Friday Noons: Something Wicked Takes the Stage- Puppets, Horror, and the Stubborness to Create with Josh Gross

In a town famous for its arts institutions, what does it take to ignore and sidestep them completely to build a genuinely local culture for yourself and your community? One that is darker, stranger, realer, and in open conflict with those same standard-bearers? And to do this with puppets, and no budget?

For Josh Gross, founder, artistic director, and writer/composer of celebrated comedy troupe Puppeteers for Fears—who tour nationwide performing original all-puppet feature-length rock'n'roll musical comedies about myths and monsters—the scariest thing an artist can do isn’t fail; it's to play the hits as the world burns; to sacrifice's art's vital role as a reflection of society to give the audience what it wants instead of what it needs. To be silenced and forced to stick to someone else's script so as not to rock a boat in dire need of rocking; even if the means to do so is puppets.

In this October Friday Noons talk, Josh will unearth the Ashland origins of Puppeteers for Fears and share the creative philosophies and practical techniques that bring its creatures and stories to life, as well as their deep roots in Ashland's local culture. He’ll explore how the work gets written, staged, and sold and how it connects to his broader life as a writer, musician, and performer. Along the way, he’ll offer a glimpse of two upcoming projects steeped in ghost stories.

Part origin story, part battle cry: a conversation about creativity, horror as a literary baseline, and why your strangest ideas are the only ones worth bothering with.