CB Goodman makes ridiculous feminist crafty-punk theatre that blends comedy, puppetry, and camp into DIY spectacle. A multigenerational Texan based in Austin, Goodman playfully pokes at the inequities embedded in “The American Dream,” focusing on gender, religion, and social class. She utilizes joy and mischievousness to directly engage with the audience, creating an unpredictable environment where anything can happen. Toggling between delightful surprise and awkward tension, Goodman invites the audience to laugh at the absurdities of life and dream new ways of being.

 

Past award-winning shows include *some humans were harmed in the making of this show and In The Beginning. Her work has been presented at venues in New Orleans, Charlotte, Atlanta, New York City, and in Austin, including recently at Fusebox Festival; she has worked with such artists as Obie and Bessie award-winning Dan Hurlin, director, designer, and puppet artists Chris Green, Tom Lee, and Lake Simons, and fifth-generational traditional puppetry master from Japan, Koryu Nishikawa V. She is a Target Margin Theatre Institute Fellow, former Artist in Residence at Dixon Place (New York) and Celebration Barn (Maine), and recipient of a Map Fund Microgrant. 

 

Her current project, Linda’s Last Show, is an epic campy comedy that merges Greek tragedy with zombie horror tropes incorporating puppetry, magic, and DIY special effects in order to laugh at the collapse of capitalism and together with the audience, collectively dream what might come next. An excerpt work-in-progress showing won Best Of Week at the 2024 FronteraFest and Commission Grant from ScriptWorks.

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Her last project, In The Beginning, performed to sold out houses at the 2024 Fusebox Festival, and won FRIGID New York Fringe Festival's Best Clown, Top Grossing and The Jill Miersch Award; Atlanta Fringe Producer's Choice Award; and the Austin B. Iden Payne Award for Best Solo of 2023.

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CB is the Artistic Director of Grackle Jack Productions, teaches workshops in clown, puppetry, solo playmaking, and devising, and designs and fabricates puppets and props for local theatre companies. In 2022 she won two Austin B. Iden Payne Awards for Best Puppetry for Salvage Vanguard Theatre’s Bright Mother and Best Props for Ground Floor Theatre's Anna in the Tropics. 

 

She holds an MFA in Theatre from Sarah Lawrence College, a BS in Radio-TV-Film from The University of Texas at Austin, and has trained with Philippe Gaulier, Complicité, SITI Company, Spymonkey, Shannan Calcutt,  Mick Barnfather, Deanna Fleysher, Atlantic Theatre Company, and Movement Theater Studio.