“The Left Hand of Darkness,” by Tom Lee and Untitled Theater Company No. 61/Photo: Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival

Tom Lee is a masterful bunraku artist and one of the leading forces that has transformed Chicago into a world destination for puppetry. Alongside Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival founder and impresario Blair Thomas, Lee created and co-directs the Chicago Puppet Lab, an incubator for new work by local artists. He and Thomas also co-direct the Chicago Puppet Studio, where Lee works as a designer, fabricator and coach.

The fruits of their efforts, and the wizardry of puppeteers from around the globe, will be on display citywide January 21-February 1, when the annual Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival wows sold-out crowds for the eighth time, at dozens of venues. Though less than a decade old, the Festival has become the largest of its kind on the continent, making Chicago an unlikely creative mecca during one of its cruelest months. The unpredictable weather can be a boon for hearty puppetry fans, however; one year my friends and I got a private performance as reward for being the only souls to brave the trek downtown in a massive snowstorm.

One of this year’s festival highlights is an adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1969 novel “The Left Hand of Darkness,” in which a man from Earth visits a planet inhabited by people who live most of their lives without specified genders. The show, four years in the making, was created by Lee and directed by Edward Einhorn of New York-based Untitled Theater Company No. 61—a specialist in absurdist theater and one of Lee’s longtime collaborators. I spoke with Lee about his new work, why puppets are well-suited to express the complexity of the human experience, as well as the festival overall.

Why were you drawn to this story for a puppet show?

This piece is a real passion project for myself and other people involved in it. Ursula Le Guin is a total groundbreaker in her position as a science-fiction writer in the time she was coming up, and the depth and integrity of the ideas she was exploring through the science-fiction lens. Her work is about us as human beings. Before there was a Hogwarts, she created the Earthsea series about how a magician is trained. The parallel with the Harry Potter writer is distinct because “Left Hand of Darkness” in 1969 is addressing this potentiality of the human being that Le Guin, a white woman, saw in many people, and tried to express in this story as a way of thinking about how we present to people, how people view us. It’s so ahead of its time in terms of these issues that we now know are really present in our society and dividing in our society.

I’d worked with Edward Einhorn in New York for nearly fifteen years. He had adapted Le Guin’s novels into stage plays, including “The Lathe of Heaven,” for Untitled Theater Company No. 61. In the process of doing that, he flew to Portland and met Ursula Le Guin and they spent the day together. They discussed “The Left Hand of Darkness” and, in that discussion Edward tells me, Ursula herself brought up the idea that puppets might be the most effective way to tell that story. A puppet is inherently genderless. All of its identity is created by the projection of the audience on an inanimate object through the work of the puppeteers. In this work that explores a planet where everyone is in a fluid gender state until it’s time to be with another, she said puppets might be a way to do this.

When Edward said this story might be it, I said, “Where do I sign up?” Most of the design team is based in Chicago and came into my orbit from working with the festival.

“The Left Hand of Darkness”/Photo: Zach Sun

Would you like to talk about the Chicago artists, from Michael Zerang making the music to the many puppeteers involved?

Michael is such a treasure and when we were thinking about who could create music for this alien world, he was at the top of the list. He’s a fascinating person because of the way he approaches music and sound. He’s composing the piece but is also working as a sound designer. He came up with a list of every sound we hear on this alien planet, from music to sounds of nature.

Foremost in the design company are Jacky Kelsey, the costume and hair designer who has influenced a lot of the aesthetics of the piece. When I first approached them, they were super-excited because the novel is considered for many queer people a primal text. The other person who has been with Edward and I from the start is Grace Needlman, who has a long history with the puppetry scene and is pursuing her scenic-design degree. They were instrumental in creating this alien world. And helping talk about what the text and performance means for folks living with a gender-fluid identity. I’m a straight man, but I love that we have a diverse, amazing group of collaborators from all walks of life.

“The Left Hand of Darkness” is a complex novel. It’s not what you would think of as a rip-roaring page-turner. Le Guin is working from a place of deep anthropological sense, building a society with rules and mores that the main character has to navigate. It’s infused with elements of Taoist philosophy and a thinking approach to what it means to be different. For one thing, on this planet of people who are not a specific gender, the person who arrives defines themselves as a human male, and so they’re viewed as the strange one in this world and trapped with his perspective on people he’s met through his life. He often describes people appearing to him in a gender he prescribes to them, but they’re free of that. At the end of the novel, he is able to bridge the gap.

The political climate here has changed a lot since you began working on this show four years ago, increasingly hostile toward people who don’t identify in gender binaries. Have those shifts informed the way you and your collaborators approached this piece?

In this period it’s more important than ever. Especially when it’s the expressed policy of our government and funding organizations for it not to appear. I grew up in the theater and always worked with people who don’t necessarily fit into easy categorizations. Life is very complicated and human existence is a spectrum and tapestry of experiences, states of being, emotions, genders. Even in my own experience, though I am a heterosexual man, I’ve been open enough to see these currents run. Honestly, it’s been so difficult to fund this piece. First of all, it’s very ambitious, but also harder because of edicts from above. But it feels even more necessary to do it now.

Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

Just to say that if you know puppetry a little bit, there’s so much. And if you don’t know anything about puppetry, there is so much. It’s an art form that has such a vast storytelling potential. Our piece is a text-based adaptation. You can see other pieces that are completely movement-based, where the story is told through the movement of the object. It’s endlessly fascinating to me because it can be what you want it to be. I’m so turned on by people who see their first puppet show and get excited and want to see more.

The Eighth Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, January 21-February 1 at dozens of venues across the city. Tickets and info at chicagopuppetfest.org.