2022 Baltimore Crankie Fest
Watch the world’s greatest stories unroll before your eyes! Baltimore's beloved festival of scrolled panoramas known as crankies, returns for its 8th year of fireside wonder!
Featuring: Emily Schubert | Katherine Fahey | Tine Kindermann w/ Michael Winograd, Ira Khonen Temple, and Josh Kohn | Maise O'Brien | Jay & Jody Best | Donna Oblongata | Dirk Joseph | The Bronze Medalists
Look, I Brought You a Hat
(Opening scene from “El Misterioso”)
A magician in a run-down carnival prepares for his final performance.
The Bronze Medalists are an alliance of musicians and visual artists from Athens, Georgia, directed by Abel Klainbaum, with lead visual artist Phil Jasen. Their first play, Lupita’s Revenge, has been touring for four years and has appeared around the country in theaters, museums, and on television.
“Look, I Brought You a Hat,” is a scene from “El Misterioso,” a work-in-progress that will be The Bronze Medalists’ second feature-length puppet show.
Abel Klainbaum is an artist based out of Athens, GA, where he explores multi media projects: Macro-photography, experimental documentaries, murder ballad puppet shows, furniture design, aluminum and clay sculptures, and web based environments. In addition to Lupita’s Revenge, his Heimlich Maneuver documentary, “The History of Choking,” was featured at the Maryland Film Festival and other festivals around the country.
Phil Jasen teaches drawing and painting at the University of Georgia and collaborates with several music groups and puppetry ensembles. He is the lead puppeteer for Lupita’s Revenge, and will be releasing “Skunkape,” a feature-length play, in late 2022.
Rae Kretzer is based in and around the Athens, GA area. She got her B.F.A. in Art Education from the University of Georgia, educated children in the arts for several years, and also works on flower, berry, and vegetable farms.
www.travelingpuppetshow.com
www.abelsinternetwebsite.com
www.philjasen.com
Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie
An interpretation of the heartfelt old cowboy tune re-envisioning the song so the main character in it is no longer a cowboy, but a horse. This work was directly sponsored by Ismay Music.
The Lantern Sisters are Katherine Fahey & Dan Van Allen. Baltimore artist Katherine Fahey is a storyteller, puppeteer, and papercut artist who has been making Crankies for 10 years. She has taught crankie making and has performed throughout the US, earning her the affectionate title of "the Jane Appleseed of crankies. Her crankies are based on songs and tales ranging from the Inuit territories of Northern Quebec and the swamps of Louisiana to the streets of her home in Baltimore City. Performing with Katherine is puppeteer, foley artist, craftsman, and visionary artist in his own right, Dan Van Allen.
facebook.com/2hawks2fishes
Instagram: instagram.com/katherine_fahey
Patreon: patreon.com/katherinefahey
What Kind of Cat Are You?
(Song by Billy Jonas)
Jay Best is a banjo man, but don’t hold that against him. He’ll play music all day long, now that he has finally graduated after spending 34 years in an eleventh-grade history classroom. Jay is an integral part of the Confluence Creative Arts Center where he runs the lights and sound as well as leads workshops in fiddle and banjo. He also runs rivers and trails and shoots panoramic photos with a 1930 Cirkut Camera. And what kind of cat is Jay? Catapulting? Catatonic? Categorical?
Jody Best’s all about kids and community…and candy! She is the founder and director of the Confluence Creative Arts Center, an art educator, and a mess-maker. Recently disembarked from a scintillant journey of homeschooling and teaching pre-AP English, she is circling back to being an artist- blacksmith who plays the cello poorly but with great enthusiasm. She can be found in her garden or the woods or happily floating down a river with her husband Jay. And what kind of cat is Jody? Catchall? Catalytic? Catnapping?
jaybestphotography@gmail.com
Instagram: @oldfarmmakerplace @confluencecreativeartscenter
N*A*F*T*U*L*E
In the 1920s’ a virtuoso of the klezmer clarinet went electric. A small part of the story of Natfule Brandwein, the eccentric Jewish musical virtuoso who shined bright in the first half of the 20th century.
N*A*F*T*U*L*E is a collaboration between visual artist Tine Kinderman, musician Michael Winograd, Ira Khonen Temple, and Josh Kohn.
Tine Kindermann is a visual artist and musician from Berlin, Germany, who has been living and working in New York City since 1993. A figurative artist working in various media, her work, which includes painting, miniature tableaux and dioramas, video and sculpture, has been shown at Stephen Romano Gallery, the Governors Island Art Fair, RePop, Mark Miller Gallery and other galleries in New York City, as well as Neurotitan Gallery and Gallery Kurt im Hirsch in Berlin.
