Adriana Hollenbeck Helps Bring Art to Life on Stage

Early in the summer, Adriana Hollenbeck, Head of The Experiential School, had her beautiful, hand-carved, wooden puppets featured on the stage. She was the Puppet Designer for a show produced by First Stage Theater, a theater for young audiences in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “Escape from Peligro Island,” a create-your-own-adventure play written by Finegan Kruckemeyer, has audiences pondering, ‘If you had a chance to start your life over, what would you do?’ The show features four storylines for its hero, and audience voting throughout performances determine a trajectory followed by a cast of adult and young performers.

Hear Mrs. Hollenbeck talk briefly about her puppet creation process for the show and wooden puppetry as an endangered artform.

“Creating puppets is a big adventure,” she says. “We deal with the unpredictable all the time. … It will allow you to find how flexible our thinking can be.”