Announcement: PUPPETS, work by Theodora Skipitares opens at Presidents Office Gallery, Wednesday, February 4, 4-5:30pm

Please join us for a reception for an exhibition of PUPPETS by
Theodora Skipitares on Wednesday, February 4, 4-5:30pm.

President's Office Gallery
Pratt Institute
Main 1
200 Willoughby Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11205

The exhibition continues through September 2009.
Gallery hours: Monday - Friday, 10-4pm

Both the opening and exhibition are free and open to the public.

For more information, please visit our website at
www.pratt.edu/exhibitions.

Theodora Skipitares is an Associate Professor in Art and Design Education
at Pratt Institute, This multi-media artist and theater director has been
creating her works for more than 25 years. Trained as a sculptor and
designer, she began creating personal solo performances in the mid 70s,
gradually moving away from autobiography to explore social and historical
themes. Realistic, life-size puppet figures, as well as miniature ones,
became the \"performers\" in large-scale works that included live music,
film, video and documentary texts. These works include THE AGE OF
INVENTION; an examination of 3 centuries of American invention featuring
300 puppets, DEFENDERS OF THE CODE, a musical about the history of
eugenics was named one of the 10 Best Plays by the New York Times, and
THE RADIANT CITY, a music-theatre work based on the life of Robert Moses.
More recent projects include UNDER THE KNIFE, a site-specific history of
medicine that took an audience to twelve different theater environments,
and BODY OF CRIME, a history of women in prison. In 1998, she premiered A
HARLOT\'S PROGRESS, a chamber opera with life-size puppet figures based
on the engraving series by William Hogarth. The work was named as one of
the Burns-Mantle 10 Best Plays of the 1997-98 season, and won the
American Theater Wing Design Award in 1999.

Recently, she created three plays about the Trojan War: HELEN, ODYSSEY,
And IPHIGENIA. They were presented individually and together as TRILOGY.
IPHIGENIA won two New York Innovative Theater Awards in 2006. Her most
recent works are EXILES (2007) and MEDEA (2008).

Skipitares has received grants from the NEA, NYFA, NYSCA, UNIMA, a
Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Fellowship and a McKnight
Playwriting Fellowship, among others. Her visual work has been exhibited
widely in the U.S. and Europe, and recently in South America. In 1997 she
traveled to Vietnam to create an opera with the National Theater of
Vietnam and the Vietnamese National Water Puppet Theater Company. In fall
1999/spring 2000, Mrs. Skipitares was a Fulbright Fellow in India, where
she created two original works with companies in Bangalore and Ahmedabad.
In 2002 she created a multi-disciplinary music-theater work in Cambodia.
From 2001-2003, she was co-director of the Puppet Lab at Arts at St.
Anns. She recently received a Distinguished Playwriting Award from the
Helen Merrill Fund. She is the founder and artistic director of Skysaver
Productions, a multi-media theater company based in New York.

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