In celebration of International Workers' Day this year, Flying Leap Productions had the honor of collaborating with SEIU (Service Employees International Union) on a vibrant, community-centered project for this year’s May Day Rally in Seattle and Chicago. Our team was commissioned to lead workshops and build large-scale puppets that would march alongside workers, activists, and community members, bringing artistic expression to these powerful demonstrations of solidarity.
We're thrilled to introduce the remarkable puppeteers who made this collaboration possible, each bringing their own expertise in puppetry to support this important work.
The Puppeteers
Jess Kaufman
Jess Kaufman (she/her) is a playwright, dramaturg, producer and all-around theater artist making thoughtful, playful, ambitious theater for families. Her work invites young people and families to cross boundaries, in theaters and site-specific performance spaces. As a queer, Jewish artist, she is particularly interested in the intersection of social justice and identity. Jess was a 2019-2020 New Victory Theater LabWorks Artist, a 2020 NYFA "Emerging Arts Leader", and a 2021 New York City Artist Corps grant recipient.
Logan Gabrielle Schulman
Logan Gabrielle Schulman (they/them) is a New York-based interdisciplinary theatrical director, educator, installation and social practice artist. A radical Jewish and genderqueer creator, their work revolves around mournfully neglected grief practices in America, the usurpation of contemporary communication via technological mediation, and building community through the shared experiences of live performer and audience (in an age where we find ourselves further and further away from each other).
Recently directed works include Stravinsky's L'Histoire du soldat (Sarasota Orchestra), Sontag's A Parsifal (Hangar Theatre), Sunday in Sodom (The FutureNow Festival), The Wives (Cellunova Theater), Waco Boy Club (The Drama League), A Children's Ceremony [TYA] (Temple of the Stranger and Flying Leap co-production), Click Clack Moo [TYA] (Orlando Rep/TheaterWorksUSA), KEEPING ON (breathing) (Greensboro Contemporary Jewish Museum), The Fog [TYA] (Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, Sarasota Art Museum), Time, Collapsed (Old City Jewish Arts Center), and Welcome to the Shiva House (Arthur Ross Gallery, Melbourne Fringe Fest).
Outside of their directing practice, they are currently a Solomon R. Guggenheim Teaching Artist, a company puppeteer with the Central Park Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre, and an associate producer with Flying Leap Productions.
Averly Sheltraw
Averly Sheltraw is a visual artist and a fabricator for The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival Studio. Recent puppet projects she worked on include Stand By (The Glue Factory Projects), The Little Mermaid (Drury Lane), See What I Wanna See (Out of Box Theatrics), Florencia (Metropolitan Opera), The Matchbox Magic Flute (Goodman Theatre), Into the Woods (National Tour), Goliath (Manual Cinema), and Akutagawa (The Koryū Nishikawa Troupe). Averly graduated from Oberlin College with a BA in art and mathematics.
Emilie Wingate
My Name is Emilie Wingate, and I am a Chicago-based fabricator with a focus on creating hyperrealistic animal puppets. I primarily work at the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, and with Rough House Theater Company as a fabricator. I have been fabricating puppets since 2012, with the life-long goal to integrate my love of animals and art into my daily life.
Nina D'Angier
Nina Castillo-D'Angier (she/they/siya) is a literal world-builder who makes and holds space to safely explore vulnerability through production design; interactive immersion; and the art of ritual griefwork. Moonlighting as Nina Nightingale, she is one of fewer than 100 silhouette portrait artists in the world and daylights as a professor for The Theatre School at DePaul University. Their multidisciplinary, diasporic work as a queer Filipinx-American is informed by a desire to indulge curiosity and bring mindful connection to everyday interactions, whether that be with strangers, objects, or the many things that we consider familiar.
Shay Jones
Shay Jones is a poet, writer, herbalist, seamstress, and performer in Chicago. Shay spreads joy and light through her work, whether she is sewing butterfly wings, mixing herbal remedies as Spicetique, bringing music and words to life on stage, or sharing her powerful words in poetry and prose.
Jacklynn Kelsey
Jacky Kelsey is a nonbinary soft sculptor, costume designer, and puppeteer based in Chicago. Motivated by a belief that play is necessary for life, Jacky treats the multimedia collaborative potential of puppetry as a playground. Their puppets were recently shown at the Chicago Cultural Center's 2025 "Potential Energy" exhibition. In 2022 they designed sculptural dance costumes for Hedwig Dance's META | MOR | PHOS in collaboration with Bauhaus Dessau. In 2023 they created Fidget, a surreal show about giant restless hands, in participation with the Chicago Puppet Studio's eight month "Puppet Lab" workshop. They designed and performed for Little Fears as part of Steppenwolf's 2025 Lookout Project. They remain active in the local physical theater and puppetry scene, working with theaters such as Roughhouse, Manual Cinema, and Steppenwolf.
Agnotti Cowie
Agnotti (they/she) grew up in Logan Square, Chicago and is passionate about the intersection of social justice, community dialogue, and performing arts. They facilitate workshops employing a variety of pedagogical techniques such as InterPlay, Theatre of the Oppressed, clowning, puppetry and devising. They received a degree in Theatre and Sociology from Beloit College, spending a year abroad in Ireland and Hungary doing cross-cultural research and performance. After several years of working for Opera-Matic as a performer, they stepped into the role of Co-Director in 2021. They have taken their work around the globe, facilitating workshops in Vietnam, India, Chile, Australia, Indonesia, and Germany.
August Boyne
August Boyne is a musician and puppeteer residing in Chicago, Illinois. Since graduating from University of Illinois-Chicago with a degree in music performance, August has played in countless ensembles and styles. In 2018, he artistic directed and composed music for "Perennial Growth", a full-length sci-fi ballet about a plant that assimilates all life on Earth that premiered at the St. Louis Fringe Festival.
As a member of the 2023 Chicago Puppet Lab, August began his development as a puppeteer and expanded his skill set in electronic music composition. With this opportunity, he debuted "Fidget" with collaborator Jacky Kelsey, a puppet piece about two giant hands coming to life and exploring their purpose through a vivid sensory experience.
Since then, August has continued to expand his artistic range, participating as a performer and composer in the Chicago International Puppet Fest, Rough House Theater's "House of the Exquisite Corpse", in addition to being a core organizer for the upcoming People's Puppet Festival.
Joshua Krugman
Joshua Krugman (he/him) is a poet, composer and theater-maker of Latvian-Jewish descent who grew up on the banks of the kwinitekw/Connecticut River. His poems have appeared in a variety of periodicals, two chapbooks, and several pamphlets and broadsides. His compositions have featured in theater performances in major venues and festivals and in a concert devoted to his works. He has collaborated extensively with Bread & Puppet Theater.
With Gratitude
Flying Leap Productions extends our deepest thanks to this extraordinary team of artists whose creativity, skill, and dedication brought our May Day collaboration with SEIU to life. Their contributions not only resulted in towering puppets that captured attention at the rallies, but also facilitated meaningful engagement with union members and the broader community.
The integration of art and activism has long been a powerful force for social change, and we're proud to have worked with these puppeteers who understand the importance of visual storytelling in movements for worker justice. We look forward to future collaborations that continue to bridge art and advocacy, creating work that resonates with communities and supports movements for positive change.