Bio / Recognition
Biography
San Diego based artists Bridget Rountree and Iain Gunn are Animal Cracker Conspiracy, a contemporary collaborative hybrid puppet company invested in peering under the surface of things and pushing the boundaries of live kinetic performance.
Joining forces in 2004 with a shared desire to collaborate with one another and create performances that would radically decenter expectations, open new avenues of thought and invoke the uncanny. Their ongoing performance practice is based in devising hybrid performance, as well as creating frameworks for collaboration, investigation, and discovery of the stories hidden amongst us.
Their shared interest and exploration of where fine art, puppetry, performance art, physical theater, and mixed media intersect is a continued source of inspiration for their work. ACC seek the creation of emergent structures, defining the work through layering symbols, images, film, sounds, movement, and puppets on stage.
Traversing abstractions of movement from the material to immaterial, folk to contemporary, and intellectual to intuitive. ACC actively cultivates the suspension of disbelief by employing immediate choreography, embracing the unknown, and using the manipulation of puppets to create original stories.
ACC have participated in both national and international artist residencies, conferences, and workshops with the La Jolla Playhouse, Bread and Puppet, North American Creative Laboratories, La Pocha Nostra, Rosenclaire, The Old Trout Puppet Workshop, Handspring Puppet Company and The Eugene O’Neill Center’s National Puppetry Conference.
They have performed and/or exhibited as ACC or in collaboration with ZIRK UBU, Patricia Rincon Dance Collective, Mango and Dango, WSOHOIDPS, ZenArtsLA and the Vaudeville Vixens at the Museum of Contemporary Art- San Diego and Santa Barbara, the La Jolla Playhouse, HERE ARTS NYC, Exit Theatre San Francisco, The Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego, as well as for Arts and Lectures at Cal State San Marcos, for Art Power at UCSD, at the Performance Annex in City Heights, at the Montana Fair, at KAABOO, at Lightning in a Bottle and the Skirball Center. They have received support from the San Diego Foundation, Jim Henson Foundation, Puffin Foundation, Guthman Foundation, Sator Arts Foundation, Synergy Arts Foundation, the Heather Beth Henson Fund and The Puppet Slam Network.
Recognition & Awards
- 2016 Puppet Slam Network Grant
- 2015 Jim Henson Foundation Project Grant
- 2015 Network of Ensemble Theatres Exchange Grant
- 2015 Puppet Slam Network Grant
- 2014 Guthman Foundation Grant
- 2013 Creative Catalyst Fellowship
- 2013 Puppet Slam Network Grant
- 2112 Heather Henson, IBEX Puppetry Grant
- 2012 Puffin Foundation Grant
- 2012 Jim Henson Foundation Project Grant
- 2012 Puppet Slam Network Grant
- 2012 Best of S.F. Fringe
- 2012 Techies Choice Award S.F. Fringe
- 012 Curated Choice New Orleans Fringe
- 2011 Puppet Slam Network Grant
- 2011 Synergy Art Foundation Grant
- 2010 Jim Henson Seed Grant
- 2010 Puppet Slam Network Grant
- 2010 Heather Henson, IBEX Puppetry Grant
- 2009 Sator Arts Foundation Grant
