Azdak's Garden was founded in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1991. Our first major works, collectively known as The City Play Project, were puppet-based theater pieces examining the history, growth, and development of three major cities in Connecticut--Bridgeport, Hartford, and New Haven. These plays were developed and produced in conjunction with Fairfield University, Trinity College, and ACES/Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven and performed in all three locales. This project led to our New York City premiere in 1995 at Theater for the New City where we produced Syneocism, a distilation and reworking of ideas about urban life developed in The City Play Project. Syneocism also heralded the premiere of Puppetsweat Theater, our company of artists dedicated to carrying out the mission of Azdak's Garden through the medium of puppetry.
Other New York City performances soon followed. In 1996, Puppetsweat performed Der Signàl, an oratorio with shadow puppets, as part of the Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater's Late Night Cabaret. Later that year, we premiered Appetite: a revisionist telling of the Fisherman and his Wife for the Third Annual Toy Theater Festival at Los Kabayitos Puppet Theater. We were invited back to the Late Night Cabaret during the 1998 Henson Festival, where we presented MS Found in a Bottle, the first part of Three Tales By Poe, a performance that premiered at the National Puppetry Conference in Waterford, CT. The complete Three Tales by Poe and Der Signàl were featured at the 2000 Henson International Festival at La MaMa E.T.C. (Annex) in New York, September 19-24.
Buttons and Bows , the first part of a piece based on Jill Cutler's memior, A History of My Clothing, premiered in November 2000 at HERE Arts Center in New York as part of the Fifth Annual Toy Theater Festival.
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