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Great Small Works, founded in 1995, is an artists’ collective that reinvents ancient and popular theater techniques: toy theater (papiertheater), mask and object theater, circus sideshows and picture-shows (cantastoria) to name a few.

Often combining live performance with puppetry, the company seeks to promote theater as a model of democratic participation. Based in New York City, Great Small Works produces performance works on a range of scales—from outdoor pageants featuring giant puppets and hundreds of performers, to miniature spectacles.

Full-length theater works currently in the repertoire include A Mammal’s Notebook: The Erik Satie Cabaret, created by the company as a whole and directed by John Bell; The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln, directed by Jenny Romaine and created in collaboration with Yiddish music artists Adrienne Cooper and Frank London; The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare, adapted from the G. K. Chesterton novel and directed by Mark Sussman; and Zangezi: A Supersaga in Twenty Planes, written by the Russian futurist author Velimir Khlebnikov.

The company’s name is based on its fascination with toy theater. The original toy theaters were complete dramas in miniature directly modeled on early 19th century European stage hits. Paper characters and scenic elements were pasted on cardboard, cut out and then placed in a small model theater reproducing the stage of one of the popular playhouses of the day. Later, toy theaters were mass-produced and distributed throughout Europe and the Americas. They remained popular household entertainments, alongside the piano, until the advent of film.

Great Small Works has continued to reinvent this particular form with new works and adaptations of classics, including Toy Theater Faust and Olivier’s Hamlet. Other toy theater pinnacles include the noir hand-puppet thriller New York Confidential; B. B. in L. A., adapted from the Los Angeles journals of Bertolt Brecht; and two shows for children.