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Downtown Cody Brown Puppeteer |
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| Cody with the his puppets from The Shoe Box Opera (1999). |
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| Cody began his career as a professional entertainer at age eleven, working as a street magician at the Piedmont Arts Festival (Atlanta GA, 1988). A year later he was featured as the solo performer in the Nexus Theatre's avant-gard, multi-media production, Giant Step (1989). Since then he has worked as an actor, musician, writer, dancer, director and designer in many productions ranging from classical ballet, to live hip-hop, old-time jazz, and more. His focus is on puppetry and comedy.
Cody was first introduced to puppetry by his mother, Debbie Brown who is a school teacher and puppeteer. His first professional work as a puppeteer was in 1998 with Chris Lutter and Puppet Farm Arts in northern Wisconsin and Minneapolis MN. In 1999 Corey founded the Shoe Box Puppet Co. and created his first original production, The Shoe Box Opera. In 2000 Corey moved to northern California to enroll in the Dell’ Arte International School of Physical Theater. There he trained with master teachers, focusing on acting, dance, mime, mask-making, clowning and many other aspects of theatre. Since graduating from Dell' Arte Cody has co-directed the Live Art Workshop for four summers in a row. Live Art is a festival of puppetry and performing arts that takes place every summer on Madeline Island in Lake Superior. The Live Art 2004 production, Pirate Island, was a collaboration of many talented artists from Bedlam Theatre (MN), Bread and Puppet (VT), and many others. |
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| In addition to creating puppets and masks for his original shows Cody builds masks, puppets, and sets on a commission basis. He has won multiple awards for his creations. He has built many puppets large and small using a wide variety of methods and materials. His preferred medium is paper mache. He says "With paper, glue, cardboard, and paint you have anything you can imagine." |  |
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| Cody's frog-man mask was awarded "best performance mask" at the Ink People Center for the Arts' 19th annual Maskibition. |
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"Teaching other people what you do is a great way to learn more about it," says Cody, who has taught workshops on theatre and puppetry since he was a teenager. He attributes much of his inspiration to the creativity of his students. He has worked as an instructor for the Dell' Arte International Education Through Art program and has been an artist-in-residence at many institutions. His students have ranged from pre-school to university level. Cody's most recent production is a collaboration with puppeteer and illustrator Sean Powers. They have worked together to adapt the traditional form of Greek and Turkish shadow puppet comedy (Karogozi Theatre), into a contemporary comedy starring characters from northern California. Cody now lives in CA with his 9 year old daughter Rosey who is also a puppeteer. He plans to keep doing puppet shows for a long time although he is also interested in using computer animation to expose his work to a larger audience.
For more information about the Shoe Box Puppet Co. |
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Photos by Grace Dolan, Kent Tenny, and Corey Brown.
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