SPAGHETTI KAREVAN

Great Small Works and Fihi Ma Fihi present

SPAGHETTI KAREVAN

Saturday, September 19, 2026
La Plaza Cultural Community Garden
674 East 9th Street (between Aves B and C), NYC

What’s Spaghetti Karevan?
An autumn offshoot of our annual Spaghetti Ramadan celebration, a NYC-based spiritual solidarity project of nearly a decade between Muslims, Jews and other friends… breaking bread at the nexus of art, theater, and community. Musicians and puppeteers from across the Muslim world; a lantern procession through the community garden with lanterns made by everyone; and... spaghetti!

Many rivers; one ocean -- Though we may come from different traditions and walks of life, we believe we're all headed to the same ocean of divine unity.

Doors, food and lantern-making 5:00 PM
Program begins at 5:30 PM
Tickets: $20, no one turned away for lack of funds
Info: 917-319-8104
(A rain cancellation call will be made by noon the day of the show.)

***We invite you to arrive early and make a lantern, which will be lit at sundown and become part of a procession through the garden.***

Featuring:

Host AAREEYAN of Fihi Ma Fihi Worlds
Poet from the international collective SoU (Sounds of the Unseen)

A new performance by Keri Egilmez of THE WHIRLING IMAGINARIUM and Jenny Romaine of GREAT SMALL WORKS
"The Tale of the Bedouin and His Wife" from Rumi's Masnavi.

THE BROOKLYN NOMADS – Hadi and Mohamad Eldebek
A cross-cultural ensemble rooted in Arabic music traditions.

YOUSEF TEHRANI and FRIENDS (Hedayat Shafeei and Amin Sarshar)
Iranian traditional music

GABE PACHECO
Comedian, podcast host

THE LEGENDARY CYPHERS
New York City Hip-Hop masters

*****
*Great Small Works is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

*Spaghetti Dinners are funded, in part, by public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

*This project is made possible, in part, with funds from a regrant
program supported by the Howard Gilman Foundation and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

*Additional thanks to: the Puppet Slam Network, the Scherman Foundation, and the Constance and Jarvis Doctorow Family Foundation

******

SPRING SPAGHETTI DINNER

Great Small Works' Spring Spaghetti Dinner
"When We Are Among the Trees"
(with a tip of the hat to Mary Oliver)

SUNDAY, MAY 17, 5:00 PM

La Plaza Cultural Community Garden

East 9th Street between Avenues B and C

Puppet shows in the garden!
Suggested donation: $20
Info: 917-319-8104

A reprise of last year's event, with intimate mini-shows performed simultaneously around the garden.

We too have "come into the world... to be filled with light, and to shine." (Mary Oliver)

FEATURING
Piedmont Bluz Acoustic Duo
Valerie and Benedict Turner, ambassadors of Country Blues music, Piedmont-style fingerpicking, and roots percussion, have a mission to help bring awareness to these unique aspects of African-American culture.

And small-scale puppet shows by:
Eva Lansberry
Emmanuel Elpenord
Gil Verrelli
Erika Martinez Land
Harrison Greene
Tom Tuke
Sayma Karim/Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre
Kim Fraczek/Claire Lebowitz

Ray Dondero

And we will sing together!

Led by Jenny Romaine and Luisa Muhr

"Until All of Us Are Free" by Arnaé Batson

**********
Great Small Works is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Spaghetti Dinners are funded, in part, by public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Additional thanks to: the Puppet Slam Network, the Scherman Foundation, and the Constance and Jarvis Doctorow Family Foundation.

**********
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.”

PLEASE SUPPORT GREAT SMALL WORKS

 

Dear Great Small Works Family,

YEAR-END SPAGHETTI DINNER, Call In the Giants!

 

Celebrate the coming of the New Year with pasta, puppets, music, and each other!

Monday, December 29, 2025
doors and pasta at 7:30PM; program starts at 8:00
Tickets: $20, no one turned away for lack of funds

Judson Memorial Church
55 Washington Square South, NYC

No advance reservations
For info: 917-319-8104

Live at Judson Church and livestreamed --

Watch on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1577624343266027

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLE3oDaBKRs

CALL IN THE GIANTS
Seven giant puppets from different artists will participate in a Convergence of Giants to celebrate the ways that oversized puppets have performed festivals of resistance from the Middle Ages to the 1980 Women's Pentagon Action and the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement.
Puppets by: Ronnie Asbell, People's Puppets of Occupy Wall Street, Puppeteers Coop, Unidad Latina en Accion, Chinese Theater Works, and Amy Trompetter.

Also featuring:

**Music by FRANK LONDON and friends

Loisaida Fife & Drum Corps
Deconstructions of mid-19th-century American tunes
Frank London, trumpet
Reut Regev, trombone
Ron Caswell, tuba
Charles Burnham, violin
James Paul Nadien, drums

**A new dance by JENNIFER MILLER
with NOA RUI-PIIN WEISS and ZO WILLIAMS

Bach Sonata 1 in G Minor, Presto

**Two crankies by ERIK RUIN with music accompaniment by ALI DINEEN
"On Another's Sorrow," a poem by William Blake
"Letter from Isolation" with text from Ulrike Meinhof's "Letter from a Prisoner in the Isolation Wing, June 16, 1972 to February 9, 1973."

