, plus audience talk back
Synopsis
Tomte is a Swedish gnome who takes care of a family and their farm, though they never see him. On a cold winter night, Tomte teaches us about the importance of kindness and looking after all living things.
Performer/ creator: Tom Lee
Narrator: Lisa Gonzales
Artist Profile
Tom Lee is a puppet artist, designer and director based in Chicago. He began his career at La MaMa Experimental Theater in New York. His work often explores the synthesis of manipulated objects, miniatures and puppet figures with film and animation.
Mr. Lee grew up in Hawai’i and studied traditional puppetry in Japan. He is a student of Japanese master puppeteer Koryu Nishikawa V with whom he created Shank’s Mare (2015) and Akutagawa (2023). His original work has toured the U.S., Japan, France, Bulgaria and Indonesia. Mr. Lee’s puppetry performances include War Horse (Broadway), Florencia en el Amazonas & Madama Butterfly (Metropolitan Opera) and The Queen of Spades (Lyric Opera Chicago).
He is the recipient of multiple Jim Henson Foundation grant awards for his original puppetry work and is co-director of the Chicago Puppet Studio and Chicago Puppet Lab. Tom teaches puppetry design and performance nationally and internationally.
@tlee668
