Box Cutter Collective is a New York City based political puppet troupe whose members met while working at the Bread and Puppet Theater. Their work addresses current political movements drawing inspiration from anti-fracking activists, efforts to unionize workers, anti-war demonstrations, decolonization thinkers, abolitionist strategists, and others. They believe cultural change precedes political change and that puppetry, humor, and music are essential tools for collective transformation. They have performed at venues across New York City and beyond. In 2025, they premiered Dimension Zero, an anti-capitalist sci-fi musical, which received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and The Henson Foundation and had a sold-out run at HERE Arts Center in Soho. They most recently premiered the latest show, The Cardboard Pizza Puppet Circus at the NYC International Puppet Fringe Festival - a  circus created in collaboration with community groups like Sane Energy and El Puente and featured 30 live performers.

Salomé Egas (she/her/ella) is an Ecuadorian interdisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural worker weaving dance, theater, film, and textiles to question identity and belonging. Her embodied practice creates experiences for immigrant communities to process displacement while imagining pathways for cultural innovations rooted in her Ecuadorian and indigenous ancestry. A three-time Brooklyn Arts Council grantee (2026, 2024, 2022) she created Más que un Pétalo, an award-winning interdisciplinary work exploring her immigrant experience, supported by the 2023 NYC Women’s Fund and The Opportunity Agenda’s Narrative & Culture Fellowship.

Her performances cross borders, from Ecuador to Cuba, Argentina, Canada, Romania, and throughout New York City. She founded F.U.N. Collective, and is the Director/Lead Choreographer of KIPA PACHA at the Ecuadorian American Cultural Center. Salomé holds an M.A. from NYU Gallatin and a B.A. from Skidmore College, and has shaped her artivist practice with Creative Capital, Broadway Advocacy Coalition, and EmergeNYC.

Freedom Debkah

Rude Mechanical Orchestra is a radical protest marching band based in Lenapehoking, the unceeded occupied land of the Lenape Nation, colonially known as the New York City area. We play music and provide chant support in the streets at protests, marches, rallies, direct actions, community events, and more for the revolution and all its intersecting avenues, including (but not limited to): feminism, immigrant rights, queer and trans liberation, labor, peace, equitable community self-determination, decolonization, and racial, social, economic, housing, and climate justice. We actively resist and seek to dismantle racism, (cis)sexism, anti-queerness, ableism, ageism, classism, colonialism, zionism, antisemitism, apartheid, war, genocide, ecocide, gentrification, and all forms of oppression.  

Through our music, we strive to bring joy and inspiration to the communities we are in solidarity with and to inspire new people into activism of all kinds. We pay tribute to the world’s cultures and the revolutionary role music has played throughout history. Internally, we work towards being a safe, welcoming place for all genders, ages, races, sexual orientations, disabilities, neurotypes, religions, ethnicities, and musical skill levels.

The Street Theatre Crew was founded by Radical Evolution in October 2023 by a group of theater makers who participated in a two-week exchange with the historic, New Delhi-based street theater company Jana Natya Manch (aka Janam). Collectively, we are a multidisciplinary crew who are writers, musicians, choreographers, performers, producers, and community organizers. We make work in support of left and progressive social movements in NYC and beyond.

These awesome organizations and artists will be present at the festival. Check them out when you arrive!

Francesca Barr is a working artist and writer from Massachusetts. She loves screenprint for the physical labor it demands, as well as its value in movement-making past, present, and future. Her practice intertwines the tradition of the propaganda poster with modern photographic methods, exploring the relationship between image and message. Before her term as Harvard University’s Henry Russell Shaw Fellow in Ireland and Spain, she graduated from Harvard College with a degree in Sociology and Art, Film, and Visual Studies. Francesca is now based in Brooklyn, NY where she leads arts education programming for community organizations—including The People’s Forum, Penikese Island School, and Strother School for Attention.

For the Streets! is supported in part by: 

La Plaza Cultural Community Garden

The NYC Department of Cultural Affairs
New York State Council on the Arts