_edited.png)
ABOUT
"The enduring language of fairy tales, folklore, and myth feels increasingly relevant today. These stories have the power to reconnect us to who we are and why we are, acting as golden threads that bridge waking reality and the intuitive world of imagination.
​
I believe everyone carries stories within themselves, and that these stories exist for a reason— they carry meaning, memory, healing, and transformation. Again and again, stories remind us that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things.
​
We daydream and intentionally create fantasy for a reason: to envision possibilities and alternatives that lie beyond the borders of what is known, and toward the tantalizing potential of the unknown.
​
I have found no better way to share these ideas than through music, theatre, storytelling, and the expressive language of puppetry. Puppetry, by its nature, opens the door to the fantastic and speaks directly to our instinctive need to believe in magic.
​
Through immersive, participatory performance, I invite audiences to suspend disbelief and enter a shared imaginative space. I believe the depth and quality of this collective experience has the power to inspire connection, curiosity, and a renewed sense of wonder — and in small but meaningful ways, to transform our world for the better."
~Dalrymple MacAlpin
​
Meet The Team
Angela Holm
Producer / Manager / Art Direction
​
Jill Kelly
Costumes / Textiles
_ed.jpg)
Benjamin Milner
Sound Design / Audio Tech /
Art Direction
Pamela Hodges
Stage and Set Design/Graphics
Camen Hodges
Stage Tech/
Videographer
Raven Aletheia
Puppeteer / Actor / Singer
Jesse Krautkramer
Saxophone / Vibraphone
Jiamo Chen
Cello
Dalrymple MacAlpin
From the dawn of his career in Detroit Michigan, singer, puppeteer, composer, storyteller, playwright and multi-instrumentalist, Dalrymple MacAlpin has been creating works steeped in the culturally rich heritage of mythology, folklore, faerie tales and the mystical traditions surrounding them.
MacAlpin's body of work consists of eight studio albums and six multi-media musical theatre productions. Throughout his various creative disciplines, MacAlpin continually reinvents his characteristic approach to singing, song-writing, puppetry and the unconventional interpretation of his signature instruments, the piano, harp and guitar.
RECORDINGS
After recording his first album, March To The Sun in 2001, MacAlpin moved from Detroit to the historic gold-rush town of Nevada City, California where he founded the medieval/psych-folk ensemble, Lasher Keen. MacAlpin wrote, recorded and released six Lasher Keen albums between the years 2006 and 2015 on record labels, Pesanta Ur-folk and Crystal Cave Records. His 8th studio album, Make Believe was released in 2019 under his own name.
​
STAGED WORKS
MacAlpin wrote, directed and scored his 1st production, The Middle Kingdom, in 2015. The Middle Kingdom is based on a 12th century love story from Irish mythology, Tochmarc Etaine and was inspired by Irish poet/playwright W.B. Yeats’ stage works.
His second production, Make Believe, debuted in 2019, based on the Sisters Wild, a real family of six sisters who lived next door to the preeminent folklorists, the Brothers Grimm. These often overlooked and uncredited sisters were responsible for many of the Grimm’s most enduring fairy tales.
​MacAlpin debuted his 3rd stage production in 2019, Illumination Tales: Poetic Magic From Ancient Ireland, Stories and Songs of Finn mac Cumhaill. This intimate bardic odyssey caters to a more personal facet of MacAlpin's artistic spirit, culling together his story and song craft into a cohesive and exhaustively researched program of harp ballads and dramatic interpretative tale telling over the course of three acts.
​MacAlpin debuted his 4th stage production, The Wild Daimons in 2024. This production incorporates marionettes MacAlpin designed and built after studying with Czech puppet master, Miroslav Trejtnar. The Golden Thread is loosely based on the Greek Myth of Er by Plato.
​
MacAlpin’s 5th staged work The Cauldron Crone, debuted in 2025. The Cauldron Crone is a one-man show, a reinterpretation of the 16th century Welsh story, Hanes Taliesin, told from the perspective of the mysterious Witch Goddess Ceridwen.
​
Rumpelstilzchen's Fairy Gold marks MacAlpin's sixth and largest musical theatre production to date. Featuring wooden marionettes, hand puppets, shadow puppets, giant puppets, film animations, live music and acting, the show focuses on an original backstory for the Brother's Grimm most enigmatic character, Rumpelstilzchen.
​
TOURING/LIVE PERFORMANCES
Throughout Europe and America, MacAlpin's live shows have found him sharing the stage and working with artists such as: Terry Riley, John Ames, Motoko, Antonio Rocha, Bonnie Prince Billy, Faun Fables, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, In Gowan Ring, Dawn McCarthy, The Edmund Welles Quartet, Mellissa Auf Der Maur, Oz Fritz, Jeremey Cohen and many others.
MacAlpin has performed throughout the US and internationally at notable festivals and venues including, The Skupova Plzen Puppetry Festival in the Czech Republic, The Northwest Folklife Festival, The Sierra Storytelling Festival, Noise Pop Festival, Café Du Nord in San Francisco, The New Parrish in Oakland CA, Center for the Arts in Grass Valley, CA, The Star Theater in Portland Oregon and the oldest running play house west of the Mississippi, the historic Nevada Theatre in Nevada City, CA.
​
STUDIO
MacAlpin, along with his wife, son, seven cats and 93 puppets (and counting) has made a home for himself in The Hollow Hill, a private studio located in the Sierra Foothills of Northern California.