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SELECTED PROJECTS

​Embodied Ecology: The Iowa DNR Deer Project

This project fused puppetry and wildlife science to create anatomically informed deer puppets used by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources for hands-on community training in Chronic Wasting Disease sampling.

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Puppet Designer and Fabricator

In collaboration with Dr. Rachel Ruden, Iowa’s State Wildlife Veterinarian, I designed and fabricated a series of deer puppets for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to support conservation education and public health outreach related to Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). Developed at the intersection of performance and environmental science, these puppets functioned as tactile teaching tools, enabling hunters and conservationists to practice proper tissue sampling. Their form as puppets, rather than static anatomical models, was essential in fostering a sense of relational awareness and ethical engagement with the deer, encouraging participants to approach the work with care, attention, and respect for the animal as a living being rather than an abstract specimen.

Puppet Power 2025
International Applied Puppetry Conference, Iowa Site

Led by WP Puppet Theatre (Alberta, Canada) and co-hosted for the first time by Iowa State University, this international hybrid conference brought together artists, educators, therapists, and community leaders to explore puppetry as a tool for communication, education, and creative problem-solving. With in-person events in Iowa, parallel programming in Calgary, and virtual access worldwide, Puppet Power 2025 created multiple points of connection across the global applied puppetry community.

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Iowa Conference Site Coordinator, Applied Puppetry Exhibit Director

For Puppet Power 2025, I served as the Iowa State University Site Coordinator and a member of the international planning committee, helping shape the conference’s hybrid structure. My role encompassed developing in-person programming in Ames (including a first-of-its-kind juried Applied Puppetry Exhibit), coordinating with partners in Calgary, and supporting presentations from artists in the United Kingdom, Lebanon, Kenya, and Mexico. Together, this work contributed to a more flexible and accessible model for international exchange in applied puppetry.

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Fairytales for the Anthropocene
by Jaisey Bates, Diana Burbano, Ty Defoe, Darcy Parker Bruce, Amanda Petefish-Schrag, & Tiffany Antone

This project combined puppetry, live performance, and new short plays by U.S. playwrights to explore the fragile relationship between human activity and the natural world. Blending original works with reimagined folk tales, the production used imaginative, visually driven storytelling to examine themes of survival, extinction, and environmental responsibility within the complex landscape of the Anthropocene.

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Director, Lead Puppet Designer, Contributing Playwright

For the project, I directed a collection of newly commissioned short plays that explored environmental change. I coordinated the commission process and fostered play development in rehearsal. Shadow puppetry ran throughout the evening as an evocative and unifying performance element. The work was staged in a converted campus maintenance shop to create a flexible, surprising, and intimate performance.

Alongside directing, I designed and built a variety of shadow puppets from discarded materials and contributed two plays, "The Fall" and "Once Upon a Time", both shaped by questions of human responsibility and ecological entanglement.

The Velveteen Rabbit
Adapted by Amanda Petefish-Schrag & Ben Schrag based on the book by Margery Williams

Margery Williams' classic children's book, The Velveteen Rabbit, chronicles the tale of a toy rabbit who longs to become "real." In bringing the beloved story to life, this new stage adaptation featured original music, puppetry, and a small acting ensemble.

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Director, Puppet Designer and Fabricator

For The Velveteen Rabbit, I conceived and led a fully integrated, small-scale touring production. The work was rooted in Margery Williams' meditation on loss, death, and renewal, written during a period of global upheaval that is strikingly resonant with our own. I designed and fabricated all puppets, scenic elements, as well as the portable puppet theatre. Each of these elements was constructed from discarded paper materials, supporting themes of fragility, transformation, and resurrection while framing the performance as a story being read into being.

She Kills Monsters
 by Qui Nguyen, Directed by Cason Murphy

This dramatic comedy follows Agnes Evans on a journey of grief and discovery as she unlocks mysteries about her deceased sister, Tilly. As Agnes pursues Tilly's secrets into the world of Dungeons & Dragons, the play jumps between reality and action-packed fantasy via 1990s pop culture, dance battles, giant dragon puppets, and more.

