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The Trouble Puppet Theater Company was founded by Connor Hopkins in 2004. The company started out performing works in bars and at benefits for Austin nonprofits and gradually developed increasingly ambitious shows and an extended corps of puppeteers, crew, and volunteers. Trouble Puppet has performed works such as The Gunpowder Plot: Or How I Became a Catholic Suicide Bomber in September 2007, The Cruel Circus from December 2007 to March 2008, and The Case of the Haymarket Riot in May 2008, which was also featured at the Fusebox Festival. First Night Austin 2009 commissioned The Cosmic Clock, which was performed in Austin’s City Hall. And in the fall of 2008, Trouble Puppet mounted what was then its most ambitious production, Frankenstein: A Trouble Puppet Show, at The City Theater. This show returns in fall 2010 on the main stage at SVT.
Hopkins has been awarded scholarships to attend the prestigious National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center each year since 2007. In 2009, he was invited to the conference as an Emerging Artist. The piece he developed there, an adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, won a Seed Grant from the Jim Henson Foundation, and was performed as a work-in-progress in Austin. The Jungle was named on three of four of The Austin Chronicle’s “Best of 2009” theater lists. It was one of only three productions to be nominated for the B. Iden Payne award for Outstanding Theatrical Event in 2009. The Austin Theater Examiner nominated Connor Hopkins and The Jungle for Best New Play Written by an Austinite (or Austinites) and for Special Technical Achievement, for puppet design. It is nominated for two 2010 Austin Critics Table Awards, for Best Production (drama) and Scenic Design. The Jim Henson Foundation has since awarded Trouble Puppet a Project Show Grant to produce a fully realized Jungle in 2011.
Trouble Puppet’s founder and artistic director, Connor Hopkins, is also a company member of the Rude Mechanicals, Shrewd Productions, and a founding member-coordinator of the Austin Scenic Co-op, which has received a Theater Communications Group A-ha! grant to expand its efforts to reduce waste and expense by recycling scenic and stage materials.
Hopkins has been awarded scholarships to attend the prestigious National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center each year since 2007. In 2009, he was invited to the conference as an Emerging Artist. The piece he developed there, an adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, won a Seed Grant from the Jim Henson Foundation, and was performed as a work-in-progress in Austin. The Jungle was named on three of four of The Austin Chronicle’s “Best of 2009” theater lists. It was one of only three productions to be nominated for the B. Iden Payne award for Outstanding Theatrical Event in 2009. The Austin Theater Examiner nominated Connor Hopkins and The Jungle for Best New Play Written by an Austinite (or Austinites) and for Special Technical Achievement, for puppet design. It is nominated for two 2010 Austin Critics Table Awards, for Best Production (drama) and Scenic Design. The Jim Henson Foundation has since awarded Trouble Puppet a Project Show Grant to produce a fully realized Jungle in 2011.
Trouble Puppet’s founder and artistic director, Connor Hopkins, is also a company member of the Rude Mechanicals, Shrewd Productions, and a founding member-coordinator of the Austin Scenic Co-op, which has received a Theater Communications Group A-ha! grant to expand its efforts to reduce waste and expense by recycling scenic and stage materials.
Core Company:
Connor Hopkins, Producing Artistic Director, Head Troublemaker
Jeanine Lisa, Producing Artistic Partner
Kathryn Rogers, Associate Producer
Connor Hopkins, Producing Artistic Director, Head Troublemaker
Jeanine Lisa, Producing Artistic Partner
Kathryn Rogers, Associate Producer