Clarinetist Michael Winograd lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is a performer and composer of Klezmer, Eastern European Jewish wedding and celebration music. He performs internationally with his band the Honorable Mentshn, and plays regularly with today's premier klezmer musicians. Michael has shared the stage with Itzhak Perlman, the Klezmer Conservatory Band, Frank London, Budowitz and countless others. He is a member of Pneuma Quartet, and co-founded Sandaraa along with Pakistani super star Zeb Bangash. In 2016 Michael recorded the opening track for Vulfpeck's LP "The Beautiful Game," and has since been a regular guest with them in concert, including a sold out show and live recording at Madison Square Garden in 2019. Michael is a founder of the Yiddish New York festival, now embarking on it's 6th edition. He served as Artistic Director of KlezKanada from 2016-2021.
Crankie Fest Co-Curator Josh Kohn is the Associate Director at the Center for Cultural Vibrancy. He first heard of the story of Naftule Brandwein electrocuting himself in front of Meyer Lansky after a performance with Michael Winograd several years ago at Creative Alliance. Not a day went by where he didn’t dream longingly of seeing that story as a crankie. He worked on this script with the help of Tine, Michael, his wife Marianne, and his three-year-old daughter Golda who, despite the provenance of her name, is not a fan of Naftule Brandwein (yet).
Ira Khonen Temple is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and embedded cultural organizer. Recent credits include accordionist for Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, and music director of Indecent at the Weston Playhouse, Great Small Works’ Muntergang and Other Cheerful Downfalls, the Aftselakhis Spectacle Committe Purimshpil, and Zoe Beloff’s Days of the Commune. Ira is a founder of the radical-traditional Yiddish music group Tsibele.
www.tinekindermann.com
facebook.com/tine.kindermann
Instagram: @tinekindermann
www.michaelwinograd.net
Hindsight is 2020
An attempt to make sense of life during, within, and since the onset of the pandemic. A questioning, reflection, an unlearning, relearning and a gathering together. Please be ready to participate in the togetherness!
Crankie Fest Curator Emily Schubert is an interdisciplinary artist working mainly in the worlds of puppetry, performance, sculpture and collage. She hails from the borderlands between Cincinnati, Ohio and Northern Kentucky. She earned a degree in fiber and textile art from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has worked on costumes for traveling Broadway shows, participated in puppet theater festivals and workshops in Europe, Indonesia, and the United States. She is inspired by the fantastical and the everyday and how these shape peoples’ perception of the world. Drawing from mythology, folktales, memories, and personal experience she creates narratives and characters that aim to make some sense of our existence by giving form to our collective anxieties and desires. Her piece No One Knows was created as part of a residency at Bunnell Street Arts Center in Homer, Alaska early in 2021.
www.emily-schubert.com
Instagram: @schubertemily
Nespress Yourself
Best practices for sourcing and making coffee sustainably.
Nespress Yourself is created and performed by Donna Oblongata, illustrated by Elaine Arias, and directed by Donna Obologata.
Donna Oblongata is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Philadelphia. She was a founding member of The Missoula Oblongata, a punk rock theatre company that toured original plays around North America for seven years, to critical and grassroots acclaim. She was also a member of the Baltimore-based artists collective, Wham City. Her work has been presented at Ars Nova (NYC), Flint Public Art Project, the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, FringeArts Philadelphia, Baltimore Theater Project, Bread & Puppet Theater, The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and at squats, intentional communities, and underground venues around the world. Her work has been supported by the Leeway Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, Meow Wolf, and most recently by a MacDowell fellowship and a residency at Cornell University’s Soil Factory.
Elaine Arias has been an early childhood bilingual educator and Latinx artist in Philadelphia for seven years. Having studied printmaking at Temple University, she is currently a teaching artist with Spiral Q and has been since 2014. Her most widely seen work was when she went viral on social media as the now-famous twerking mailbox during the 2020 election vote count. The mailbox costume has since been acquired by the Smithsonian.
Francesca Montanile Lyons (she/her) is a Philadelphia-based director and multi-disciplinary artist. Credits include creating/directing Dear Diary LOL (PHL FringeArts & New Ohio), directing Sometimes the Rain, Sometimes the Sea (UArts Arts Bank), Legal Tender (PHL FringeFest & AntFest), All 100 Fires by Donna Oblongata, Fourth Quarter (FPA Fest), and Rough & Tumble (SolowFest), animator & collaborator of Art House #7 (Theatre Horizon), and performing/co-creating Girl Poop (ongoing). MFA in Devised Performance from UArts/Pig Iron School (2016). BA in Theatre Arts & Performance Studies from Brown U (2011). www.francescamontanilelyons.com
www.donnaoblongata.com
Instagram: @donnaoblongata
Solomon Grundy
Based on a 19th century British nursery rhyme. The rhyme follows the living and dying of Solomon Grundy, whose health grows worse as the weather turns nice. While Solomon Grundy is one of those rhymes intended to familiarize children with the days of the week, this works, with an added second half, lets Solomon’s his unfortunate lot lead us to an opportunity to accept the process of death, grief, and memory as we move forward on this planet.
