Matthew Owens
April - May 2020
I have produced approximately 35 puppets since the quarantine began and I was furloughed from my job from the Brookfield Zoo near Chicago because of the quarantine. I began making only one puppet to perform at night with a spotlight on it from my apartment window. The process proved so satisfying that I started making more, as much for me as for the neighbors. It evolved into a circus theme, somehow. Last week I wrote a murder mystery to attempt a narrative of sorts. A detective, a new clown, a gorilla. One toddler, a regular, was upset when the villain jumps to his death at the end. This week I'll make it up to him.
For the last dozen years, or so, Matthew has designed and fabricated enrichment devices and strategies for Zoo animals at the Brookfield Zoo, Disney Animal Kingdom, San Diego Zoo, Cincinnati Zoo, Atlanta Zoo, and many other institutions throughout the country and overseas.
Top to bottom and L-R
Animal enrichment devices
A sloth bear wiggling a wobble tree, welded steel with treats in the top and the base embedded in tires to provide safe, spongy motion; a hanging feeder tray to accommodate a pangolin for nail trims, vet exams and ultrasound; a young gorilla sampling treats from a cast “bark board” with multiple holes of varying size; Hudson, the polar bear, testing a floatation toy made of “bear proof” fabric; a carbon fiber tree stump, on wheels, designed to provide the animal with safe transport and a quiet sanctuary when he’s had enough of the public; an adult Amur tiger plays in the pool with a cast urethane boulder; a cotton top monkey trying to solve a PVC puzzle feeder to retrieve a treat; a floating enrichment “barge” for otters with puzzle feeders, grooming opportunities and ice treats to provide a place to play and relax and not be harassed by gibbons; a raft designed to encourage penguins to dive and swim to it; (inset) a mobile PVC chat tree, designed to give the animal a comfortable place and not be handled, on the Tonight Show with Steve Irwin’s son discussing a sloth.
July 28, 2020
As we approach the end of July, a mere week away, with no real progress to report on the efforts to abate our “visitation” of the corona virus besetting our world, I reflect, now, upon my awkward attempt at distracting myself with what amounts to a small theatric caprice; the window box puppet performance I began early in April.
Our nation is sloughing off thousands of deaths and millions of cases and the society, and the economy are beginning to bend with the weight of local ordinances and self-imposed limitations on our ordinary, daily lives.
I began this puppet theater with the intent of amusing myself whilst tangentially doing so for my neighbors. It is a modest undertaking utilizing, mostly primitive rod puppets and music and some text revolving around a circus theme. I chose that theme as circuses, in my mind, were an early attempt at what is now known as variety shows, or vaudevilles, or music hall programs with disparate characters with varying degrees of skill and talent performing, briefly, one after another. The concept has allowed me to produce in excess of fifty puppets; jugglers, clowns, animals, tightrope walkers, sword swallowers, magicians, etc. all with the more fantastical elements of dragons and grotesques.
The show has developed into something of a local phenomenon as the local, and national press have sought to cover it as an obvious sedative to an anxious and stressed populace. As many as fifty people; parents, children, retirees, young and old gather, now, every Saturday afternoon to indulge in what, it has to be said, is nearly sophomoric entertainment for 45 minutes, or so.
The result of all this attention, of course, is that I now find myself feeling genuinely obliged to perform each week and to constantly add new characters and material. It has been, without a doubt, an enormously therapeutic exercise for me as I cope with the isolation of my city and the considerable stress of being unemployed at 63 years of age. I have missed but one or two dates, delayed or rescheduled due to weather, but consider my show to be as important to my audience as it is to me. It is pure street theater; with no monetary expectation nor obligation to stay put through the whole show.
I find my production process to be surprising me as my desire to produce increasingly detailed and elegant pieces to accommodate my imagination. For the first time in my professional life I find myself completely destroying an early prototype after hours of work with careless abandon in the hopes of creating just the right effect. Puppetry, of course, is a somewhat demanding craft which usually requires a certain amount of engineering and construction to successfully pull off. I am an artist who is used to painting a full painting in one sitting or sculpting an animal enrichment device in a single day. The very nature of sculpting, molding, casting and fabricating, together with rigging and costuming, slows down my normal impatient impulses and forces me to carefully consider each step and the subsequent actions. All this to produce an ugly little (the figures, being necessarily restricted to the scale of a tiny balcony and a three-foot window) character which flashes before the audience for, usually, no more than three minutes or so.
