The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina seems slightly more terrible if we remember that just eighty years earlier, the Gulf Coast endured a similar disaster.

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Behind the frisky puppetry of Stuffed and Unstrung

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It’s not easy for puppets to ride a merry-go-round, but on a recent Wednesday night at the Union Square Theatre, that’s exactly what they did.

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Basil Twist’s Puppet Brigade: The puppeteer pulls strings on Broadway and beyond

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Puppeteer Basil Twist has been lurking outside the mainstream theatre scene for years, but he sauntered inside in 2008, when he and performance artist Joey Arias came to HERE Arts Center with Arias With a Twist, an extravagant burlesque love letter to fifties monster movies. Now, the puppet maker and manipulator is having his cake and eating it, too: He’s got one piece on Broadway (The Addams Family, for which he designed the enormous puppets), he’s working at California’s La Jolla Playhouse on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a documentary about his work (Arias With a Twist: A Docufantasy) opened to acclaim this spring at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Recently, TDF spoke to Twist about his offbeat career path.

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