ABOUT

"The enduring language of fairy-tales, folklore and myth feels increasingly relevant today. In an age of isolation, over-stimulation and distraction, these stories possess the unique power to reconnect us to who we are and why we are.

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. To do this we must dismantle the walls we build around our own ideas and push ourselves forward into the intuitive world of our boundless imagination.

I have found no better way to share these ideas than through song, 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.

After seeing first-hand how a grown adult and a seven-year-old child can sit in the same dark room, experience the same show and each be inspired and moved for entirely different reasons, I began to devote my life to the theatre. Conjuring a world the only way I know how, out of song, shadow and string." ~DM

Dalrymple MacAlpin

is a Detroit-born singer and theatre artist who conjures original re-tellings of myth and fairy tale into a world of wonder. Across eight studio albums and six multimedia stage productions, he animates ageless stories into evenings of live spectacle with music, hand-carved marionettes, and interactive shadow-puppet films, written, scored and directed by his own hand.

MacAlpin is a countertenor and composer with over two decades performing on harp, piano, and guitar. He trained under the San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow and basso profundo oktavist John Ames. MacAlpin studied puppetry beginning in 2016 with Czech puppet master Miroslav Trejtnar of Puppets in Prague and continues designing and carving marionettes for his original stage works.

Skupova Plzen International Puppetry Festival

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. His 8th studio album, Make Believe was released in 2019 under his own name.

MacAlpin has written, directed and scored six stage productions ranging from ambitious large ensemble work involving children’s choirs and classical orchestration to intimate one-man productions. MacAlpin has shared the spotlight with artists as diverse as Terry Riley, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Melissa Auf der Maur, Faun Fables, and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, among others.

Performances have ranged throughout the US and internationally at notable festivals and venues including The Skupova Plzeň International Puppetry Festival in the Czech Republic, Sierra Storytelling Festival, Northwest Folklife, Noise Pop, Café Du Nord, The Star Theater and the oldest running playhouse west of the Mississippi, the historic Nevada Theatre.

MacAlpin, along with his wife, son, seven cats and 93 puppets (and counting) makes a home at The Hollow Hill, a private studio located in the Sierra Foothills of Northern California. He is the Artistic Director of Heady Lore, an independent company which produces his original work.