September 1, 2020
The fifth month of this comedy and twenty-some performances; that is approximate. We’ve had a battery of press and very supportive responses. I’ve been reading online comments (something I’m not that accustomed to) and I’ve notices a curious byproduct.
Somehow, I’ve been called to the attention of old, very old, acquaintances. Many being classmates as far back as my grade school days. Many, if not most, are still in the West and many are still in Wyoming. This has made me evaluate where I am and what I’ve done with my life. Even old nemeses have surfaced.
September 14, 2020
This week, I finally produced a figure I’ve wanted to do for years; a rubber puppet likeness of an oriental rat flea. Xenopsylla Cheopis is the flea most associated with the transmission of the Yersinia Pestis bacillus which produces bubonic, pneumonic and septicemic plague. This unassuming and minuscule insect helped to permanently reshape the whole of Western culture, in the span of a few years in ways no human will could have dreamed of. At a time when the majority of the population of Europe was fully illiterate, the task of legally and officially documenting everything from title transfers, court documents, bills of sale, Royal declarations and birth records, among countless other necessary writings was relegated to the monks in the Abbeys scattered throughout the continent. The simple-celled bacteria annoying the gut of this humble yet voracious, parasite relied on the accommodating conveyance of the common black rat (Rattus Rattus) to deliberately and unrelentingly sweep across country borders to bring calamity to a frail and incredulous human population helpless to resist and destined to succumb, in staggering numbers, to a pandemic utterly indifferent to class, race, gender or ideology.
The cloistered environments of the abbeys provided a Petrie dish for the transmission of the disease and many monasteries and abbeys lost their entire tenancy to plague. Still others were abandoned, along with their spiritual charges now left to fend for themselves, as the clergy fled to less virulent pastures. The result was an intellectual vacuum which necessitated a new-found effort to secure literacy into the hands of the emerging merchant class. The stranglehold of the church, then, over official control was lost forever resulting in some of the earliest efforts to educate a broad population. It could be said that the real founders of August institutions of learning such as Oxford were a small rat, a tiny flea and a microscopic bacterium.
In addition to that historic rambling, the incision of a flea into a circus themed theatric show (and the obvious pun of a “flea circus) was nearly axiomatic to me. I set about sculpting as good a likeness of the Xenopsylla flea as I could muster. Unlike many of the other puppets for this production, it was demanding and time consuming. At least eight to ten full hours were dedicated to producing a twelve-inch flea puppet.
Having debuted the puppet today and gauging the audience reaction, I’m sure I’ve chosen such an esoteric and, frankly, disturbingly graphic subject that much of the joke will be lost. Having said that, the personal investment and thematic relevance to our current pandemic, and the inevitable damage done to our collective hubris (we resent disease because we feel entitled to not have to submit to it), makes this character all the more important to me.
September 26, 2020
Desmond, a vampire bat.
I discovered much I had not known about vampire bats in the production of this puppet. Vampires, which are very tiny; rarely exceeding two inches in length, are skilled at moving about on the ground and have anatomies adapted to facilitate this fact. They receive all their nutrients from fresh blood which they suck from a host (usually a mammal or bird) and derive their water from the same source. They almost instantly process the water within the blood they drink and, to avoid excessive weight which will hinder takeoff into flight, they almost instantly urinate. Their specialized incisors have no enamel and remain incredibly razor sharp throughout their lives.It is said their saliva has an ingredient which acts as an anesthesia, thus making an uninterrupted meal more likely.
They live in reasonably large colonies and, most interestingly, they perform a sort of natural socialism predicated upon the welfare of the group. Finding blood and successfully feeding is not a guaranteed effort and many bats return to the group hungry. These bats then nuzzle the ones with full bellies, who accommodate them, altruistically, by regurgitating a portion of their meals to feed the needy.
On top of all that, I discovered that researchers now believe that vampire bats share with some snakes a form of thermo sensitivity, located in their noses which allows them to ascertain the shallowest spot to bite providing the most bountiful flow of blood. This thermo-acuity is unique to these mammals.
