Sacred theater, personal expression, and a unique blend of traditional dance and spontaneous movement are combined to tell stories of passion, creation, love, and mischief.  

Phoenix Rising paints a colorful, exciting landscape that allows imagination to carry the audience beyond their day to day reality.

Born in London, England, Toby Froud began his acting career before he could speak.  Starring in his first motion picture when he was still a toddler, he played Sarah's baby brother "Toby" in the Jim Henson film Labyrinth.

Recently, Toby has been working as a stilt-walker and dancing bear with a troupe that performed throughout England this summer. Wendy made his incredible costumes and Toby has become a master stilt walker. Toby is also very interested in film making and is working on a short film featuring puppets he has made himself.

Combining folklore, mythology, Lovecraftian monsters and pop-culture parody, Shadow Circus Creature Theatre has been one of San Francisco's most popular and outrageous puppetry troupes since it's formation in 2000. Using life-sized latex and foam creatures by puppetmaker Dave Haaz-Baroque, Shadow Circus creates a world that is utterly fantastic, and yet hilariously similar to our own.

"Haaz-Baroque's characters have much more depth than [Peter] Jackson's could have ever hoped to have achieved." -Silke Tudor, SF Weekly