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Puppet Designer and Fabricator/Puppet Coach

Within this process, I created an array of puppets, from small shadow figures to a very large, multi-operator five-headed “death dragon.” My work explored how materials can embody grief and loss while also bringing the play’s shifting fantasy realms to life. The design and fabrication process emphasized material transformation, allowing the puppets to clearly express emotional weight and scale in performance.

​Iowa Insect Pageant

Bees and butterflies and beetles, oh my!

Flying, swimming, crawling, and climbing, insects are all around us. In this unique interdisciplinary, multiform, insect extravaganza, our smallest Iowa neighbors are made large through puppetry and mask.

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Project Director/Lead Devisor/Lead Puppet Designer

The Iowa Insect Pageant was rooted in both the arts and sciences at Iowa State University. This interdisciplinary project incorporated entomology, puppetry, and music, culminating in multiple free, public performances and events throughout the local community, featuring ISU students from various majors. The puppets for the production were created almost entirely from repurposed and recycled materials found in and around Iowa State and the surrounding community.

Of the Deep: Meditations Upon the Death of a Blue Whale

What does it mean when a massive whale carcass washes up on the shore of a coastal town? Created by members of the ISU Theatre community, this series of short shadow-puppet films reflected on the consequences and complexities of environmental crisis. 

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Director, Puppet Co-Designer

Originally slated for performance in April 2020, the production was rescheduled and reconceptualized in light of the COVID-19 crisis.  Filmed in the fall of 2020 and premiering in November, the production featured various shadow puppetry styles and visual storytelling techniques.

IPHIGENIA
adapted by Amanda Petefish-Schrag and Ben Schrag based on the play by Euripides

An ambitious general.  A king’s wounded pride. The greatest army ever assembled.  And one innocent girl . . .

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Co-Adapter, Director, Puppet Designer

Within this development and production process, I explored the juxtaposition of a ritualized Greek chorus, large scale puppetry, and original music to capture the inherent social commentary and disruption present in Euripides’ original text. I sought to underscore parallels between an ancient world and our own – a world in which, too often, great men prove weak, deceitful, and all too capable of doing the monstrous and unthinkable to the women and children in their midst.

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THE ENDURANCE OF LIGHT by Amanda Petefish-Schrag

Sophie refuses to leave her bed after suffering multiple miscarriages.  Now, lost in a surreal landscape with Sir Ernest Shackleton, Albert Einstein, and Hildegard Von Bingen, Sophie must navigate the mysterious forces that threaten to trap her forever as past and present, faith and science, collide.

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Playwright

Miscarriage inhabits the nexus of multiple existentially-anxious issues – sex, death, religion, science, when life begins, and the very definition of life itself.  In writing a play about the subject, I wanted to explore these intersections and reveal their inherent tensions while making them tangible, potent, and accessible. I integrated diverse stylistic elements - contemporary realism juxtaposed with surrealism; “real” characters from a fictionalized present colliding with imagined characters from the historical record; past and present timelines overlapping, intersecting, and interrupting as each informs the other.

IOWA ODYSSEY or HOW WE GOT TO HERE

Who are we and how did we get to “here”?  How does the idea of immigration connect to our community’s past and present? Iowa Odyssey is a collaborative project exploring our local stories of immigration and the idea of what it means to create community.

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Facilitator/Lead Devisor

This process  combined practices from community organizing, devised theatre, and documentary theatre models.  By the end of the production process, over 80 people had attended a rehearsal/working session to contribute. Eighteen ISU students – some of whom had worked on the project for nine months, and some who had shown up less than a week before opening night –  participated in the performances of their own stories of immigration and community – stories lived, stories learned, and stories shared. 

RHAPSODY IN PLASTIC

In this collaborative performance with Mike Giles and the ISU Jazz II Ensemble, music and puppetry come together in telling short stories of discovery and renewal. 

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Puppet Designer, Lead Puppeteer

This collaboration resulted in a variety of puppets built entirely from discarded plastics.  The nature of the specific material – it’s literal plasticity – created a foundation for the fluidity of the jazz music and the fixed puppet characters, as well as the dynamic tension for the storytelling itself.

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