As to this puppet; I found myself, again, rebuilding and restructuring to accomplish the most effective puppet behavior. I constructed and then destroyed and started over, the wings of the puppet four times to achieve a convincing accuracy while at the same time making wings light enough to unfold on stage in a suggested flight. As I have said, elsewhere, I am unaccustomed to reworking and revising my pieces. The pandemic, then, has introduced me to a methodology which, I can state with some confidence, is unique to the demands of a studio free of external requirements.
October 3, 2020
Waiting for da Goat
These two are casual representations of two characters from what I believe to be one of the single most significant works of art in history, “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett. I am not attempting to be precise, I could just as easily abandon them and argue that Didi and Gogo are nothing like these puppets; but they shall do for now.
I have no intention of presenting a verbatim scene from one of my favorite plays to the neighbors assembled beneath my window, tomorrow. I can only hope that one or two will recognize who they are and go along with the joke. Because it is, after all, a joke, a sentimental homage in the body of an innocuous puppet show.
More than that, it is a pun. I’ve often felt that the pun is nearly the lowest form of comedy, a deliberate linguistic jab intended to invoke a groan and little else. Puns are, also, presumptive to an audience that shares the artist’s language, cultural references and collective consciousness. Having said that, for every cheap pun there’s Hamlet’s Hawk and Handsaw or Joyce’s riverrun.
With all that in mind, I’m trying to tweak a groan or two out of the following:
In the play it is revealed that the disembodied Godot keeps goats.
The ambiguity of the title “Waiting for Godot” screams for multiple interpretations.
Beckett was a close, personal friend of that uberpunster James Joyce.
The original play relies, entirely, upon the denial of a resolution, frustrating some theater goers since the premiere in the 50’s.
Hence, my version, “Waiting for da Goat” is a deliberate stupid joke allowing me to indulge in something I find very funny with full knowledge few, if any, will be in on it. The goat in question is still, alas, under construction, but I’m confident I’ll get it done in time. As usual, I won’t write the attending script until just before the show, tomorrow.
Wish us luck, “nothing to be done.”
October 11, 2020
Puppeteer wows neighbors from 2nd floor apartment window! | Localish - Tap photo for video.
I know, I know. Politics is reckless … But how can one avoid politics, these days? … A simple gesture, as free of judgment as can be managed … Still these days …
October 16, 2020
Casting for the Halloween Show.
October 18, 2020
Walrus
October 25, 2020
Swamp master from the Everglades.
October 27
For the past week and a half, and continuing tomorrow, I have been building a habitat for green iguanas in the reptile house of a small city zoo in Aurora, Illinois. Immediately across from the large wooden box with a big window in their faces, two full grown American alligators have watched us work. I suspect they are rescued from traffickers and have been confiscated. Unable to return them to the wild, they now live in the care of this zoo.
I have spent some time in the Florida Everglades and visited gators close at hand. Gators were nearly wiped out by over killing, in the past, but thanks to conservation efforts, they now fairly flourish in the American South.
I was inspired by these quiet, yet deliberate animals who seemed to take an interest in our work. They could be described as living dinosaurs in that the crocodilians, like sharks, have evolved very little from their counterparts in the fossil record. To look into the eyes of these fantastic creatures is to look back into primordial history.
This Gator puppet will join the bat, the rattler, the spider, the devil, the flea and others in a Halloween special thus coming Saturday, October 31. The COVID catastrophe continues to ravage and the case numbers are rising distinctly. I have intended to lead my audience in a safe, well-spaced, well-masked parade around the block to the accompanying skirl of the bagpipe. Unless the Governor and the Mayor declare more stringent lockdown for this week, we will indeed march.
November 20, 2020
It’s early. Too early to get up but I’m awake, nevertheless. I’ve been waking up, almost hourly, for a couple of weeks. I drift back into sleep and have vivid dreams; usually meaningless things about decaying urban architecture. Sometimes I dream mini-dramas peopled by men and women I don’t know and I have clearly made up from broadcloth. Stupid stuff. The brain dumping its waste to make room for the critical choices to be dealt with upon waking. Where did I park the car? Is there anything fir breakfast? How long should the dog walk last? Critical things.
The puppet show is clearly on the brink, as much cooler weather is threatening to eliminate the audience. But, then, the initial audiences were tiny, too. This last Sunday was way too windy and cold, but a dozen, or so, stood out there anyway. One new mother/daughter team emerged from a car, which apparently took off and picked them up at the end.
