Joshua Huffman
The Myth of Persephone
The life of Persephone is said to be the coming and going of seasons. Her gifts to the world are evident in the path the audience has to take to get to the studio. With guidance from the director, the audience witnesses Persephone in her element until she falls for a mysterious flower. Her mother, Demeter, begins calling for her daughter after she notices her absence. As Demeter is looking for her daughter, Persephone finds herself in a dark new world. Slowly coming too she realizes the only way to survive is to marry her captor, Hades. The world above however is in peril. Persephone can hear her mother calling for her and this ignites a flame of hope for her. She begins to build herself up and leave the underworld.
About the Artist
Joshua Huffman is a puppeteer, theatre maker, and performer. His work is influenced by powerful stories and the catharsis they can bring. He believes the creative process is a fun way to understand the world around him. His reference points are stories from Griselda Gambaro’s Information for Foreigners, and Anna Deveare Smith’s Notes from the Field. These artists both embody the harrowing human experience in their work. Gambaro uses site-specific performance to tell the horrific reality of the enforced disappearances in Latin America during the various dictatorships. Smith uses interviews to embody many characters and tells the story of the U.S. school to prison pipeline. Both push the boundaries of audience and storytelling to bring marginalized stories to light.
Joshua’s creative process was found in his backyard growing up. He makes work that nourishes his inner child. He remembers playing with dolls and the scenarios he would give them that brought life to the inanimate objects. Each doll and toy he played with had a life of its own. This belief of life existing outside of the biological framework/understanding has followed him in his work. Giving life and perspective to various places and objects to tell a story is what fascinates him as a storyteller. He believes that the core of a creative process is to understand something deeply, and with resonance. This brought him to embodied dramaturgy: the practice of using one's body movement to tell a story or experience. The physical theater practice of embodied dramaturgy creates the deep resonance within the writing and research of performance making.
His most recent works include directing the musicals Grease, Legally Blonde, and The Little Mermaid through a youth theater organization. Roles on stage include Orcus in She Kills Monsters, Ali in Mamma Mia!, and Lana Sherwood, Violet Bick, Matilda, Sadie Vance in It’s a Wonderful Life: A Radio Play.
His training comes from studying a Bachelors of Arts in Dance, German, and Theater at the University of Vermont and a Masters of Fine Arts in Acting and Devised Theatre Performance at Columbia College Chicago and Arthaus Berlin.