JOSH RICE is a multidisciplinary theatre artist specializing in puppetry & improvisation. He makes work that is at once playful, absurd, and tragic, incorporating simple performer-driven spectacle, puppetry, live music, improvisation, and audience interaction. His work is heavily influenced by his life-long fandom of professional wrestling, comedy, and his training as an improviser. His new work-in-progress, Kayfabe—a puppet wrestling entertainment spectacular—is the recipient of a 2024 Jim Henson Foundation Production Grant, a 2022 New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Grant, and 2022 Arts Council for Wyoming County Community Arts Grant. Other original puppetry work includes The Marooned at Dixon Place and New York State Puppet Festival 2018; The VaudeVillains and Composite Portrait at La MaMa Puppet Slam; The Tempest, directed at Shake on the Lake and Sarah Lawrence College. He adapted, designed & directed Shake on the Lake’s puppet-infused A Christmas Carol (2017-19). He also founded & directed The Mnemonic Theatre Project, a puppetry program for seniors living with Alzheimer’s & other Dementias, which has been featured on the PBS documentary series, Visionaries.
Puppetry Performance Credits: Chimpanzee by Nick Lehane (Flipside Festival, Singapore, 2023); Akutugawa by Tom Lee & Koryu Nishikawa V (Japan Society NYC, Chicago Puppet Festival, U.S. Tour, 2023); Remember When They Told You This Was A Helicopter (Upper Jay Art Center Residency, 2021); Dan Hurlin's Demolishing Everything with Amazing Speed (Bard SummerScape 2016, Holland Festival, 2017); Shank's Mare by Tom Lee & Koryu Nishikawa V (NYS Puppet Festival 2022, Paris tour 2019, Chicago Int’t Puppet Festival 2019, La MaMa 2015, Japan tour 2017, Hawaii tour 2017, U.S. tour, 2016); Petrushka with the NY Philharmonic Orchestra (The Barbican, 2015), the Oregon Symphony Orchestra (Portland, 2018) and the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, 2017; The Scarlet Ibis (HERE Arts Center, 2015); Packrat (La MaMa, 2018); Jewel Casket and AO II at Dixon Place; and Janie Geiser’s Reptile Under the Flowers (St. Ann’s Warehouse, 2013).
He is the co-Founder & Producing Artistic Director of Shake on the Lake (SOTL). Founded in 2012, SOTL produces fast, fun, and physical adaptations of Shakespeare’s works in 90-minutes or less, that tour to rural communities throughout Western New York State. Shake credits: Co-Director of Songs & Sweet Airs, Charles the Wrestler in As You Like It, Richard in Richard III, Mercutio in Romeo & Juliet, Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Director of The Tempest and A Christmas Carol.
Josh is the Founder & Producing Artistic Director of the New York State Puppet Festival. Since 2018, the biennial festival of puppetry in rural Perry, NY has programmed national and international artists for performances, exhibitions, film screenings, and workshops. Artists Josh has curated include Bread & Puppet Theatre Co, Dan Hurlin, Koryu Nishikawa V, Tom Lee, Emma Wiseman, Emily Zemba, Jeghetto, Sifiso Mabena, Marcella Murray, Ash Winkfield & Max Gayford, Leah Ogawa, Trusty Sidekick Theatre Co, Sam Gold, Concrete Temple Theatre, Liz Oakley & Alli Goss, Shayna Strype, Vinny Mraz, Seth Faergolzia, Josh Marcks, Andy Manjuck & Dorothy James, Lisa Gonzales, among others. Curating Credits: the New York State Puppet Festival 2024, 2022, 2018; NYSPF@Home Streaming Puppetry Series, 2020-21; Puppet Blok (Dixon Place 2024, 2018-19). He is also the founder and host of The Puppet Pod!, an interview- based podcast with puppetry artists.
Josh Rice’s projects have received multiple grants since 2012, including/from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Jim Henson Foundation, National Arts Strategies, the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council, the Arts Council for Wyoming County, Conable Family Foundation, Palma Foundation, the Ralph C. Wilson Foundation, the Tri-County Council on the Arts, among others. In 2017 Josh was awarded a Wyoming Country Rural Arts Initiative Grant to start a theatre in an abandoned main street storefront in his hometown of Perry—Theatre@37—now home to SOTL and NYSPF.
Josh is a full-time Lecturer in Improvisation and Facilitator at the Alan Alda School of Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, teaching STEM professionals, researchers and students how communicate more clearly, vividly, and empathically using applied improv techniques. He has been past faculty at Sarah Lawrence College, Pace University, the University of Rochester, and taught workshops at Yale, Cornell, SUNY Geneseo, Genesee Community College, Barcelona Institute of the Arts, among others. MFA, Sarah Lawrence College.
Portrait credit: Bob Doyle.
Contact
Josh Rice Projects: joshrice0730@gmail.com
Shake on the Lake: shakeonthelake@gmail.com