Premiered at St. Ann's Warehouse
(Great Small Works 9th International Toy Theater Festival)


Created & Performed by Tanya Khordoc & Barry Weil

Though we've used toy theater techniques in earlier productions, Mercy is our first "traditional" toy theater piece, a poetic musing on love and loss enacted by cutout figures from Victorian-era engravings in an ornate miniature theater. Of course, we couldn't help being a bit "un-traditional" by incorporating shadow puppetry and some unusual puppeteered light sources that interact with the toy theater characters. Though the piece is very non-explicit, one audience member still told us that she didn't think toy theater could be sexy until she saw Mercy. We blushed.




Photo by Richard Termine