Raised in Mililani, Hawaii, Tom Lee is a performer, designer and puppet artist based in New York City. His original puppet theater works include Hoplite Diary, Punch of the Dead, Odysseus and Ajax and Ko’olau, in addition to work as puppeteer in a wide array of styles. He has extensive experience in performance based on the Japanese bunraku and kuruma ningyo forms and integrates animation and live puppet projection into his work.
Tom Lee is a principal puppeteer in the Metropolitan Opera production of Madama Butterfly directed by Anthony Minghella with puppetry by Blind Summit Theater. He was a builder and performer in Dan Hurlin’s Hiroshima Maiden at St Ann’s Warehouse. As a resident artist of La MaMa Experimental Theatre, he has performed around the world and worked as part of artist collaborations in the Buryat Republic of Siberia and The Rhodophi Mountains of Bulgaria. In the U.S. he has appeared at Yale Repertory, Second Stage Theater, PS 122, RedCat, La MaMa ETC, among others.
Tom’s design work includes sets, puppets and lighting for SLANT, Kinding Sindaw, Yoshiko Chuma, Tom O’Horgan, The Czechoslovak American Marionette Theatre, Kevin Augustine/Lone Wolf Tribe, and Ellen Stewart. A recipient of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Designers, Tom spent two months in 2005 studying traditional and contemporary puppetry throughout Japan. His work has received support from The Jim Henson Foundation, The TCG/ITI Travel Grant Program, The Pennsylvania Council for the Arts, The Puppet Lab at St. Ann’s Warehouse and artist residences at Sarah Lawrence College, The Rhodophi International Theatre Collective (Bulgaria) and Buffalo Seminary. |