Maisie O’brien is a Philadelphia transplant from Dallas and a Chinese-American adoptee. Growing out of a visual arts background in printmaking, their work desires storytelling at the crossroads of puppetry, original cello music, paper cut outs, and stop motion animation. Since they began tying all of these callings together through shadow puppetry in specific, they have had the pleasure of performing at virtual puppet slams since 2020, and pursuing further studies in puppetry with Bread & Puppet Theater, the University of Connecticut, the Chicago International Puppet Festival Workshops, and the O’Neill Puppetry Conference. Maisie's most recent projects have been a part of remote collaborations with Canadian dance artist Lucy M. May and German filmmaker Dion Schumann. They’re crossing their fingers that they’ll be able to join Lucy in Montreal this summer for an in-person phase of residency. Last Summer they received their first bit of city funding to pursue purely explorational works with fiddle player Georgia Beatty and composer Michael McMillan, helping them find some exciting beginnings to further shadow/music creations. Around Philadelphia, Maisie also works with arts and activism organizations like Spiral Q, Asian Arts Initiative, and Fleisher Art Memorial. In the coming year, they will be focusing on offering their aesthetic and teaching in partnership with food, land, and cultural sovereignty groups so that they can play more of a role at the intersection of art and survival.
www.maisieobrien.com
Instagram: @vegetable.lamb
Vimeo: vimeo.com/maisieobrien
Etsy: etsy.com/shop/TheVeggieLamb
Black Matter Lĭves
Black Matter Lĭves is miniature crankie inspired by the universal progression of forces and events on Earth in the summer of 2020. This crankie is created and performed by Dirk. The mini-crankie is viewed as an enlarged projection of a live tabletop performance. Though Koi and Azaria are usually puppeteers, for this the presentation of Black Matter Lĭves they have their debut as performing musicians.
DIrk Joseph is the principal artist and founder of Baltimore based String Theory Theater. His performance tonight will be a projection from a miniature crankie box with a display window that is only 1 inch wide. The music for this performance is by composer Scott Buckley. Please enjoy, Black Matter Lives.
Website: www.stringtheorytheater.com
Facebook: Stringtheorytheater
Instagram: @stringtheorytheater | @koidoddles | @ rosethemoondragon
Musical Guest:
The Local Honeys are from the oldest mountains in the world. They fish because it’s good eating, and they play old-time music because it’s just good music. They are a Kentucky duo. Montana and Linda Jean.
With voices that called horses home and rained pretty in hollers, their roots in American traditional music are natural. The influences of poets and ballads native to human spirit deep in the rhymes and themes of their songs, the Local Honeys write music for people who need it. Bullshit aside, they are here to talk about suffering.
They will help you get through it. It’s what they’ve always done. Their 2017 album, Little Girls Acting Like Men, propelled them on tours through the United States and Europe with Colter Wall. They found themselves focal points of traditional music festivals.
Since then their specific sound of Appalachian music has grown, along with a fan base of music enthusiasts and proactive culture. A tour with Tyler Childers in early 2020 was followed up with a fun, yet controversial album The Gospel. Their increasingly popular authenticity quickly catapulted them to headline artists.
As buzz builds for the Local Honeys, despite a deadened 2020 tour schedule that included shows at the biggest folk festivals around, they signed with songwriter haven, La Honda Records, home to country & Western heavy hitters Vincent Neil Emerson and Colter Wall. A recent summer show with the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts highlighted growth and new songs from the two women.
If there’s any doubt, there won’t be for long. When they sing their songs, play their banjo, their fiddle, those guitars and boxes, the rhythms in their toes, you will know The Local Honeys are from Kentucky. Their names are Montana and Linda Jean, and they’re here to talk about suffering. They are here to get you through this.
http://www.thelocalhoneys.com
Instagram: @thelocalhoneys
The 2022 Baltimore Crankie Fest is produced in partnership with the Center for Cultural Vibrancy. The Center for Cultural Vibrancy creates and cultivates opportunities for cultural connections that support living traditions and energize vibrant communities.