Eli Nixon

Eli is an interdisciplinary artist who writes, builds, directs, and performs puppet shows. They aim to create relevant accessible theater for audiences of all ages, trusting art as a vital vehicle for inquiry and experimentation. Eli sees the puppet shows that they create and facilitate as a means of grassroots organizing, grounded in their belief in the necessity of independent media outlets as a means of expression for everyday people – producing culture rather than simply consuming stories about who we are and what’s important. Eli is committed to developing themself as an ally to the communities that they work with, utilizing their ‘outsiderness’ to question and provoke what an ‘insider’ might overlook. They use humor, absurdist situations, and their own personal questions, struggles, doubts, and realizations as a way to connect audiences with issues of social change. In 2008, Eli received the Independence Foundation Fellowship to fund the creation of Mite We?, a piece that examined their family’s participation in white flight and the gentrification of West Philadelphia. Other works include Sloth Teeth, a live radio play that dramatized their struggles navigating race and class while working on a puppet show with a multi-racial group of teenagers in North Philadelphia, and ATM Muscleman, a show featuring an insightful Automatic Teller Machine that would tell the user what they really needed, more than money, more than capitalism. Eli has worked with and taught locally at Spiral Q Puppet Theater, Puppet Uprising, Southwest Community Enrichment Center, Hall-Mercer Adult Day Care Program, and Salvation Army Family Residence.