**Film by MEREDITH HOLCH

"Brother Bird"

**Cranky by BOXCUTTER COLLECTIVE
"Witches, Women and Witchcraft: The (Mostly) True Cranky of a Cranky Old Hag” is a brief history of the medieval witch hunts, as told by… witches! With their reproductive healthcare skills, and a team of singing bullfrogs, is it possible that witches are just what we need to defeat the imperialist capitalist patriarchy?

**Shadow puppets by SPICA WOBBE and MARGARET YUEN
"Prologue, Part II"
The second in a series of performances which focus on first generation Chinese American immigrants, Part II focuses on the stories of five women, using their own words, with shadow, objects, music and dance.

Great Small Works is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts; and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Additional thanks to: the Puppet Slam Network, the Scherman Foundation, and the Constance and Jarvis Doctorow Family Foundation.

SPAGHETTI DINNER with Archive-Based Creative Arts

 

GREAT SMALL WORKS SPAGHETTI DINNER

“Our Lives Hold Archives” -- Willie Kearse, Archive-Based Creative Arts

At The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center

107 Suffolk St, NYC

Doors/Dinner: 6:30 PM. Performances: 7PM
Tickets: sliding scale, $20 suggested (no one turned away for lack of funds)
Info: 917-319-8104
Walk ups welcome

Featuring:

SPECIAL PREVIEW
"Creative Writing Workshop Vol. 1," The Eastern Correctional Facility creative writing anthology, assembled by the men of the Lifers & Longtermers Committee Creative Writing Workshop and published by Archive-Based Creative Arts.

Archive-Based Creative Arts is an arts program, publishing platform and archiving collective building collaborations across the prison wall. The new anthology emerged through a creative writing workshop created and led by Lamarr "Streets" Reid and Santos "Pikasso" Lopez at Eastern Correctional Facility, and was edited and compiled by ABCA's resident archivist Serious Soul Brother. The workshop and its anthology were created by incarcerated people from behind the wall, and ABCA is thrilled to preview their work for the public -- and tell the story of how it all came to be.

It’s a Living Newspaper! Diverse artistic voices will be heard via live call-ins! Poetry! Music! And a new cranky created by the ABCA team with Great Small Works.

Pickle and The Deli Guys
"Sandwiches Are Beautiful: And What Else Is True?"
Emma Alabaster, Mary Feaster, Jenny Romaine/GSW, Willa Folmar, Alexander Udis, Joe Dobkin and a cranky scroll by Mor Erlich

Marlee Miller
"Black Femme Dreaming," a cranky

Gretchen Van Lente
“Annabel Lee”

Klondyke 
aka Wes Olivier, live music and drag by the King of Kreep and The Professor of Grotesque!

@klondyke-drag

*******
Spaghetti on site or to go
We'll have food to go for folk who choose not to eat on site, and a big basket of KN95's to offer you to make the evening more fun and accessible.

Space Access: Teatro SEA is in the process of renovating their building for access (hopefully by Spring). Currently there are 5 stairs to enter the building. Public restrooms are on the third floor. There is a restroom on ground level that can be made available, but it isn’t spacious enough to fit a chair.

Great Small Works is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

Additional thanks to: the Puppet Slam Network, the Scherman Foundation, and the Constance and Jarvis Doctorow Family Foundation.

SPAGHETTI KAREVAN

 Great Small Works and Fihi Ma Fihi present

SPAGHETTI KAREVAN
A seasonal Spaghetti Ramadan remix

“Still many rivers, still one ocean; but with some extra rivers.”

What’s Spaghetti Karevan?
A seasonal offshoot of our annual celebration, a NYC-based spiritual solidarity project of nearly a decade between Muslims, Jews and other friends… breaking bread at the nexus of art, theater, community and alternative marketplace-building.

Featuring:
The Brooklyn Nomads
A cross-cultural ensemble rooted in musical traditions from the Arab world

Julia Patinella
Flamenco Fusion singer

Keri Egilmez of The Whirling Imaginarium
with Jenny Romaine/Great Small Works
"The Caravanserai Story: Part 2, Merchant's Hidden Treasure"

Suggested admission price: $20
For more info: 917-319-8104

Great Small Works is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.

This project is made possible in part with funds from a regrant program supported by the Howard Gilman Foundation and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Additional thanks to: the Puppet Slam Network, the Scherman Foundation, and the Constance and Jarvis Doctorow Family Foundation.

HAPPY SUMMER FROM GREAT SMALL WORKS

Happy summer!

We are sending love, respect and grounding…don’t give up hope! We were made for these times. 

Our company will be in two residencies this summer getting our fully staged "Myceliad" show ready for 2026. A week in June in Craftsbury, Vermont. And a week in August in Trois Rivieres, Quebec, hosted by puppet company Les Sages Fous.

On July 13th, see us in a revival of our classic street show, "Three Graces."

We’ll be performing at Clark Institute of Arts' Community Day in Williamstown, MA

https://www.clarkart.edu/event/detail/2881-92426

Save the date for our next Spaghetti Dinner -- Spaghetti Karevan, co-hosted with Fihi Ma Fihi, on August 24th at La Plaza Cultural Community Garden on East 9th Street

And if you are in town check out the work of our colleagues and friends:

Puppets Come Home, a puppet slam for the whole family

June 24th, 12 - 2PM  in Brooklyn Commons Park

https://www.instagram.com/p/DKlXPaUsRuH/

The Lunatic Fringe Society Orchestra -- Lily Pink and Allison Sniffin

June 21st and 22nd at the Westbeth Community Room

An intimate evening of animal songs for adult audiences