BETSY TOBIN

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Betsy Tobin, Artistic Director of the Now Or Never Theatre, has directed and performed original theatre pieces across the United States, in Canada, in Guinea, and throughout Europe where she won awards at festivals and earned an international reputation as a solo puppeteer. Her innovative work integrates forms of puppetry with acting, masks, shadow theatre, and video projection. During the last 12 years, she has experimented with different ways of telling stories using layered imagery in larger multi-media productions. Shows are presented in unusual settings with projection on a variety of surfaces as in SHADOWS & JOURNEYS, performed in canyons across the Southwest with shadows on rock walls representing the memories of the land.

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She participated in the Art in Embassies program in Guinea in June 2016 and returned to Africa in February 2017 to direct “Ombres et Lumieres Sur Conakry” (Light & Shadows Over Conakry) in Guinea with local actors, musicians, and dancers. This devised theatre piece contrasted day and night, exploring rituals and scenes from everyday life and dreams and nightmares portrayed with shadow theatre, projections, and the griot (storyteller) tradition.

Betsy is working on a video collaboration juxtaposing sculptor George Sherwood’s use of light in his kinetic sculptures with her use of shadow. She performed in Margarita Blush’s show Unfolding, at puppetry festivals in Bulgaria, Turkey, and Minnesota. 

Betsy currently performs her production, The Auspicious Adventures of an Improbable Princess. She has performed the show on tour in Colorado, at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, and at Dixon Place in New York City.