JOEL K. ORR, artistic director, graduated from the University of Houston with a BA in English Literature. There, he was accepted into Edward Albee’s Playwright’s Workshop on the merit of his first play, a puppet show entitled Free Advice. Between 1989 and 1992, Orr produced his first theater pieces, the puppet shows Free Advice and Humanagram, and the plays Sisyphus Distracted, There and Bobbindoctrin. Orr dropped out of the creative scene for a few years while he worked on his degree at UH and enjoyed steady employment at Houston’s Landmark Theatres (where he learned the fine art of making people do a lot for almost no money, and how to spell theater ‘theatre’.)
     In 1995, Orr was approached by Houston artist Jim Pirtle to perform a puppet show for Zocalo’s 1995 Self-Indulgent Crapfest. The idea of producing something inherently self-indulgent and crappy was liberating to Orr, and he decided to write a play about the general uselessness of his education. The resulting five-minute piece, Punchface, told the story of poor little Punchface, who is entrusted to the care of the evil Dr. De Generiste after his father dies of liver failure. This production was the first puppet play to bring together the founders of Bobbindoctrin: Dennis Clay, Frog Gilmore, Larry Olivarez, Joel Reed Parker and Doug Spearman. It was the talent and competence of these artists that inspired Orr to found Bobbindoctrin Puppet Theatre. Little did he know that this decision would cost him his job and his fiancé. And little would he have cared.
     After some strategic meetings with his co-founders, Joel Orr expanded the Punchface story into The Punchface Trilogy. This serial was performed over the summer of 1996 at Instant Karma, Brasil and The Orange Show.

     DENNIS CLAY, technical director, is the founding technical director of Bobbindoctrin Puppet Theatre. He has built stages and effects for pretty much every Bobbindoctrin show, including The Punchface Trilogy, The Black Box, The Mole, Corruption of the Species, Freakin’ Amazing City, The Mauist, The Crime of the Assistant Master Butler and Why Do the Children Rust?
     To make a living, Dennis works as a key grip on film productions across the country. Past film credits include Nightmare on Elm Street, Waiting for Guffman, Rushmore, and Tornado!
     You can normally see Dennis’s award-winning work, his VW Bug “Mirror Image” during the Orange Show’s annual car parade.