“Big Top Machine is all about wonderment. With its sublimely inventive theatricality, it reminds us what wonderment feels like, and makes us more than a little wistful that it’s becomes so rare and precious these days.” Martin Denton New York Theatre Experience (nytheatre.com)

“This show has the potential to make us wish for an innocence we have lost forever.” The Puppetry Journal

“In (Augustine’s) hands the simplest act of bringing life to the inanimate becomes a hugely theatrical event.” Basil Twist

Step right up! Winner of the “Overall Excellence Award for Solo Show” at the 1999 FringeNYC, Big Top Machine is a tour-de-force production of acting, life-sized puppetry and mesmerizing theatricality.

The Allied corporation has downsized the Big Top! A hero is needed to recover the lost magic. But can heroes exist at all when we have ceased to recognize their absence? Lone Wolf Tribe explores this timely query in a humorous and edgy romp that sets classic hero mythology against our modern yearnings for magic. Journey with an ordinary dreamer as he joins a corporate-owned circus, but finds an underworld sideshow instead. Witnesses an entire three-ring extravaganza come to life as Mr. Augustine partners with his spellbinding, hand-carved puppets. Step into the bleachers for a show that fearlessly embodies the Tribe’s aim to create theatre that is emotional, visual, and brutal and poetic…stories that touch the heart as well as break it.

Following a recent appearance in the 2004 Dream Music Trio Festival sponsored by the Henson International Festival of Puppet Theatre, with Lone Wolf Tribe's
Animal (hailed "masterful and pulsating" by The Village Voice) Kevin Augustine returns to the stage with his award winning puppet show, Big Top Machine at The Brick in Williamsburg. Free peanuts and popcorn will be provided before the show!

Big Top Machine is written, performed and directed, with puppets created by Kevin Augustine

Puppeteers: Sophie Nimmannit,
Matthew Riggs, Laura Emanuel
Lighting designer: Andrew Hill
Sound designer: Sean McFaul
Props and Costumes: Gloria Sun
Assistant director: Leslie Strongwater
Stage manager: Beatrice Bass
Graphic designer: Colin Stokes

Kevin Augustine is artistic director of Lone Wolf Tribe; a one-man theatre ensemble composed of himself (the wolf) and his tribe of foam rubber puppets. In Augustine’s hands (as well as feet) ordinary foam is transformed, hand carved for maximum expressiveness, into living breathing creatures—strangely unsettling while at the same time extremely tender. This bizarre and evocative partnership makes Lone Wolf Tribe performances a “truly powerful” Backstage, and uniquely mesmerizing theatre experience. Established in 1997 LWT is winner of the San Francisco Fringe Festival Critic’s Choice Award and the New York International Fringe Festival Overall Excellence Award for Solo Show and has performed at prestigious theatre festivals and artistic centers in the US and abroad (The HARARE International Arts Festival in Zimbabwe, The Henson International Festival of Puppet Theatre, The Painted Bride, in Phila, HERE in NYC)

Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm
March 4 through April 2
All tickets $10
Reservations: 718.907-3457