I grew up doing carpentry and went to college for mechanical engineering. After university I worked as a construction engineer and a toy designer, and have spent the last few years splitting my time between metalworking and traveling foreign lands by bicycle and motorcycle.
Jesse Mooney-Bullock (Puppet Designer) is delighted to be filling the Cabinet of Curiosity with more hand-carved movable sculptures. His puppets were last featured here in Tabletop Tragedies. Other Chicago-area projects include The Little Mermaid (Paramount Theatre), The Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz, Mister Punch (House Theatre), The Selfish Giant (CCT), The Feast (CST), and several Redmoon Theater productions. He has received two Jeff Awards and been nominated for several others, and a puppet design award from San Francisco Theatre Critics Circle for The Oldest Boy (Marin Theatre.) He lives in Cincinnati and works at MoonBull Studio, his puppet design company.
Kass Copeland is an artist, designer, and illustrator who has worked in Chicago since 1995. She earned her BFA from The Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. Prior to that, she studied and apprenticed with her father, a theatrical prop designer and craftsperson. In addition to her studio work, she does freelance art and design work for clients.
Jefferey Thomas is a Composer, Guitarist, and Music Director. He is a founding member of Mucca Pazza, co-creator of the multi-media art group The Fruit Stare, and is the creator and music director for The Hideout’s annual Make-Out Party: An Evening of Aural Intercourse. He currently performs with Relevant Hairstyles, Dr. Atop’s Journey to the Polygon of Suffering, and The Old FNG’s; he has worked with Greek composer Michael Karras, punk singer Excene Cervenka, recovering groupie Cynthia Plaster Caster, Chinese guzheng virtuoso Xu YuYen, St. Louis’ The Honkeys, Bobby Conn, and Marvin Tate. He has written incidental music for Redmoon Theater, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the Neo-Futurists, as well as dozens of independent films. His first symphony, “Rumour”, premiered at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in February 2014. He lives in Chicago with his wife and two sons.
David Goodman-Edberg is delighted to be working with Cabinet of Curiosity again after lighting Tabletop Tragedies. Working primarily in the words of dance and theatre, David has collaborated with such companies including Adventure Stage Chicago, Akvavit Theatre, Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre, Chicago Repertory Ballet, Chicago Tap Theatre, Eisenhower Dance Detroit, Factory Theatre, The Gift Theatre, Joel Hall Dancers, Manual Cinema, Mudlark Theatre, Organic Theatre, Red Tape Theater, Rough House Theater, The Syndicate, Thodos Dance Chicago, Trap Door Theatre, Visceral Dance Chicago, Water Street Dance Milwaukee, and Wildclaw Theatre. Website: daviddesignsthings.com
Seth Bockley is a playwright and theater director specializing in literary adaptation, design-driven production, and new play development. As a writer his works include Gilgamesh & Enkidu, Tabletop Tragedies, Charisma! with Minneapolis rock band Greycoats, Rip Van Winkle; or, Cut The Old Moon Into Stars, the first commission by Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Cold Spring NY, 2666 (adapted with Robert Falls from the novel by Roberto Bolaño, Goodman Theater), CRISPR Kids, Laika’s Coffin, Journey For The Sun, Wilderness, February House (with Gabriel Kahane, The Public Theater, NYC), and adaptations from stories by George Saunders: Jon and CommComm, plus the “Cool Dads of America” sketch from A Prairie HomeCompanion. Directing credits include Gilgamesh & Enkidu; the multimedia documentary theater works Wilderness and Basetrack Live with En Garde Arts (Abrons Arts Center, NYC), 2666 (withRobert Falls, Goodman Theater), Lauren Yee’s Samsara and Philip Dawkins’ Failure: A Love Story (Victory Gardens, Chicago); Jason Grote’s Civilization (all you can eat) and 1001; the clown play Guerra, with Mexico City-based troupe La Piara (toured Mexico, Colombia, and U.S.) He teaches at the University of Chicago. Website: www.sethbockley.com
Frank Maugeri is a designer of community, art, education, and events. Maugeri’s life revolves around leading the contemporary wave of participatory arts and how the participatory arts brings people together, creates dialogue, and crosses differences. As an artist, his work is visual and interactive, ranging from intimate productions to mammoth spectacles. When he’s not bringing art to life, he’s bringing art to lives through his work as an expert collaborator, community builder, ritual maker, educator, and innovator of curriculum and artistic programming. Frank guides Cabinet of Curiosity’s event experiences, ritual apprenticeship program, theater productions and ceremony activities. In Cabinet’s short 2 years he has created an enterprise that has developed 3 large collaborative productions, trained apprentices from across the nation, executed 2 large scale outdoor ceremonies with Chicago’s Blu Rhythm Collective and The Park District, and designed events for The Shedd Aquarium, Navy Pier, The City of Chicago, The Mayor’s Inaugural Team, University of Chicago, The Merchandise Mart, and many more. He concurrently makes his additional artistic home at Clayco, where he directs the businesses art salons, guides the community inspired civic art projects, develops the visual art’s community, and produces, designs and directs it’s grand fundraising event, Illumination. In 2016, Frank was named Community Programs Artistic Director at Chicago Children’s Theatre. There, he developed the brand of a once local police station into an arts hub, devised multiple education courses for families, created a teaching force and trained them in innovative curriculum and developed civic events, while performing as the community liaison between the neighborhood and the hub. Prior, he spent two decades as Producing Artistic Director at Redmoon Theater, where he mentored hundreds of young designers, artists, performers and educators from across the nation, while simultaneously helping to guide the institution’s art, education, and community engagement. Maugeri proudly created art and experiences for The White House, The City of Chicago, Los Angeles Music Center and other cultural institutions. In his time at Redmoon Theater, Frank authored, designed, and created Redmoon's longest running production, The Cabinet, and conceived and led Redmoon’s celebrated annual events Boneshaker and New Year’s Revolution, employing objects of his own creation, including his inventions The Momentary Opera, Nickelodeon’s, Mechanical Scrolls, The Libation Machine, The Bubble Man, Cake Hats, Redmoon’s interactive installations, and collaborative objects like The Drum Cart. Collaborative credits include directing productions which toured to Charleville- Mézières, Brazil, Japan, and Amsterdam as well as original works developed for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Maugeri is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago and trained in Animation and America.