I haven’t produced a new puppet in a week or two and that seems strange. Where has the impulse gone? Am I really this tired at the end of the day or is quiet depression just fixing me into bed in lieu of the studio. My twin brother wants me to make a bear puppet. I’ve decided to try and do that, but make a sloth bear instead if the usual choice as I think sloth bears need greater exposure and are immensely charismatic. We’ll see.
So, post-election, post-elation we are confronted with a childish president who won’t acknowledge the truth of his situation in yet another crass partisan bid to hold onto power. My countrymen are dying and falling sick whilst demagogues preen and puff. I actually enfolded some topical political material into last Saturday’s performance. It was the day Biden was declared the winner. I don’t think it went over all that well, but how could you not say something? I have a large American flag from off the top of someone’s casket I bought it at a resale shop folded in the traditional triangle and zipped into a tacky vinyl case with the funeral home address imprinted on it. I clipped it to the balcony and draped it beneath the puppet performance. It is the first, and probably last, time I’ve ever used a flag in my work. I call the American flag an oil rag masquerading as a coffin warmer and bristle at my nation’s unctuous love of the thing. It is too laden with the permanent stains of racism, imperialism, colonialism, to ever mean anything to me but the cheapest form of agitprop.
Ah, well, it promises to be a fairly mild day tomorrow, so on with the show...
November 29, 2020
Yesterday, an old friend came to see the puppet show. She had come at least twice before, but as is typical of her natures she’d missed the previous times by being too late. She loves the show, a sort of collections of greatest hits in honor of another friend in town from Los Angeles
Afterwards, late in the evening, she texted me and, after voicing her approval of a couple of the newer puppets, she asked me how many there were. I realized I had stopped counting long ago but took it as a challenge to make a sort of dramatic personae list so far. Off the top of my head, and in no discernible order …
Trapezist, Ring Master, juggler, mesmerist, hula hooper, sharpshooter, tightrope walker, strong man, snake dancer, werewolf, owner, detective, nervous manager, roustabout, costumer, stage manager, puppeteer, security guard, tumblers, contortionist, piper, gorilla, dancer, warthog, elephant, rattler, vampire bat, camel, rabbit, magician, sword swallower, hippo, spider, flea, organ grinder, monkey, proboscis monkey, goat, Gog and Didi, father and son, high diver, Bertram, walrus, tattoo, clown one, clown two, opera singer, ghost, demon, devil toad one, toad tow, Giggles, sloth ear, dragon, vulture, cassowary, handy man, alien, fat lady, crocodile, pensioner, alligator, chickens, fiddler…
I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few.
Oh… sergeant and Mabel, Don Giovanni and Zerlina, Falstaff, Shakespeare, COvid19…
And now, the cold weeks approach and I have to decide what to do to continue. Some presence online, I should think, though we’ll probably do some holiday/Xmas show live. I’ve told myself I would stop when the temperature dropped well below 40 degrees. Ending this seems impossible.
December 10, 2020
Handy Man and Desmond, the Vampire Bat.
December 14, 2020
Christmas Rhino
December 25, 2020
Matthew and Christmas Rhino.
December 31, 2020
My little neighbor’s absolutely favorite Christmas present. Next, I’ll teach him about atheism and existentialism. Everyone, but everyone, is ruminating about the year past, and I, for one, have more to celebrate than mourn. It’s been a bastard 365 days, to be sure, but this year yanked me, unceremoniously and brutally, out of a certain level of comfort I had acquiesced to. It put me up and took me off, it made me stand to and not stand to. It provoked nose painting and urine. And who is it who is knocking at the gate? We’ll not know until we open it.
To everyone...Hello, 2021!
January 27, 2021
The icy cold of winter has stopped the puppet show. I’ve told everyone we would perform to 40 degrees or higher, and we are now plunged into an arctic surge which makes each Saturday in the thirties at best.
I would have thought the break would be somewhat welcome; the pressure of mounting a new show every week has its downside, but, instead, I’m deeply regretting not having a show to put on. I’ve made one or two or three new puppets and have no venue for them. This could mean an opportunity to focus on an online presence in lieu of live, but I haven’t yet found the impulse.
This, together with the stern reality that the Covid scourge is still running amok means I’m at loose ends.
