TANIA YAGER, puppeteer

TANIA L. YAGER is a visual/performance artist and San Diego native who is making strides to expand puppetry in the North County region and beyond. She is the founder of Twisted Heart Puppetworks, a small puppet company operating in Vista, California for the past 7 years. Tania is a 2015 alumni of The Eugene O’neill National Puppetry Conference and has recently studied traditional marionette carving in Prague. Tania loves all forms of puppetry but is most at home and delighted when constructing shadow theater. Her puppetry studies have taken her to Italy, Germany, and the Czech Republic as well as across the US. Tania has studied with such international powerhouses as Mirek Trejnar (Prague), Larry Reed (San Francisco), Basil Twist (New York), Judith Hope (London) and many more talented folks close to home. Her debut into creating shadow projections for opera came in January 2019 with He’ Porturino, a Maori inspired opera, by Celeste Oram of New Zealand.
 

Tania has created, directed, and performed original works such as The Shadows For One series, the Norse inspired fairy tales of The Forest Wife and The Fenris Wolf, and Snake Heart Jack, a feature length puppet play adaptation of The Plucker by the artist BROM. Tania is using 2020 as a year dedicated to learning online and honing her craft as well as teaching herself the basics of filming puppetry and movie editing. She is thrilled to be part of the ACCELERATE COMPETITION with the members of Project [BLANK]. She hopes to do more work with opera in the future.