Watch the world’s greatest stories unroll before your eyes! Flushing Town Hall is thrilled to produce this festival of scrolled panoramas, known as “crankies,” for CRANKIES TAKE NEW YORK!

A crankie is basic in concept: it is a scroll that provides the visual narration to a story or song. Versions of the crankie have been around for hundreds of years, if not longer; their most recent iteration is directly linked to moving panoramas popular in the 19th Century. In recent years, artists have begun to embrace the intimacy of the format, creating multi-layered, immersive experiences for audiences that create a sort of fireside wonder. It's mesmerizing and the perfect respite from our digital world. 

Both evening shows will feature the same lineup of artists and musicians. While the performances will not have anything explicit, we recommend these shows for adult audiences and mature youth.  

Join us for a youth matinee on Saturday that will feature a smaller cast for a tailored kids and family program. Come early to make your own crankie!

Friday, February 28
7:30 PM Performance
General Admission: $20 Adults / $15 Members, Seniors, & Students w/ID
Children are welcome and this performance is geared towards adults.

Get Your Tickets for the 2/28 Show Here

Saturday, March 1
1:00 PM Workshop
Come early for a family friendly pre-show workshop where you get to make your own mini crankie. Perfect for the young crank-sters in your household.

2:00 PM Kids and Family Performance followed by Q & A
General Admission (Workshop): FREE for Members w/Ticket Purchase / $5 for All Others.
You must buy a performance ticket to ANY show to attend the workshop.
General Admission (Performance): $15 Adults / $12 Members / $8 Children

7:30 PM Public Performance 
General Admission: $20 Adults / $15 Members, Seniors, & Students w/ID
Children are welcome and this performance is geared towards adults.

Get Your Tickets for the 3/1 Workshop/Performance Here

Sunday, March 2
2:00 PM Master Class with Kathy Fahey
General Admission: $30 Adults / $25 Members
Discover the wonders of crankies with instructor Katherine Fahey by making a matchbox into a storytelling machine! Explore the art of basic crankie making on a miniature scale. Get creative, by drawing your own scroll and proscenium or use the ones provided. This workshop will feature a crankie performance by teachers Katherine Fahey and Dan Van Allen. These crankies can be an end in themselves or drafts for larger pieces. If you plan to design your own, come prepared with a simple story or song to base your crankie on. If you’d like to do so, there will be time for sharing your crankie at the end of the workshop.This Master Class is only for Adults.

Get Your Tickets for The Masterclass Here!

Crankie Artists- More to be announced!

Crankies Take New York Co Curator - Emily Schubert 

Crankies Take New York co-curator & host Emily Schubert is a puppeteer, crankie maker, storyteller and mixed media artist, currently based in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. She has participated in puppet theater festivals and workshops in Europe, Indonesia, and the United States including performing at the Letni Letna Festival (2014) in Prague with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (2022), at the National Puppetry Festival (2018), National Puppet Slam (2016), and New Orleans Giant Puppet Festival (2022-23). She is also the curator and organizer of the Baltimore Crankie Festival and has hosted many a "puppet slam" including her self-produced Experimental Puppet Happenings (2022-2023). Emily is enthralled by the emotive power and depth of expression achieved through puppetry and storytelling and she believes that within these realms lies a source of powerful real-life magic that is deficient in much of our daily lives. Everyone could use more puppet encounters, crankies, and chances to stop and listen to a story! 

The Lantern Sisters

The Lantern Sisters are a collaborative duo comprised of Baltimore-based multidisciplinary artists Katherine Fahey and Dan Van Allen. They make performances and  tell stories through the arts of shadow puppetry, papercutting, and crankies. The stories and songs they perform often root themselves in folk tale traditions, both regionally and from around the world. Katherine has inspired a world-wide tradition of crankies and her work, done with impeccable hand-cut details, draws audiences deeply into the performances.

Phoebe Potts

Phoebe Potts is a comedic storyteller, graphic artist and professional Jew. Her show “Too Fat for China” has sold out the Suffolk’s Modern Theatre in Boston, The Den Theatre in Chicago, the Gloucester Stage Company and a three week run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it received rave reviews from The Scotsman. "Too Fat for China" is the sequel to Potts’ critically acclaimed graphic novelGood Eggs  (HarperCollins). Too Fat for China recently won “Best Storytelling Show” at the United Solo Show Festival in NYC. Potts was raised like a farmed salmon in Brooklyn, but lives in Massachusetts because of the tougher gun laws there. 

Charming Disaster 

Charming Disaster is a goth-folk musical duo based in Brooklyn, NY, formed in 2012 by Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris. Inspired by the macabre humor of Edward Gorey and Tim Burton, the murder ballads of the Americana tradition, and the dramatic flair of the cabaret, they write songs that tell stories about death, crime, myth, magic, folklore, science, and the occult.

BoxCutter Collective

Once upon a time everyone was bored. Then someone got the bright idea to act silly on purpose, to the delight of many. The Boxcutter Collective carries on this tradition to this day, often provoking laughter and occasionally thought. 

The Boxcutter Collective is made up of four core members who bonded over their shared passion for waving things around and pretending that the things are talking. This is called “puppetry,” and it is a highly respected artform in every culture except this one.

Nasaria Suckoo

Born in George Town, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, Nasaria Suckoo is one of the finest traditional storytellers and visual artists on the Cayman Islands. She received a BA in Theatre and an MA in Educational Theatre from New York University. She is a member of the artists collective Native Sons and has exhibited widely both with the group and as a solo artist. An accomplished poet and actor, her work explores themes of female strength and empowerment, race and the repercussions of enslavement, as well as the erosion of Caymanian cultural traditions. She is a keeper of traditional “duppy” stories, which often involve ghostly figures, usually believed to be the spirits of deceased people, who can appear as hitchhikers, roam specific locations like the "Duppy Turn," or even manifest as a "Rolling Calf" - a large, ghostly cow that chases people, often linked to a butcher who has passed away. This will be her first ever crankie and perhaps the first crankie ever built in the Cayman Islands.