The Glass Contraption aims to create spirited, surprising and original works of theater and media.

Drawing loosely from the traditions of clown, bouffon, commedia and vaudeville, we seek to access the performer’s humor, openness and imagination in the creation of poetic, comical, bizarre and highly theatrical worlds.

Each collaborator is intimately involved in this enterprise. We bring our strangeness, our beauty, our ferocity, cruelty, curiosity and stupidity to the stage. We investigate that which most unsettles, confuses, excites or repels us. We invite an intoxicating interplay between performer and audience.

These elements compound with text, songs, dances, stories, handcrafted contraptions and bits of theater magic to create surprising collisions between the comic and tragic worlds. In this way, our shows and media projects explore the great triumphs and disasters of human experience, celebrating in both artist and audience the need for a great laugh, a good cry, a profound sigh or a triumphant yawp.

The company is committed to training artists, to creating new works and to developing community-based arts collaborations both locally and abroad.