JOHN BELL
Co-Artistic Director
John is a performer, writer, and teacher who started making theater seriously with Bread and Puppet Theater; he was a company member of that troupe for over a decade. While studying for his Ph.D. in theater history at Columbia University he began to create shows with the group of friends who became Great Small Works. He conceived and directed the Great Small Works production A Mammal's Notebook: The Erik Satie Cabaret, and with his wife Trudi Cohen and son Isaac Bell has created various Great Small Works projects in Boston, where the family lives. He is the author of Strings, Hands, Shadows: A Modern Puppet History, and edited Puppets, Masks, and Performing Objects; a forthcoming book project is American Puppet Modernism. He is a Contributing Editor to The Drama Review and the Historian of Puppetry International, for whom he edited the Fall/Winter 2006 issue devoted to puppet scripts. He is recognized internationally as an expert on the history of puppet theater. john.bell.puppeteer@gmail.com