Miniature raconteur, sequined pyromaniac Laura Heit performs teeny tiny puppet shows inside matchboxes. A dead boyfriend, a sausage fairy, a tiger whisperer, a perfectionist, a bath-loving ghost, and many others play their parts in these uncanny micro plays. The miniature stages come to life with crankles, fire, and pop-up paper engineering. The puppet shows are simultaneously projected on a screen behind the table making the little tiny details of this portable variety show larger than life. 

Always evolving, The Matchbox Shows have been performed nationally and internationally since 1999, in a number of venues including: Great Small Works Toy Theater Festival at St. Ann's Warehouse Brooklyn, the Jim Henson International Festival of Puppetry, the Velaslavasay Panorama theater (LA), Casteliers Montreal Canada, Dordrecht Netherlands, and Puppetropolis (Chicago).

"It is a tired old analogy to compare the relationship between puppeteer and puppet to that between God and man, but when God shows up slightly tipsy and wearing red lipstick and a blue sequined tube top it is possible for the idea to seem fresh again." - Susan Simpson, Puppetry International Magazine

Laura Heit employs stop-motion, live-action puppetry, hand drawing, and computer animation in her short films. Her work has screened nationally and internationally in museums and film festivals, including; The Walker Arts Center, New York MOMA, The Guggenheim Museum, The Anthology Film Archives, The Millennium Film Workshop, The Annecy, Rotterdam, Taipei, Ann Arbor, and London International Film Festivals, The Black Maria Film Festival, among others, and has been broadcast on PBS. She also works in puppetry, experimental theater, and live performance.   Her acclaimed puppet-show-in miniature, The Matchbox Shows, in which Heit plays ringmaster to a tiny cabaret, has been touring for over ten years. 

Heit has been the recipient of awards and grants from Mac Dowell Colony, Channel Four Television London, British Film Council, Durfee Foundation, ARC grant, Jim Henson Foundation, Puppeteers of America, and MTV. She has a BFA in Film from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a MFA from Royal College of Art, London.  From 2007 to 2011 She was co-director of the Experimental Animation Program at the California Institute of the Arts. She currently lives in Portland Oregon. 

More information can be found at www.redcat.org 

Source: REDCAT