This project is the first iteration of a larger play following a young girl navigating the collapse of lifelong friendships within middle school’s social hierarchy, paralleled by her father, a pastor at an interracial church, as his congregation turns against him in a bid for power. The work investigates the shared power structures between Christian church dynamics and middle school popularity, blending early 2000s technology aesthetics with religious motifs and spaces. Building on themes from a recent original Little Mermaid reimagining, both father and daughter are portrayed as mermaids, fish with legs, creating a fantastical aquatic world that explores misguided love and the pain of self-transformation for the sake of being loved.
Why Puppet Ballet
When I was a child, being a ballerina was my first dream. As it is the fantasy of many femme children. In modern times, ‘The Ballerina’, and ‘Disney Princesses’ provide the most extreme expression of femininity in our culture. To children who are still developing their sense of self it allows them something to latch onto. At about four years old, girls feel the need to express their gender binary in the most extreme way in order to be perceived as female. Ballet is seen as one of the highest of feminine art forms, one where one’s body is transformed as an instrument of ultimate grace and beauty. The desire to embody the feminine ideal; ballet. Which comes with its own history of exploitation, racism, exclusion.
The juxtaposition and inclusion of puppetry transforms the art of ballet, reshaping the lines of the body, the arches of movement now reinvented. Due to the reshaping and transformation of the body through the puppet. The creation of entirely new possibilities of movement, that is not conducive to the understanding of the preordained presentation of ballet. This transformation, this existence, is the black femme experience.
Little Mermaid……… Santiago Alvarado
Narrating Crab………. Leah Lara The Prince………Natiana Fonseca Waiters
Seahorse………Kolya Kishinsky
Starfish….. Aya Borucki
Shrimp…… Maya Enriquez
Club Goers
Business Fish……. Ike Huntley Intern Fish………Jenson Tavares Lover #1…….Billie Wynn Lover #2 ……….Celeste Jackson Lone Fish ……… Caroline Ju
Shadow Puppeteer……….. Maya Enriquez Shadow Puppeteer……….. Sol Caponigro Shadow Puppeteer Assistant……Kolya Kishinsky Bubble Mechanic/Fish Alternate……….. Marius Keo Marjolin
Stagehand / Lighting ……………. Pei-Yu Hung Written and Directed by ….Leah Lara
Leah Lara 2026 