A DEEP SPACE PERFORMANCE RESIDENCY
A Fishing Line Sings
A Fishing Line Sings is a new work of shadow puppet theater being created by longtime collaborators Rima Fand (composer/writer) and Erin Orr (puppet designer/director). Based on a concept by Rima, the piece brings together personal childhood fishing memories, dreams, Finnish and Slavic human-fish transformation myths, and the scientific story of our evolution from fish. It explores the idea of fishing as a metaphor for memory. It expresses our longing for connection with other realms, as we cast a line into the unknown to make contact with an unseen world. And, at its core, it is a piece about reckoning with loss: the fishing line as a conduit between us and those who have disappeared into the deep. The line vibrates with an ancient song and allows us to feel the heartbeat of those who are gone.
About the Artists
RIMA FAND
Rima is a Brooklyn-based composer, musician and educator. An innovator who is also strongly drawn to folk traditions, she creates on an edge where the traditional meets the experimental. She has created music for performances ranging from puppet theater to outdoor spectacle to tableau vivant to contemporary musical theater to clown shows. She is currently composing her first chamber opera, entitled Precipice, for which she was the recipient of a 2020 Opera America Commissioning Grant. Precipice will premiere in the Prototype Festival at La MaMa in January, 2026. She is thrilled to be working again with longtime collaborator Erin Orr to create A Fishing Line Sings, the most personal piece she has yet endeavored to make. rimafand.com
ERIN ORR
Erin is a Brooklyn based artist who creates puppet theater as an experiment in visual storytelling, frequently in collaboration with living composers. Her work includes Don Cristobal, Billy-Club Man, a musical inspired by Lorca's puppet plays, co-created with Rima Fand, Savage Nursery, a wordless dark fairytale for adults scored by Rima Fand & Sxip Shirey, and It's a Bee, Honey, a circus for all ages about the drama of honeybees, co-created with Baby Dee. Erin's work has been supported by The Jim Henson Foundation, HERE Artist Residency Program, LMCC, St. Ann’s Warehouse Puppet Lab, The Jerome Foundation, and Abrons Art Center. As a puppeteer, Erin specializes in three-person manipulation and has performed for artists including Basil Twist, Chris Green, Lake Simons, Paula Vogel, Swoon, and The Monkey Boys. Most recently, she was the puppet master and builder for Peregrinations, a masked show about people and borders created by Long Story Short (a production developed at NACL). She is the co-director of The Twilight Soiree, an annual puppet spectacle performed outdoors at the Hip Pocket Theatre in Texas.