I suppose I can focus on my current business endeavor to produce and sell enrichment items for zoos; and that has borne some meaningful fruit. I’m going to work, every day, just as if I had a job and we have produced some two dozen items for our catalog and, indeed, for one or two zoos, already. But the truth is I’m aching to get back to performing.
I suppose this means that I am, at last, in the unenviable position so many of us are in strict lockdown and isolation. I’m a rather social animal, and I truly crave live interactions with people. At work, I mostly toil away alone; Sarah, my partner at the Zoo Enichment Lab, plugging away at marketing duties in her house while I crank out devices. I have no company save TED lectures, Early Music, show tunes and occasional porn. What a sad little monkey I have become. I will listen to recordings of Marat/Sade, Shakespeare and Waiting for Godot. I will, on occasion, listen to the raucous news of my nation in perpetual adolescent crisis, but I have no one to talk to. I must rally myself to make better use of this enforced introspection.
The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is lost. The best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with passionate intensity, as Yeats would say. The nation, gripped in the callous hold of a cruel and indifferent virus, is also stretched to splitting its seams with the sudden limelight of the grievous, fascist right; whining and blustering their moment in the spotlight with the gleeful support of the evangelical Christians. My nation, afraid to know itself.
Ah well...more to follow.
Atticus the Platypus
February 27, 2021
First show in nearly two months. The weather promised slightly better temperatures than we got, but around thirty people stopped by, anyway.
It was particularly gratifying to be back in the proverbial saddle. Every show is a blend of new characters and material and time-tested repeats. This week, I introduced a platypus puppet named Atticus who speaks exclusively in platitudes. The audience was appropriately confused, at first, and then the joke dawned on them and they responded splendidly.
Now, I’m encouraged to reapply myself to producing new works. Given that I’ve had free time, one might expect that I’d take advantage of the down time and grind out new things, but that did not happen. Instead, the zoo device business has amplified itself, a bit and I’ve been creating work there. We get the impression that some zoos have decided to exploit the absence of visitors to pursue projects otherwise shelved. Maybe, let us hope, that means we may get some large and challenging requisites.
Another interesting aspect of today’s performance was that a substantial number of audience members were first time viewers, who, I have to admit, are often some of my favorites as they stand, mouths agape, in wonder as to what the hell this is all about. I have always valued the responses of “virgin” audience members seeing my work with critically indifferent eyes. Many years ago (and somewhat apropos of our current preoccupation) I did a piece about the emergence of a virus that was killing crows worldwide. It turned out to be an Arbovirus, that is, transmitted by vectors such as mosquitoes. My piece involved an actor dressed as a crow, reading an essay book by the architect le Corbusier, whilst I, dressed in an elaborate but unmistakable mosquito costume, recited an absurd fantasy of entering a lover’s chambers as she slept and kissed her gently on her throat. I then left three precious stones on her night table without disturbing her. The whole affair was very beholden to Lawrence Durrell and the Alexandrian Quartet. Mind you, I was dressed as a giant Anopheles.
After the piece, a woman came up to me who I did not know and claimed she’d never seen my work before. She took me by the upper arm and said, breathlessly, that the piece was the most erotic piece of theater she’d ever seen. Even allowing for hyperbole, the fact that she told me so, as a giant mosquito, pleased me immensely.
March 13, 2021
Last night I completely destroyed the octopus (still just in clay) to make a central casting leprechaun puppet for today’s show, just shy of St. Patrick’s Day. The neighborhood is filling up with college types rushing out to get wasted at local bars, and I’m reminded of the crush from a year ago, when the hammer had just been lowered in bars and restaurants to stave off the viral onslaught. Not quite as much brazen disregard as last year, but still.
I’ve had an interesting relationship with Irish culture my whole life. I’ve played Irish traditional music for years and I’ve visited the Emerald Isle once, when we drove around the southern parts and sought out pub sessions to play in. Unfortunately, my attitude towards Ireland is colored by my favorite authors; Joyce, O’Casey, Yeats, Behan, and, of course, Samuel Beckett who would be a hero if I had heroes. Most of these great minds were driven from their homeland by conservative, often Catholic backwater attitudes. Having said that, Ireland just recently recognized Gay rights, somewhat before America did, and I take that as a good sign.
I produced an absolutely cliched Leprechaun which told stupid Leprechaun jokes (they are in abundance) without giving into the temptation of attacking the church. That’ll come soon enough; Easter is just around the corner.
