Madison J. Cripps is a puppeteer, builder, and multidisciplinary artist whose hand-carved wooden marionettes sing, argue, philosophize, and occasionally fall gloriously apart. Performing professionally since 2006, Cripps combines puppetry, improvisation, music, sculpture, and mechanical experimentation into live performances that feel somewhere between a surreal cabaret, a folk tale, and an elaborate conversation with the audience.
Drawing from backgrounds in fine art, woodworking, farming, jewelry fabrication, and street performance, Cripps builds his puppets from carved wood, salvaged materials, wire, paint, intuition, and an ongoing fascination with how humans hold themselves together. His performances have appeared throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico, including the National Puppetry Festival, Puppets in the House Festival, Lake Eden Arts Festival, and the NOLA Giant Puppet Fest. Cripps is a recipient of grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Henson Foundation, and his work has received an UNIMA Citation of Excellence in Puppetry.
At the center of Cripps’ work is a simple idea: puppets can say the strange, tender, impossible things humans sometimes cannot.
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Step into A Slice of Crazy Pie, a surreal cabaret of hand-carved wooden marionettes, live music, and audience interaction created by puppeteer and multidisciplinary artist Madison J. Cripps. Since 2006, this ever-evolving performance has blended live harmonica, vaudeville spirit, and transformational puppetry into a theatrical experience where frogs leap mid-dance, skulls hatch butterflies, spaceships blast into orbit, and puppets reveal impossible hidden mechanisms before your eyes.
Performed cabaret-style with the puppeteer fully visible, the show invites audiences beyond passive observation and into collective play through song, call-and-response, improvisation, and direct interaction with the marionettes themselves. Equal parts street theater, folk art, and absurdist ritual, A Slice of Crazy Pie explores ecology, human oddity, emotional vulnerability, and the joy of creative participation.
