Robin Frohardt

COMING IN 2018  More info at PLASTICBAGSTORE.ORG

THE PLASTIC BAG STORE  is a performance and installation that takes place in a city storefront resembling a grocery store.  But this is no ordinary store,  all of the products that line the sheloves are just plastic bags.  There are bottles of bags, cans of bags, boxes of bags, and of course bags of bags,  each product an original design, made from discarded plastic stuffed inside other discarded plastic, creating an endless cacophony of packaging.

 At night this store comes to life with live performers, dynamic sets, hidden worlds and inventive puppetry to tell a darkly comedic, sometimes tender story that explores how the hordes of plastic refuse we are leaving behind might be misinterpreted by future generations.   THE PLASTIC BAG STORE is a tragic-comic ode to the foreverness of plastic. 

Obsessed with cleanliness and order, Frank is also plagued by pigeons. Convinced the pigeons are plotting against him, Frank sets out on an adventure to solve a problem that perhaps isn’t really there? The Pigeoning is a darkly comedic yet heartfelt story that spins articulate puppetry, original music, and lo-fi special effects into an epic tale about the illusion of safety and control in the context of the end of the world. 

Winner of  the 2013  Arlyn Award for Excellence in Puppet Design, 

Critics Pick in the New York Times who called it " a tender, fantastical symphony of the imagination"  "exquisitely rendered, very funny"

read full review here

Drama Desk Ward nominee for best music in a play for Freddi Price's orngial score

The Pigeoning originated  at St. Anne's Warehouse Puppet Lab and premiered at HERE Arts in 2013.  The show continues to tour at home and abroad.   for bookings please contact Elsie Management

FITZCARDBOARDALDO and THE CORRUGATION OF DREAMS are two short films I created in 2013.  These fake trailers are  all cardboard tributes to the Wener Herzog film "Fitzcarraldo" and the Les Blank documentary "The Burden of Dreams".  Created as part of the Puppet Lab at St. Anne's Warehouse, the films were an official selection at the Telluride Film Festival in 2013 and the Jim Henson Puppets on Film Festival the same year.   They were also shown at the Les Blank Retrospective at Union Docs in New York City.   In 2014 they were screen at the Maritime Film Festival at the Parish Museum. 

No Place for the Living: The Mad Story of Dr. Cosel , a film that is currently in development by creator/ director  by Ronni Thomas.

The film will tell the strange, forgotten story of Count Carl von Cosel - a German immigrant in 1930s Key West, Florida, who believed he could use scientific and supernatural methods to bring the woman he loved back from the dead.

The story will be told in Von Cosel’s own words, as recorded in his actual journal, and brought to life using recreations will be done with puppets  of my design.  

The Dumpster Monster is a 10 foot high inflatable plastic bag monster that explodes from a dumpster.  The audience in encouraged to participate by playing with various cockroach , fly and rat puppets that swarm around him.  

<------ WATCH THE VIDEO TO THE LEFT

Dumpster Monster was originally created for the NEXTNOW Festival at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in 2015.

Heaven Through The Back Door  is an observational documentary  film by Anna Fitch and Banker White that  follows Yolanda Shea over the last two years of her life. “Yo,” as she is universally known, has always lived by her own rules. She is a grandmother and a dealer, an intellectual and a psychic, a hostess and a tyrant, and above all an amazing storyteller. 

The piece is made up of verite footage of Yo today and hybrid of animations and puppetry to bring to life the epic stories from Yo's intriguing life. I will be creating the puppets for the film.  To left is an image of the Yo puppet in progress.  

Apocalypse Puppet Theater (2005- 2010)  was founded by myself,  Kirk Lombard, Freddi Price, Ben Burke, Jesse Roadkill and Caryl Keintz.  Our combined talents  created a broad spectrum of work utilizing a breadth of existing puppet styles and some of our own invention.   The plays themselves are often ridiculous, occasionally historical and usually apocalyptic.   When possible we performed live from our self made traveling stagecoach theater pulled by a team of bicycles...
 

Scroll down to read about shows.

The Cardboard Institute of Technology is an artist collective that I worked with in the Bay Area from 2008 to 2012 making massive interactive installations from cardboard and hot glue.

Watch video to the left

 more info here

Jollyship the Whiz-bang is a pay by Nick Jones

In 2009 I designed and fabricated the sets for Jollyship the Whiz-bang's performance at the Public Theater as part of the Under the Radar Festival.

 In 2009 I designed and built the sets for IRT: A Tragedy in Three Stations, a site-responsive theater piece on the New York City Subway by aristis and director Jeff Stark.  A melodramatic period piece in public space, produced without permits.

Watch the video on the left.

New York Times article here

Empire Drive-In is a large-scale temporary installation created by artists Jeff Stark and Todd Chandler.  It is a full-scale theater made out of wrecked cars and a 40-foot screen constructed of salvaged wood. Audiences climb in and out of cars rescued from the junkyard to watch films projected on the big screen. Low-power radio transmits stereo audio directly to each car.

In 2010 I joined Jeff and Todd in the creation of the Empire Drive-In  at the Zero One Festival in San Jose, CA . I designed and fabricated  the snack bar and ticket booth.

Salt of the Earth is a play by Zvi Sahar for which I was the puppet designer. The play is seen through the eyes of the hero—a faceless, nameless, Bunraku puppet—the audience sees the tragic cycle of war via a miniature city where plastic tanks barrel down paper streets amid a Middle Eastern landscape created out of one thousand pounds of salt. A specially rigged camera zooms through the tiny sets, simultaneously feeding the footage onto a large movie screen hanging above the city.

 

The Dream Community is an arts center located in Taipei Taiwan.  Every year they bing a team of artists from around the world to create puppets, floats, and costumes for their annual Dream Parade which includes of over 7,000 participants.   I  first participated in the Dream Parade in 2005 and returned as the Director in 2006.  

In 2009 I returned and created a puppet show and toured it around the aboriginal villages of Taiwan.  

Here are some pictures of my creations there.

More information here

Wakka Wakka is a puppet company based in New York and Norway.   I have worked with them on their show, Baby Universe, to create the Red Giant, a large wearable stilt puppet. (pictured here)

In 2011 I traveled to Norway to design and fabricate the set, props and large puppet elements for SAGA, a show about the financial collapse of  Iceland.  

Here lies an archive of things i created that didn't fit into the other categories you may or may not have clicked though by now.....