Adhesive Theater Project
Adhesive Theater Project binds the arts through the bonds of collaboration. From Brooklyn, the company brought theater artists together with fashion designers, scientists, illustrators, engineers, musicians, puppet makers, and video artists to create experimental work built for the live stage.
The company’s work ran from its earliest projects through the 2013 world premiere of The Service Road. The work moved between classic plays and new writing, but its method stayed recognizable: build a theatrical world from many materials, keep the mechanics visible enough to spark the imagination, and let music, movement, objects, light, and language carry the story together. The results included talking animals, shadow puppets, a folk opera about robots, objects with unruly inner lives, a film-noir landscape assembled from frames, and a storm-struck city park populated by video puppets. A shorter welcome to the company’s work picks out the qualities that recur from one production to the next.
A production line made by hand
The company’s first production was The Battles of Coxinga in 1999, a large-action treatment of Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s play. In 2000 came Spring Awakening, shaped through stark painted imagery, and Kirby, an ensemble superhero deconstruction. Les Mauvais Garçons followed in 2002, then Chantecler in 2005 with puppets, masks, live illustration, physical theater, and a three-piece band.
In 2006, R.U.R.: A Futurist Folk Opera combined music and contemporary dance with a new version of Karel Čapek’s robot play. The same season included the first Brooklyn Robot Parade. In 2008, I, Object! used music, puppets, animation, and live video to turn familiar belongings into dramatic partners. The 2009 world premiere of NOIR translated film grammar into an angular stage world with live music and movement. In 2013, The Service Road opened with live sound effects, moving branches, stop-motion animation, and a large video puppet.
Projects beyond the proscenium
Adhesive also made events that put the same collaborative spirit into public and informal settings. The Brooklyn Robot Parade invited mechanical creations and handmade costumes into D.U.M.B.O. The Farmyard Puppet Workshop connected the animal world of Chantecler with the physical work of building and manipulating puppets. Stoop sales gathered props and objects into neighborhood tables, while a tenth-year gathering brought music, dance, and the company’s extended creative circle into one evening.
The associated Brooklyn Jugs carried an old-time blend of jug music and blues to festivals and garden events. Their stage names, homemade rhythm instruments, and good-humored farewells made them a neighboring branch of the company’s collage: part music, part performance, and part Brooklyn gathering.
Find the work
The Projects & Events page places the productions in order and links to full company and cast credits. Reviews gathers brief excerpts from the press the productions received. About Us sets out the mission and the idea of theater as an invitation to complete an imagined world. Company Officers names the two officers and explains the collaborative structure.
Many of these productions asked performers and technicians to share space with large objects, inclined planes, live cameras, puppets, and long technical sequences. A separate guide to the physical side of multimedia and puppet theater considers ordinary rehearsal-room habits for that kind of work. The company’s stage practice rested on spectacle made from careful coordination and the belief that an audience will always bring the final ingredient—its imagination.
Collaborators and recurring materials
People are named only in their production roles, without personal profiles. Adhesive’s productions were collective stage work: different people wrote, directed, performed, composed, designed, managed, illustrated, filmed, built, or operated each element. All years and venues refer to past events.
The production sequence is also a map of recurring materials. Shadow figures in The Battles of Coxinga lead toward the masks and animal puppets of Chantecler. The live band and sculptural pieces in R.U.R. lead toward the frames, magnets, and music of NOIR. Live video in I, Object! develops into the projected faces and head-rigged puppet of The Service Road. Not every project followed one formula, but together these connections show how collaborators kept testing what an audience could understand from an object, a body, a sound, and a change of light.