PUNCH Puppet Slam:
WILLY WONKA!
Wednesday 6/4 @ RUBULAD
Doors: 7pm / Show: 7:30pm
Tickets: $18 online / $20 @ door
Join us for another PUNCH puppet slam - where a diverse group of puppet artists use a wide variety of puppet styles to tell one story! Let's see what these artists have in store for Roald Dahl's classic tale of capitalist espionage and trust!
PROGRAM
BELOW

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ACT ONE: Charlie prologue... = Kell Selznick & Adrienne Gomez
Kell Selznick is a puppeteer based in Queens and has been puppeteering and building puppets for over a decade. During the day they stitch or prep wardrobe for Broadway shows and at night they are a devoted cat parent. Previous Punch's include Ubu Roi and WW2. Favorite puppet jobs include Frozen, Jim Henson's Dinosaur Train, and Erth's Dinosaur Zoo.
Adrienne Gomez is a Chicana/Puerto Rican writer, comic, and producer born and raised in Southern California. She attended California State University, Northridge from 2008 to 2011, where she majored in Theatre and minored in Philosophy. From 2012 to 2019, she wrote, performed, and produced sketch comedy in Los Angeles. In 2019, she moved to New York City to earn her MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, with a thesis in playwriting. Gomez currently lives in Brooklyn and is pursuing stand-up comedy and playwriting. @kellznick and @adriemmecgomez
ACT TWO: The Golden Tickets! = Sonya Sobieski/Crooked Square Puppetry
Sonya Sobieski is a playwright dramaturg turned pandemic puppeteer. Her short puppet films have been presented around the U.S. and in Canada. Live on stage in NYC: La Mama Puppet Slam, Drama of Works, We Wiggle Dolls, and The Idiot’s Hour. Media used: anything that works, preferably upcycled. Affiliated artist with Obie Award-winning New Georges, for whom she also serves as New Play Advocate. Aspiring clown at Brooklyn Comedy Collective. MFA Brooklyn College. @crookedsquare
ACT THREE: Pure Imagination! = Marcelo Bottaro/The Figments
Marcelo Bottaro is a cartoonist voice actor, puppeteer, and our teacher locally from Brooklyn. New York has been teaching puppetry for over three years and has been performing puppetry and developing his craft for over 22 years. Instagram handles: @marcelobottaro_927 @figmentsinc @bottarocartoons
ACT FOUR: Augustus! = Esme Roszel
Esme Roszel is a Brooklyn based teaching artist and puppeteer hailing from Plymouth, Massachusetts. His work has been seen at Jalopy Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, Puppet Showplace, and the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry. Other recent puppetry projects include “Song of the North” (Fictionville Studios),“Bequeathed” (Dixon Place), and “The Legend of the Snow Queen” (Puppet Bucket Productions). He holds a BFA in Puppet Arts from University of Connecticut. View his work at esmeroszel.com or @esmeroszel on Instagram.
ACT FIVE: The Tunnel! = Hailey Bendar
Hailey is a puppet artist living in NYC. She has worked in television as a puppet wrangler and gotten into shenanigans in the Pennsylvania Theme Park scene. She is an alumni of Drama of Works' December 2024 slam, and spends her days with people of her maturity level as an elementary school teaching artist. She thanks her amazing boyfriend Ben and her cats, Tenar and God Emperor Clementine of the Known Universe, for their love and support. Hailey can be found on Instagram at @thehaileybendar, website coming eventually.
ACT SIX: Violet! = Zlata Godunova, with Ariel Lewis and Stephan Shteynberg
Zlata is a performer, puppeteer, and designer. Classically trained at the National Academic Theatre of Drama and Musical Comedy in Ukraine, she recently starred in the one-woman show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. She puppeteered in Magic of Light with Yara Arts Group and Tom Lee at La MaMa, and was part of the International Puppet Slam in 2024. You can find her in Central Park, where she works as a puppeteer at the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater. @zlata_god zlatagodunova.com
ACT SEVEN: Veruca! = Ricky Downes
Ricky Downes is a New York based comedian, voice actor, and puppeteer and SO excited to be joining Drama of Works for this delightfully delectable puppet slam! Ricky specializes in highly energetic, animated character comedy with a fusion of performance art, puppetry, props, drag, classic stand-up comedy, music, and more! Previous antics include the Off-Broadway, national tour of Paddington – playing the iconic bear himself, a one man show of The Lion King at The People’s Improv Theater, and going viral for singing the entirety of the Broadway hit Hamilton in the voices of the Muppets. Ricky also loves ducks! @rickydownesiii
ACT EIGHT: Mike TeeVee! = Anthony Sellitto-Budney/BreakFAST Puppets
Anthony Sellitto-Budney (They/Them) is a graduate of the UConn Puppet Arts BFA Program and founder of BreakFAST Puppets. They are a puppeteer, clown, and performance artist and have been featured in the NOLA Giant Puppet Fest, the Asheville Fringe Fest, and were the 2023 Emerging Artist at the Eugene O’Neill Puppetry Conference. @skunklurv
ACT NINE: Charlie! = Kate Brehm/imnotlost
Kate Brehm is a professional puppeteer and movement director. Recent credits: The Odyssey at A.R.T. (puppet design and direction), Song of the North at the New Vic (puppeteer). Her New York based company, imnotlost, has produced full length and short form puppet shows alongside interactive events since 2003. She has enjoyed touring the world performing for amazing artists such as Basil Twist, Lee Breuer, Chris Green, and Torry Bend, in places like Japan, China, Chile, France, Sweden, England, Italy, the Netherlands, and across the USA. @therealkatebrehm

PUNCH Puppet Slam is generously supported by the Puppet Slam Network!
PUNCH Puppet slam - where we take a theme or event or story and retell it in order with a number of different artists, creating a collage of an experience. You can read all about it and view our previous themes HERE. Obviously we’d like most of the pieces to be told with puppets, but are open to other forms of visual storytelling. Our slam evenings often relate to current events and in this moment we are committed to furthering our mission to bring people together through multimedia performance - and FUN!!!
