Dramaton Theater: About the Company

Ken Berman (Artistic director, performer, director): I graduated in 1993 from Tyler School of Art with a BFA in sculpture, where I was known as the “spiderman” for my work reanimating dead daddy longlegs in intricate miniature machines. In 2003 I earned an MFA in Puppet Arts from University of Connecticut - a degree I was interested in earning in order to qualify for that elusive teaching career of which I sporadically dream. The biggest advantage of this education was meeting the other now-permanent members of Dramaton Theater: Frankie, Sarah, and Faye. As creative soul-mates, we have complementary personalities that compose a creative whole in very special ways. We work on everything together, within and beyond Dramaton.

My first foray into puppetry was in 1994 with my short-lived experimental troupe, No Man’s Puppet Company, dubbed by City Paper as “Philadelphia’s Dadaist Puppet Troupe.” Our debut performance was set up as a site-specific trilogy of puppet stories. My contribution was a marionette performance, “The Life in a Night of…” It was the first time I dealt with the strange cyclical path of life, and could be seen as a precursor to the stories of our production, The Traveler. This performance motivated me to pursue my own work under the name Dramaton Theater. In 1998, we debuted at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival with a more developed performance of “The Life in a Night of…” Since then I have concentrated on establishing a performance vocabulary with puppets.

Until The Traveler, all my productions had been non-verbal, and integrated live original scores. The underlying approach to the art of puppetry has remained: relying on gesture and the defiance of human-boundaries to share an experience with an audience that probes the mysteries of our collective human psyche. My goal is to create an “experience," rather than creating a “puppet performance” – wherein puppetry is the vehicle for, rather than the point of, communicating abstractions.

Some extracurricular highlights include contributing articles to Puppetry Journal, being a guest on WNPR’s “Radio Times” with Marti Moss-Coane (speaking on the renaissance of puppetry), being the first recipient of the “Margo Rose Scholarship” to attend the National Puppetry Conference, and being invited to attend the Studios Midwest residency in Illinois, where I was the first puppeteer in the program’s 15-year history. I have also been a guest director, most recently for Long Island University’s 2004 human and puppet production of The Little Prince. And I have taught performance and construction for children and adults at art centers and universities. Dramaton Theater’s alter-ego is a production company called Dramaton Designs. Under this moniker we build and design for other companies and productions. Most recent work includes design and construction of 13-foot tall transforming puppets for an outdoor production of Beauty & The Beast, and many of the puppets on SeeMore’s Playhouse, a new children's program on PBS, on which I also perform the role of “Basil Wombat.” I have also toured internationally with Huber Marionettes in Dan Graham’s marionette rock-opera, Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty.

Not surprisingly, Frankie, Faye and Sarah have also played equal parts in these experiences…

Frankie Cordero has been puppeteering since age eight, when he first joined the Chicagoland Puppetry Guild and attended his first of many Puppeteers of America Festivals, earning many awards as a young puppeteer. Frankie earned a BFA in Puppetry at University of Connecticut where he was twice awarded the Jim Henson Memorial Prize in Puppetry. Puppetry credits in New York City include performances at La MaMa E.T.C., the Manhattan Children’s Museum, and Carnegie Hall, and for television on Sesame Street, as a principal guest puppeteer on the Noggin television series, Oobi, and as a puppet wrangler and craftsperson for the PBS Kids series, It’s a Big, Big World. In Chicago, Frankie has puppeteered in Hystopolis Productions’ The Adding Machine and in Blair Thomas & Co.’s Pierrot Lunaire, a staging of Arnold Schoenberg’s 1912 composition. His Chicago television puppeteering credits include Nickelodeon’s newest DVD series, “Curious Buddies” and Jack’s Big Music Show, a brand new puppet preschool series that currently airs daily on the Noggin Channel.

Frankie is also partner in Dramaton Designs, for which he has recently co-designed and built 13-foot tall puppets for an outdoor production of Beauty & the Beast, and many of the puppets for SeeMore’s Playhouse, a new children's program on PBS, on which he also performs the role of “SeeMore Seal.”

Faye Dupras has worked since 1990 in Canada and the United States as a coordinator, director and facilitator for various organizations creating and implementing non-traditional educational and recreational theatre and arts based programming for diverse populations. She is co-founder of the international puppet company Foreign Landscapes, under which she co-created the UNIMA award winning show By the Willow that she is currently producing internationally. She holds a BFA in Drama for Human Development, has apprenticed and worked under Noreen Young, one of Canada's top puppeteers, and earned her MFA in Puppetry Arts from the University of Connecticut. Faye has recently moved to eastern Massachusetts where she continues working as a freelance designer, performer/director, and educator.