Stage • Media • Print • News • About • Links • Map
The Independent EyeMedia


Stage performances of The Independent Eye are now on DVD. (how to order)

King Leardvd

Two actors. Twenty puppets. Shakespeare’s fiery text. Lear is the puppeteer of his own puppet show, the solo human in his motherless kingdom of power and commodity. Like Dante’s damned souls, caught in a perpetual hell particular to each, Lear obsessively plays out his loss of power, friendship, shelter, sanity, and at last even hope. The Fool is his withered soul, an acid clown who torments Lear, stage-manages his story, and finally disappears into Lear’s madness.

Sprung from The Independent Eye’s series of landmark actor/puppet stagings—Macbeth, The Tempest, Frankenstein, Descent of Inanna—this King Lear features Conrad Bishop as Lear, Elizabeth Fuller as the Fool, with Fuller’s music score. From the live stage performance, premiering in San Francisco in 2015 and touring CA, AZ, NM, OR, WA, CO, IA, WI, PA, VA, DC, MD, NH and NY.

Watch a preview (5 minutes)


(103-minute DVD, $16.95)
Frankensteindvd

Adapted from Mary Shelley’s classic novel by Conrad Bishop & Elizabeth Fuller, this Frankenstein is the story of a man who, tormented by the death of his mother, seeks to conquer death by making birth obsolete. Three actors, puppets, music and video create an ironic clown-show as unsettling as today’s news. It was described by a critic as “a strangely beautiful, visually arresting spectacle of inanimate oddness … a more intimate story of a damaged soul in search of love.” From the live stage performance in 2011.

Watch a preview (10 minutes)


(70-minute DVD, $16.95)
The Tempestdvd
Tempest DVD

Shakespeare’s final masterpiece of redemption and forgiveness, a comedy with fierceness and deep soul.  Our staging is faithful to the gorgeous text but unlike anything you’ve ever seen before—with five actors, 20 large puppets, masks, shadows, video projection, and Elizabeth Fuller’s stunning musical score.  From the live stage performance in 2009.

Watch a preview (10 minutes)


(107-minute DVD, $16.95)
The Descent of Inannadvd

The Queen of Heaven and Earth begins a fateful descent to meet her sister, Queen of the Underworld, as a New Jersey wedding photographer finds her images turning into nightmares. Based on 5,000-year-old Sumerian myths, this dramatic revisioning features compelling music, masks & puppets, and the dazzling richness, humor and erotic imagery of the ancient texts.  From the live stage performance in 2007.

Watch a preview (7 minutes)

(Also available in an audio version.)


(80-minute DVD, $16.95)
For three and a half years, from our Northern California studio, we crafted Hitchhiking off the Map, a show of audio portraits and micro-dramas about trips and transformations. We publish CD anthologies, and all the episodes are available for on-line listening.
CD Anthologies    (how to order)
The Descent of Inanna • Love Tales • Family Snapshots • Walt, Patty, & the Gang • Nativity • Life Journeys • Migration Routes • Odd Safaris • Tapdancer
Episode Archive
every episode of Hitchhiking off the Map - listen online

The Descent of Inannacd

The Queen of Heaven and Earth begins a fateful descent to meet her sister, Queen of the Underworld, as a New Jersey wedding photographer finds her images turning into nightmares. Based on 5,000-year-old Sumerian myths, this dramatic revisioning features compelling music and the dazzling richness, humor and erotic imagery of the ancient texts.

Information about the stage production


(66-minute CD, $14.95)
Love Talescd
The mad love of adolescents freeing a shoplifted lobster. Or a mother and daughter finding each other. Or a dead husband. Or a movie star. Or the jangled communion of two old ladies at the Burger King, and a real-life miracle. A deep heart journey through love’s many faces.

(73-minute CD, $14.95)
Family Snapshotscd

Fifty-four 90-second micro-dramas about those times you were too frazzled to pick up the camera. Broadcast on more than 80 public stations, they’re funny, unsettling, thought-provoking, heart-warming, absurd, startling, joyous. You’ve never heard anything like these—except in real life.

The fifty-four stories are each ninety seconds or less.


(78-minute CD, $14.95)
Walt, Patty, & the Gangcd
These twelve pungent micro-dramas take you into the world of earnest suburbanites Walt, Patty, and their friends, who live among terror alerts, ominous signals from the neighbors, marital stress, and subversive shrubbery. Read the news and feel like screaming? Try laughing instead.


(76-minute CD, $14.95)
Nativitycd

Childbirth: human and divine. The voices of twenty-six women describing their experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, shadow and sun, intermingled with fragments of Divine Birth narratives from many cultures, as well as the Biblical nativity. It’s about the extraordinary diversity—and the innate sacredness—of every birth-giving.


(77-minute CD, $14.95)
Life Journeyscd

Unforgettable chronicles of the crossroads, the choices, and the consequences of lives unfolding, ordinary people moving into the unknown, from Mississippi to the Australian bush, from Hungary to New Guinea, from boxing to evangelism to India, and across the boundaries of their fears. How did you get to wherever you are from wherever you started out?


(79-minute CD, $14.95)
Migration Routescd

The ongoing challenge of the American immigrant experience is captured in these five voices—from the Philippines, Mexico, Germany, Cameroon, and Rumania—speaking of their childhoods in warfare, pogroms, poverty and magical beauty, and their continuing journeys of discovery.


(71-minute CD, $14.95)
Odd Safariscd

Seven dramatic tales about surviving the surrealism of daily life. You’re in third grade, naked. You meet space aliens. You’re in the chariot of the Sun God. You fall down the rabbit hole at the age of 44, right after the election. Be warned: these stories are human, unforgettable, and as honest as your dreams.


(71-minute CD, $14.95)
Tapdancercd

Our all-time favorite! A comic fantasy about risk. Investment broker Ken Leonard is given a gag gift: six tap dance lessons. This innocent venture sends him careening through a fantasy of cult stardom, startling sex, midnight vandalism, trial by jury, and a verdict of death by lethal injection. He survives, as long as he keeps tap-dancing on the footboard of his deathbed.


(3-CD set, $29.95)