A BRIEF HISTORY!

We took over PUNCH puppet slam in 2005 from Travis Chamberlain and Natalie Johnsonius. It was held at Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg, BK. It was held on the second Tuesday of every month and it was wild and punk rock. It cost $5 at the door, cash only. Some of the pieces were brilliant and some were only okay, but they were all "too short to suck" as James Godwin would always say. 

 

That venue closed and Galapagos opened a new sexy venue in Dumbo, BK and we moved PUNCH with it. But it wasn't the same. We started moving the slam around - to Jimmy's no. 43 in the East Village (an amazing pub with a small performance space in the back on East 7th street that sadly was devastated by the building explosion / fire on the corner of 7th and First Avenue in 2015), Dixon Place hosted us multiple times, and we hosted PUNCH film nights at 92streetY Tribeca as well.

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In 2007 we held an Alice in Wonderland puppet festival at HERE Arts Center and "Kamikaze" is a term we coined for the crazy slam experiment we did for the event. Artists of various styles and puppet experience were assigned chapters and then we presented the pieces in order. No limitation was given on interpretation or puppet style used. It made for the weirdest interpretations of things... ​We loved it.

 

At the time we felt the need to give this themed slam its own name since we still were still doing regular slams as well. Now that we are only focused on the themed slams, we're dropping the slightly problematic "Kamikaze" from our name, and will be known as simply "PUNCH puppet slam!"

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To view some videos of past PUNCHes:

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Our next theme is WILLY WONKA - find out more here!