The Dry Bio:
Beth Nixon is an interdisciplinary artist who works under the name Ramshackle Enterprises. Since 1998 Beth has been writing, building, performing, and touring her own solo clown and puppet shows, collaborating with other artists, and frequently facilitating the creation of puppet parades, pageants, and performances with groups of children and adults. Beth has worked with Pig Iron Theatre and Spiral Q (Philly), Red Moon Theater (Chicago), Bread and Puppet Theater (VT), and Big Nazo Puppets (RI). Beth has a BA in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, ME and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College in Plainfield, VT. Her graduate thesis work was entitled “Navigating Curious Terrain: An Illustrated Field Guild to Ethics, Power and Imagination in Community-Based Puppetry and Personal Practice.”
Beth has performed her original work up and down the East Coast, across the US, and beyond. She has busked around France, Spain and Italy and performed at The Andorra International Festival of Women Clowns in the Pyrenees Mountains. Other venues include: The Blacksheep Puppet Festival in Pittsburgh, Chicago’s Puppetropolis Festival, The Radicackilacky Puppetry Convergence in North Carolina, Boston’s Puppet Showplace Theater, ABC No Rio, HERE, and the International Toy Theater Festival at St. Anne’s Warehouse in NYC. Her Ramshackle Enterprises have overtaken numerous cabarets, house-shows, coffee shops and street corners.
She has created large scale puppet installations at The Manchester Craftsman’s Guild (Pittsburgh), 40th St. AIR Gallery and the East African Cultural Center (Philly), SPACE Gallery (Portland, ME) and other venues. Her puppets have been displayed at The Constitution Center, the gallery at City Hall, and the atrium at One Liberty Place in Philadelphia, as well as in many storefronts, barns, living rooms and abandoned lots. Beth has been an artist-in-residence at dozens of schools, senior centers, and addiction recovery and mental health facilities, and has worked extensively with community groups, libraries, camps, and after-school programs.
Beth was awarded a 2008 Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts, was a 2008 First Person Arts Artist-In-Residence, and was awarded a Spiral Q Artist Activist Award in 2009. She received a Jilline Ringle Solo Performance Residency at 1812 Productions in 2010, and a Leeway Transformation Award for her art and social change work in 2011. She enjoyed free studio space as a 40th St. Artist in Residence for 2011-2012 and was an invited member of the Pew Heritage Philadelphia Program History/ Performance Incubator until she left Philly in 2012. Beth grew up in Rhode Island and after many years of bigger state adventures, she has relocated with her family back to Providence, RI. She enjoyed an Arts Mentoring Fellowship at New Urban Arts from 2012-2014, and last year received a RI State Council on the Arts grant for her work with local activist and community groups building art for the PRONK parade. Beth is currently delving into her solo performance practice, finding new collaborators, and trying to create more than she consumes.