Felicia Cooper is a Minneapolis-based artist working in puppetry and performance across the United States. Her work has been seen at LaMama Theater's Puppet Festival, Dixon Place, the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, Full Moon Puppet Show, In the Heart of the Beast Theater, and more. Her artistic endeavors have been supported by The National Humanities Center, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Connecticut Sea Grant, the Heinz Foundation, the Pennsylvania State Arts Board, and others.

She has held artistic residencies with the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, The Bell Museum, the Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance,  Open Eye Theater, Winterthur Museum and Gardens, Hambidge Center, folkLAB, the New Hazlett Theater, and others.

As an extension of her social practice, she conducts contextual research and writes about puppetry histories. She makes work embedded in community and creates platforms for others to create experimental work, including her work with the Puppet Union, UNIMAS-USA, Puppeteers of America, and Minnesota Fringe Festival, where she serves as the Director of Audience and Volunteer Engagement. She holds an MFA in Puppetry from the University of Connecticut. Go Huskies. 

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Artist Statement

I make puppet shows and art experiences which allow us to ask questions together, to be complicit in acts of inquiry, wonder, and mischief. My work is embedded in consistent performance technique as well as a practice of community and embodied research. I celebrate questions and curiosity in shared spaces through performances and installations which examine the complicated ideations of the glorious, the strange, and the romantic mundane. Subjects have included alterity, 19th century feminist craft, submarines, freshwater mussels, model trains, and the nature of hope.

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