Wakka Wakka Productions, a New York City based visual theatre company, specializes in highly physical productions that overlap a range of styles—including grotesque, absurd, and clown—and incorporate elements such as puppetry, masks, and original music. The company has toured extensively in Scandinavia, China, and the UK. They received a 2011 Obie Award Grant for Outstanding Work and a 2013 Drama Desk Award for their “sophisticated puppet theater…that explores with wit, imagination, and insight serious issues of our times.”
Baby Universe, Wakka Wakka’s magnetically whimsical puppet odyssey, was developed in association with Nordland Visual Theatre. Located in the arctic fishing community of Stamsund, the company is the leading developer of visual theatre in Norway, facilitating the creation of traditional puppet theatre, as well as works that draw from the visual arts, theatre, mime, dance and multimedia.
Nordland’s commitment to puppetry and innovation has led to an ongoing, fruitful collaboration with Wakka Wakka—the company also developed their 2008 piece Fabrik: The Legend of M. Rabinowitz while in residence at Stamstund. Gwendolyn Warnock, co-writer and co-director of Baby Universe, notes that puppetry allows performers to more effectively explore the theatricality of science by expanding the horizons of onstage possibilities. As she says, “I enjoy performing as a human being as well, but as a creator, writer, and director, we have more liberties using puppets. We’re not bound by [human] limitations. Characters can float or fly. It’s easier to make magic happen.”