Happy summer!
Wednesday, June 11, 2025
HAPPY SUMMER FROM GREAT SMALL WORKS
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
Save the date. Spring Spaghetti Dinner
(with a tip of the hat to Mary Oliver - see below)
Featuring --
Jenny Romaine (GSW) and Keri Egilmez (Whirling Imaginarium)
“Keep Swimming”
“Family Trees”
“On the Pulse of Morning” by Maya Angelou
“Opinion Man”
"Oracle / Coracle"
“Man in the Moon”
“Al Otro Lado”
“The Amazing Cosmo!”
"Cranky Town"
“Turn the Crank, Shut it Down! From Toxic Past to Justice Found!”
About NYS largest fossil fuel facility in the heart of North Brooklyn
Hearts of Steel Jouvert Pan Band!
Info: 917-319-8104
WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES
by Mary Oliver
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
Additional thanks to: the Puppet Slam Network, the Scherman Foundation, and the Constance and Jarvis Doctorow Family Foundation.
Friday, April 4, 2025
Spaghetti Ramadan 2025 Resource Guide
Spaghetti Ramadan 2025 Resource Guide
For the next 35 years, this has been the last Ramadan to fall during Nowruz. Let’s honor that convergence with depth, beauty, and clarity of direction. Spaghetti Ramadan has always been about weaving unlikely connection -- Muslim, Jewish and non-Muslim -- across ethnicities and generations, the spiritual and political, dinner and du’a.
🌍 Spiritual & Cultural Gathering Spaces
🪩 Spiritual-Cultural Nightlife (NYC)
🇵🇸 Palestine-Centered Organizing
Plug into justice-centered, people-powered resistance:
🔺 Within Our Lifetime
🔺 Decolonize This Place
🔺 Palestinian Youth Movement – PYM USA
🔺 Students for Justice in Palestine – National
🔺 Jewish Voice for Peace NYC
🔺 Jews for Racial and Economic Justice – JFREJ
🔺 If Not Now
🔺 The People’s Forum – Weekly Palestine gatherings & programming
Email: salam@fihimafihi.worlds
Saturday, December 28, 2024
Just $25 dollars (or any amount) right now will fuel this work and let us do it in style.
Please donate HERE. [www.greatsmallworks.org/
With gratitude,
Jenny, John, Mark, Roberto, Stephen, Trudi
Some highlights of 2024
Spaghetti Dinners: Great Small Works’ signature cabaret-style, one-time-only events dating back to the mid-1980s, an ancestor of today’s burgeoning “puppet slam” movement continue and are broadcast as hybrid on-site/online events whenever possible. Four Spaghetti Dinners took place this year:
1) January: ”Solidarity Songs,” our annual year-end/beginning large-scale event at Judson Memorial Church. With a Great Small Works reflection on Solidarity; an underwater ballet composed of giant sea creatures made of seaside garbage by Gregory Corbino; traditional Abéimahani singers singers; Heather Christian’s community choir from Terce ; puppeteers Rowan Magee and Takeme Kitamura, Chinese Theatre Works and Boxcutter Collective; and a world polka dance band led by trumpeter Frank London;
2) February: the NYC premieres of two Great Small Works Toy Theater productions at Jalopy Theatre – “We Love Trees” by John and Trudi with musicians Marji Gere and Dan Sedgwick, “Ten Sentences: On the Life of Robert Walser” by Mark, and a screening of “Living Objects in Black,” Jacqueline Wade/Women of Color’s film about African American Puppeteers;
3) April: "What Would Rumi Do?," the 7th iteration of Spaghetti Ramadan co-hosted with curator Arian Nakhaie of Fihi Ma Fihi Worlds that drew its material from the teachings of Persian poet and great thinker Jalaluddin Rumi. Musicians from across the Muslim world performed, and Jenny partnered with Keri Egilmez of the Whirling Imaginarium puppet company on a daytime program which allowed many families with kids to share the meal, participate in the craft tables, and take part in the anti-genocide pageant;
4) November: another evening at Jalopy Theatre of shadow puppets, projection and paper movie shows responding to the news of the day.
Naming the Lost Memorial Project: Company member Jenny Romaine played a leading role in conceiving, designing and organizing the 2024 edition of Naming The Lost Memorials – a yearly city-wide mobilization of communities to create and erect memorial artwork in honor of the thousands lost to the Covid epidemic since 2020. Great Small Works has been a core partner on the project since its inception, together with City Lore, Mano a Mano: Mexican Culture Without Borders, Green-Wood Cemetery and the New-York Historical Society, exhibited in outdoor public spaces such as the perimeter fence of Green-Wood cemetery in Brooklyn and St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery, to invite collective reflection on the enormity of the pandemic. This year’s memorial, “A Big Slow Majestic Covid Memorial of Murmurs and Testimonials,” was on view at Green-Wood Cemetary from May 3-June 3.
