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

Save the date. Spring Spaghetti Dinner

 

Great Small Works' Spring Spaghetti Dinner

"When We Are Among the Trees"
(with a tip of the hat to Mary Oliver - see below)

Puppet shows in the garden!
Featuring --

New work by
Jenny Romaine (GSW) and Keri Egilmez (Whirling Imaginarium)

with special song bird Luisa Muhr

"The Caged Bird's Escape"

And a collection of peep shows, lambe-lambe shows and other tiny gems:

Samantha Sing
“Keep Swimming”

Bark and Branch Theater
“Family Trees”

Stephen Kaplin
“On the Pulse of Morning” by Maya Angelou

Tom Cunningham, Boxcutter Collective
“Opinion Man”

Tom Tuke
"Oracle / Coracle"

Patrice Escandon
“Man in the Moon”

Erika MarLand
“Al Otro Lado”

Emmanuel Elpenord
“The Amazing Cosmo!”

Alicia Gerstein
"Cranky Town"

Kim Fraczek, Sane Energy Proect
“Turn the Crank, Shut it Down! From Toxic Past to Justice Found!”
About NYS largest fossil fuel facility in the heart of North Brooklyn

-- PLUS, TO CAP IT OFF --
Hearts of Steel Jouvert Pan Band!

Suggested donation: $20
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.”

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 Ramadan 2025 Resource Guide

As we take a pause from Spaghetti Ramadan this year, we express our spiritual solidarity with the following resource guide: 

Spaghetti Ramadan 2025 Resource Guide 

Nowruz & Ramadan Edition

Published by Fihi Ma Fihi Worlds

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. 

This guide is an extension of that spirit. It’s a call to connect with people, places, and practices that nourish the soul and serve the world -- from sufi circles to Palestine organizing hubs, from healing spaces to gatherings that remind us we’re not alone. 

 🌍 Spiritual & Cultural Gathering Spaces 

🕌 Jerrahi Dergah (Chelsea, NYC) Instagram @jerrahidergah Thursday night zikr gatherings, rooted in Ottoman Sufi tradition. Music, prayer, and loving presence. → A sanctuary of remembrance. 

 ☕ Barzakh Café (Brooklyn) Instagram @barzakhcafe A spiritual-cultural community space with nightly programming: poetry, study, prayer, arts, and dialogue. → Heart-centered, creative, rooted in liberation. 

 🪩 Spiritual-Cultural Nightlife (NYC) 

Disco Tehran — Diasporic joy and music rooted in Iranian heritage. 

Laylit — Celebrating SWANA nightlife, Arab musical heritage, and cultural pride. 

🇵🇸 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 

📩 Want to add to this list?
Email: salam@fihimafihi.worlds

 

Dear Great Small Works Family,

From all of us to all of you, greetings! Hugs, love and appreciation. There is no doubt that times are fearful and unknowable, and that we are in for some tough rounds. There is a ton of organizing work ahead and we'll put our puppeteer shoulders to the wheel of that effort in all the ways we can. We are trying, as Kelly M. Hayes advises, to not assume maximal outcomes for the new administration. "That’s a form of psychological surrender.” They will stumble, fail and misstep. We will be creative. 

In the spirit of not backing down, Great Small Works is diving full body into the creation of a new full-length show we hope to present in January of 2026. It’s called The Myceliad. It’s a shadow puppet epic that tracks the voyage of an eclectic crew of New York puppeteers (us) thrust out to sea by the crises roiling the country, crafted as a homeopathic horror story in which issues facing us in the real world are introduced in parable form. In our epic, a fantastical Mushroom Oracle conveys to the crew – in the journey’s most perilous moments – the wisdom of listening, of leaning into decades of movement strategy, of mobilizing all of the powers they do have lest they be used against them, and ultimately, learning to live, like fungi, in the middle of a diverse and ever-changing world. Not since Muntergang and Other Cheerful Downfalls have we created such an ambitious, multilayered full evening work.

Great Small Works exists to keep theater at the heart of social life, and to help keep each other alive. So, in further non-capitulation to despair, we are escalating. Most of our funds sustain our studio (see below) and our work on large-scale community based projects (also below). In these strange times we are asking you to do something unusual: please fund us to be performing artists in our own work. Our 2025 campaign to bring you the best medicine we can offer supports three company residencies through the coming year.

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/donate]  Or, send a check to Great Small Works at 315 W. 86th St., 4E, NYC, NY 10024. Great Small Works is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and your donations are tax-deductible.

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

From Top: Naming the Lost Memorial Project, photo: Erik McGregor;  We Love Trees; What Would Rumi Do?, Spaghetti Ramadan 2024, photo: Erik McGregor;  Ten Sentences: On the Life of Robert Walser