Vanessa Valliere

Vanessa Valliere creates original solo shows using elements of clown and puppetry.

 

Vanessa tours nationally with her own work as a solo artist and in 2024 she was invited by Heather Henson’s Green Feather Foundation and the Puppet Slam Network to bring one of her slam pieces to Skupova Plzen, a puppet festival in the Czech Republic. Her full length show, LOOK! LOOK! is the result of a 2024/25 residency with The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival. A work-in-development version of LOOK! LOOK! premiered during the 2025 Festival and later that year the show had its official premier at Steppenwolf Theater's LookOut Series.  LOOK! LOOK! was also made possible by an Independent Artist grant from DCASE. Vanessa has performed in three National Puppet Slams and her work has also been selected for every Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival’s Nasty, Brutish and Short slam since the Festival’s inception in 2015. Vanessa teaches for the Festival and her devised solo puppetry/clown shows have toured with their Neighborhood and Living Room tours. In 2026 she will be a Guest Co-Director of The Festival's "Chicago Puppet Lab" program, a puppet theater incubator and residency program that supports artists in bringing to life new works of puppet theater.

In 2020, Vanessa was awarded a commission by Heather Henson's Handmade Puppet Dreams to create Gut Feelings, a short puppet film that she co-starred, devised, directed and edited at the height of the pandemic. The film screened at several film festivals, where it received awards in categories like "Best Comedy Short." It also appeared in the London Mime Festival and the Festival of Animated Objects in Calgary, Canada.

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In 2022 & 2023, Vanessa completed two residencies at Nordland Visual Theater in Stamsund, Norway as the Assistant Director to Neville Tranter on Yael Rasooli's solo puppet show, Edith and Me. Vanessa will return to Nordland Visual Theater for research and development of a new work of her own in June 2026. 

Manual Cinema is an Emmy Award winning performance collective and Vanessa has toured both nationally and internationally as Ada in their production of Ada/Ava. She is also one of the original cast members of Manual Cinema's The End of TV.

From 2011 to 2016, Vanessa was a member of an ensemble of clowns/performers for Tour De Fat, a touring festival sponsored by New Belgium Brewery. The ensemble was responsible for the creation and performance of the festival’s creative content. She has also performed with Big Nazo out of Providence, RI and The Neo-Futurist and the New Colony in Chicago. She was a co-deviser and nationally touring performer, with Theater Unspeakable’s The American Revolution, a production that was presented by Lincoln Center Education in New York.

Vanessa received an Individual Artist Support grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency (IACA) in 2019 and a Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) grant in 2020 and 2024. She was the recipient of a 3Arts Make A Wave Grant in 2017, a DCASE grant in 2012, and residencies with The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, Links Hall and High Concept Labs in Chicago.

For sixteen years, Vanessa has been a proud nerd-cheerleader for Chicago's own thirty-piece circus punk marching band, Mucca Pazza. Mucca Pazza is a national touring band that has been featured on the Conan O'Brien show and Tiny Desk Concerts.