Touring:-
“Three Cookbooks in the Garden,” a magic act (in Yiddish) created by Jenny about the arrival of eggplant to the cuisines of co-vivencia medieval Islamic Spain, continues to tour to communities and festivals, speaking across traditions where "divide and conquer" is used to keep us demobilized, alienated and depressed.
“We Love Trees” was performed for seniors, students and residents at a series of public housing and senior residential centers in Somerville, MA.
“Ten Sentences: On the Life of Robert Walser” premiered at the 2024 Casteliers Festival in Montreal.
Building Stories Studio: Great Small Works continues to anchor Building Stories, LLC, the multi-use creative space anchored by an interracial, intergenerational crew of arts practitioners - film makers, puppeteers, graphic designers, and radical visual artists and technicians providing support to grassroots organizing. Over the past year, the studio has been used by hundreds of cultural workers and activists in this serious moment of increased movement need. We have ongoing pride that the infrastructure we have fought for and nourished since the 1980s can enable so many to hold and build the energies they need to fight and win!
From our collaborators: “Building Stories is a space to make things which can be visible in the street and claim power.”
(sigh of relief) “There is a space set up with all the tools and materials you need, an infrastructure of hosts who can make sure you can find the key, and/or welcome you in?”
Please donate here: www.greatsmallworks.org/donate
Monday, March 25, 2024
SPAGHETTI RAMADAN VOL. 7
SPAGHETTI RAMADAN, VOL 7: WHAT WOULD RUMI DO?
A Ramadan Decompression Garden Party
SUNDAY, April 14, 2PM-5PM
La Plaza Cultural Community Garden
9th Street and Avenue C, New York City
PERFORMANCES BY:
Iranian-Balkan Silk Road Crossover Vibes
*Senavazi (Mehrnam Rastegari, Daro Behroozi, Matt Moran)
*Mitra Khorsandi
*Salieu Suso
*Legendary Cyphers
*Public Housing NYC
This year we are trying to figure out what time it is on the Spaghetti Ramadan clock of the world? by delving into the poetry and teachings of Jalaluddin Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet, scholar of the Qur’an, Sufi mystic, and great thinker. We'll ponder Rumi's journey to look for subtle approaches to love and resilience that resonate with the needs of our current moment.
About:Spaghetti Ramadan began in 2017 when two NYC cultural workers, a Muslim (Arian Nakhaie) and a Jew (Jenny Romaine), conceived of a spiritual kinship celebration to bring people together at a time of increasing polarization. Nakhaie and Romaine met through political organizing and art-making in NYC in 2013. Jenny and Arian’s bond has strived to cultivate an open shared space that allows for the free exchange of ideas.We built this container between Jews & Muslims because we predicted there would be moments like this where “divide and conquer” would be used to keep us demobilized, divided and depressed. We wanted to make sure we had the relationships and socio-cultural art making practices in place to address divisive propaganda. Our solidarity of years is why we’ve been able to work in tandem in collaborative satire and storytelling that will counter militaristic narratives.
Exploring Emotional Depths:
Reflect on heart hardening amid societal turmoil. How can Rumi's emphasis on communal love and compassion guide us through these challenges?
Drawing from Rumi's Wisdom:
Consider Rumi's metaphysical identity and its relevance to contemporary struggles. How can his teachings inform our resilience and creative expression in adversity?
Navigating Injustices:
Contemplate the complexities of historical and present injustices. How do we reconcile admiration for Rumi's wisdom with societal realities?
Cultivating Love and Compassion:
Delve into the transformative power of love and compassion amidst conflict. How can Rumi's poetry and Islamic tradition inspire forgiveness, courage, and faith?
Confronting feelings of complicity, and accountability in societal injustices.
How do we navigate shame and guilt, drawing from Rumi's teachings on introspection and ethical engagement?
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Spaghetti Dinner
Sunday, February 25th, 7:30 PM
Jalopy Theatre
315 Columbia Street, Brooklyn
Savor the flavors of new work by Great Small Works and Friends
and... Spaghetti To-Go!
or at the door
A native of Biel, Switzerland, Robert Walser has been described as “a clairvoyant of the small.” A writer of keenly detailed observational prose, he published feuilletons, stories, and short novels in the early years of the 20th century. With limited means of support and suffering from a mental breakdown, he later moved to a sanitarium where he walked the countryside, producing no further writing. A collection of microscopic texts, written on the backs of visiting cards, envelopes, and matchbooks, was found in a shoebox after his death in 1956. Using a “cranky” – a hand-cranked moving scroll – with flat paper puppets and rear-projected video to evoke this solitary and contemplative life.
A paper theater play with live music by Gere (violin) and Sedgwick (piano) featuring a magnificent copper beech tree which grew in Somerville, MA, on the same land where the musical Hadley family lived in the early 20th century. It celebrates trees, and what we can learn from them. With texts from Peter Wohlleben, Robin Wall Kimmerer and Jill Jonnes, and music by Henry Kimball Hadley and Stevie Wonder.