Who We Are
The Festival Curators
Dave Buchen
Dave Buchen has been co-coordinating the Banners & Cranks since its inception. His cantastoria projects include Natural History by Plinius the Elder and the 7-year long Baudelaire in the Box project.
He is a member of Chicago’s Theater Oobleck, for which he has written numerous plays and San Juan’s El Teatro Bárbaro, for which his children would like to remind him that they are the bosses.
As a printmaker, he has made numerous books and a yearly calendar since the previous century. He plays with La Banda Municipal de Makula-Barun. He lives with his two children in San Juan.
Clare Dolan
Clare Dolan is a specialist in cantastoria performance and is the Co-creator of Banners & Cranks with Dave Buchen. She is also a performer, director, cheap artist and Intensive Care Unit nurse based in Vermont. She was a full time puppeteer for twelve years with the Bread and Puppet Theater, and today continues to perform, install exhibits, and teach for Bread & Puppet in cities and towns throughout the United States and abroad. Independently, she lectures and leads workshops in a wide range of arenas, from small town community centers, to mountain villages in Mexico, to inner city schools. She also creates, performs, and participates in collaborative projects in puppet theater, toy theater performance and experimental dance. She is a stilt dancer and instructor, and also the founder and chief curator of The Museum of Everyday Life, a grassroots museum experiment in Glover Vermont, whose goal is to explore, analyze and celebrate everyday life objects.
