Liebe Wetzel

Liebe Wetzel, Artistic Director of Lunatique Fantastique, has peformed in a variety of incarnations including puppeteer, performance artist, mime, stilt-walker, and clown at festivals, fairs, and theaters throughout the West Coast. She is a graduate of the Dell Arte School of Phyisical Theater, and has trained with Keith Johnstone at the Loose Moose Theater in Canada. She holds a BA in biology and biochemistry from Rice University. In 1999 Wetzel debuted her award-winning style of ordinary-object puppetry with a collection of vignettes for adults, Naked Foam and Objects in Predicaments.

Wetzelâs performing credits include left hand and head of Pruitt in the original 2000 version of Snake in the Basement: the Prosecution of Rev. Bill Pruitt, #3 sponge in Objects in Predicaments, potato feet of Spud Flexor in My Dinner with Lunatique Fantastique, Peanut man head and left arm in Wrapping Paper Caper, tinsel feet of Mlle. Papier in Another Wrapping Paper Caper, head and right arm of Teacup Napkin son in E.O. 9066, head and left arm of Farmer Toilet Paper in Fixed Boundary.

Her directing credits include Brace Yourself!, Another Wrapping Paper Caper, My Dinner with Lunatique Fantastique, Attack of the Wrapping Paper Caper, E.O. 9066 and Fixed Boundary.

Lunatique Fantastique has received numerous grants from the Hensen Foundation, Zellerbach, and CASH. The Exit Theater with Liebe Wetzel were granted a Rockefeller Foundation M.A.P. grant for Beauty and the Beast

which will debut at the 2006 DIVAFest.

Wetzel comes to the Lucas Artists Programs thanks to a generous grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.