I might also mention that Carla (my wife and producer) put our show on YouTube. Somehow, and almost immediately, we were banned in North Korea, Syria and Cuba. Well, there goes my target demographic.
April 3, 2021
This character is wearing a hospital gown, an oxygen feed in his nose and is dragging an IV stand around. His routine, such as it was, had nothing whatsoever to do with his condition. In fact, he speculated about his desire to write the next big wedding song. He ran several titles by the audience (Everything You Are You Owe To Me, Oh God, My Mom is Here, What the Hell is a Soup Tureen, Free Bar). The idea being that his health had nothing to do with his wit and the audience is left to fill that part of his backstory themselves.
Really old clown, his name is Skeeter.
May 1, 2021
A very challenging performance, today. Just before curtain I realized my mic had completely failed. The music input was fine, but I had to bellow my intro lines. Together with that, it was a particularly windy afternoon, and my curtains blew down on my head. The male dancer puppet, the small warthog, simply fell in two as I lifted him into the stage, so I had to improvise his routine with no legs. Fortunately, puppet material lends itself to these kinds of critical disasters.
Nevertheless, I did include the gerontological clown in the show and, adding a rod to his right wrist, I was able to milk his routine successfully. I also debuted my version of the Komodo dragon I had spent two days working around earlier in the week. The puppet (really just the head and fire paws) is essentially life-sized and she (it’s based on the live female named Shrimp) worked spectacularly well. Starting with a cheap alliteration of a Komodo in a kimono, I invented a taxonomic detail that Komodo dragons in the wild participate in amateur Gilbert and Sullivan’s productions. I dressed the lizard in a bright Japonais garment reminiscent of a kimono and had her lip sync to the soprano solo from the second act of the Mikado, “The Sun Whose Rays are all Ablaze.” It worked grand. This was a complicated puppet to produce, its head and hands covered with thousands of individually placed scales. It took some hours to finish. I’m in love.
May 12, 2021
Ghidorah, the three-headed Kailua dragon from the Godzilla series, reimagined as giraffes; Ghidoraffe, if you will. The heads have been glued into place (the straps provide pressure, later to be removed) and the necks are articulated to undulate and thrash about. Like real giraffes, each neck has seven vertebrae. Giraffe-patterned fabric will cover the plastic and the heads will each have a rod inserted in the back. Right and left will be maneuvered with the hands whilst the center giraffe will be animated using the mouth. It should be interesting. Oh, and it’s about twenty-eight inches tall.
May 17, 2021
Green tree python habitat with mural plus PVC trees at the Wildlife Discovery Center, Lake Forest, Illinois.
Matthew Owens’ parents met on horseback in Wyoming. Since 1981, he has made Chicago his home where he has produced art, theater, film and video, worked in the events industry, curated art programs, designed costumes, sets and props and played music.
Matthew is a seasoned performance/theater performer and has been seen at such sights as Lincoln Center, P.S. 122, La Mama and Feature in New York City, N.A.M.E., the Art Institute, Randolph St. Gallery, Chicago Cultural Center and the Field Museum in Chicago. He has also performed in Ireland, Finland and different venues throughout the United States and Canada.
Matthew is a puppeteer and has designed puppets for such venues as the Tim Robbins feature film, “Cradle Will Rock” the world premiere of “Amistad” at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and several independent local films. He has made puppets and performed for Stravinsky’s “A Soldier’s Tale” with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Matthew also performs music, playing various folk and early reed and wind instruments such as crumhorn and Bombarded as well as Highland, Uilleann, Spanish Gaita, Turkish Tulum, Breton Biniou and Renaissance bagpipes. For many years he was the piper in the Irish Traditional band “Sheila-ma-Gig.
For the last dozen years, or so, Matthew has designed and fabricated enrichment devices and strategies for Zoo animals at the Brookfield Zoo, Disney Animal Kingdom, SanDiego Zoo, Cincinnati Zoo, Atlanta Zoo, and many other institutions throughout the country and overseas.
Matthew has written several plays and is currently trying to finish a full scale puppet show about Forensic Cadaver Farms.
Currently, Matthew is producing a Windowbox puppet event out of his Lakeview apartment for the neighborhood during the lockdown conditions mandated by the State. government.