Robin Frohardt

Robin Frohardt is an American playwright, puppet designer, visual artist, and director based in Brooklyn, NY.

Career Frohardt constructs her sets for films and plays completely from cardboard. She also uses plastic, wood, cloth, and other recycled materials to make puppets and installations. Some of her puppets are realistic people while other objects take abstract forms. Frohardt uses Bunraku-style puppetry, most notably in her show The Pigeoning. Bunraku is a traditional Japanese form of performance that involves puppeteers, chanters, and musicians.

Environmentalism is the primary theme in Frohardt’s work, specifically in Bag Movie, and Dumpster Monster, This exhibition transformed into a three act live puppet performance at night The theme is that humans can never really throw away trash. is a puppet show that debuted at HERE Arts Center in 2013 about an obsessively clean office worker who believes that pigeons are plotting against him. It won the Arlyn Award in 2014 for Outstanding Design in Puppet Theater and was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Best Music in a Play for its original music by Freddi Price.

Collaborations Frohardt created puppets for Anna Fitch and Banker White’s documentary film Heaven Through the Backdoor. She designed the sets for Nick Jones’s play Jollyship the Whizbang. She worked on the additional set pieces for a theater piece on the subway titled IRT: A Tragedy in Three Stations by Jeff Stark. She designed the snack bar and ticket booth for Jeff Stark and Todd Chandler’s installation Empire Drive-In. Frodardt worked with Dream Community as a director and creator of floats, costumes, and puppets in the Dream Parade in Taipei, Taiwan. She designed puppets

Other experience Along with other artists Kirk Lombard, Freddi Price, Ben Burke, Jesse Roadkill, Duskin Drum, and Caryl Keintz, Frohardt founded Apocalypse Puppet Theater which ran from 2005 to 2010. The artists built puppets and wrote plays for the mobile theater that ran out of a wagon pulled by bikes. from 2008 to 2012 to make cardboard installations.

Awards and honors

2019, Made In NY Women’s Fund Grant Award 2018, Guggenheim Fellowship 2016, DisTIL Fellowship at UNC 2016, Olson Kundig Artist in Residence 2016, Creative Capital Award for “The Plastic Bag Store” 2016, Jim Henson Foundation Project Grant 2016, Residency at The MacDowell Colony 2016, Jim Henson Foundation Seed Grant for “The Plastic Bag Store” 2014, Mid-Atlantic Arts Fund USArtists International Grant Award 2014, Arlyn Award for Puppet Design for “The Pigeoning” 2013, Peggy Irvine Foundation Award for Artistic Excellence 2013, Artist in Residence St. Anne’s Warehouse’s Puppet Lab 2012, Jim Henson Foundation Project Grant for “The Pigeoning” 2012, Artist in Residence at HERE Arts “Dream Music Puppetry” Program 2011, Artist in Residence St. Anne’s Warehouse’s Puppet Lab