A STORYTELLING COLLECTIVE
ABOUT EDTYF
Eat Drink Tell Your Friends is a non-hierarchical company that explores intimate stories to start larger conversations. We tell these stories through puppetry and mask work. The founders met at Hampshire College in Amherst MA where they created work together at an entirely student-run theater. After school and a few years of exploring the NYC theater scene by themselves, they each stumbled into puppetry independently and immediately began discussing their first collaboration.
We begin with a conversation. Our process involves stretching our personal stories into the realm of the imagination and the surreal. From that first conversation we form a loose outline of a story we want to tell. We then sketch out ideas for puppets or sets or snippets of dialogue and then we begin building. After we’ve built a few workable puppets, we invite other puppeteers to come explore, through guided improvisation, different relationships and limitations of our new characters. Building, improvising, and honing those improvisations, becomes a cycle until we find ourselves with a mass of concepts, characters, scene ideas, and relationships that we can carve into our show.
WHO IS E D T Y F
ANDY MANJUCK
co-founding member
is a puppeteer, performer, director, and voice over artist. He is a member of the award-winning company Wakka Wakka (Baby Universe, SAGA), and works closely with artist Robin Frohardt (The Pigeoning, Monster MGMT). He recently performed Petrushka (NY Philharmonic Orchestra/Giants are Small) at the Barbican in London, and El Retablo de Maesa Pedro with Doug Fitch and the American Symphony Orchestra as part of Bard College’s Summerscape program.
ASHUR RAYIS
co-founding member
is a musician, sound artist, and puppeteer from Atlanta, Georgia. He studied music composition and literature at Hampshire College, and since moving to New York in 2011 has collaborated with artists and makers such as Maiko Kikuchi, Elliott Jenetopulos, Puppet Lab, and the A.O. Movement Collective, and he makes a mean pot of chili.
RACHEL SCHAPIRA
co-founding member
is a working artist living in Brooklyn. She makes theater, puppets, books, drawings, fiber art, prints, poetry. Rachel has worked with Basil Twist, Ripe Time, The Story Pirates, New Georges, Opera Slavica, and Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew. She is a teaching artist with Red Hook Art Project and a member of a monster trux collective. She is into community, communication, and decision-making by committee.