Puppeteers For Fears

Puppeteers for Fears, the world’s premiere all-puppet horror and science fiction musical comedy troupe, will present a terrifying and hilarious new work, ROBOPOCALYPSE: THE MUSICAL!, in Charleston at Music Farm on July 28 as part of the company’s 2026 summer tour.

Years in the making, the show is a hilarious cyberpunk escapade exploring impacts of the meteoric rise of artificial intelligence on a world still struggling to remember its email logins. The show will be performed entirely with hand-and-rod (Muppet-style) puppets and a live band. It tells the story of Jolie Daniels, teen hacker extraordinaire, whose efforts to build a sentient robot as a means to connect with her tech-baron father accidentally birth a malevolent artificial intelligence that she alone has the ability to stop — if she can survive the army of self-driving cars and web-connected smart gadgets that the A.I. has weaponized against her.

“This is the most ambitious show we’ve ever done,” says playwright and company director Josh Gross. “In addition to the complexity of the puppets, because of the cyberpunk themes, we’re really working the multimedia angle in the staging. It’s got digital backdrops, virtual reality, appliances having rap battles — everything.”

The original score for the show is also influenced by the story’s cyberpunk themes, and will be performed using analog synthesizers paying heavy homage to 1980s synth-pop.

“The songs are super fun,” says Gross. “There are shades of Devo, Depeche Mode, Bonnie Tyler, and even deeper cuts like Kraftwerk and John Carpenter’s classic film scores. It’s a hilarious stage play, but hot dang does it rock.”

The show’s many intersecting elements are so ambitious that it was selected by the Oregon Community Foundation to receive the organization’s revered Creative Heights Grant to facilitate the production.

“It was an honor to be chosen for this grant by the O.C.F., and we can’t wait to show everyone what the funding made possible,” says Gross.

Robopocalypse: The Musical! was written and composed by Josh Gross, and will be directed by PFF’s Lead Puppeteer, Hunter Prutch. It stars returning cast members Alyssa Mathews, Forest Gilpin, Hunter Prutch, Brianca Knight, and Alex Giorgi, and introduces new ensemble member Raz Mostaghimi. Performances will feature an opening set by special musical guest, Blunderbusst.

Run time is approximately two hours with an intermission.

Puppeteers for Fears is an Oregon-based comedy troupe, specializing in original horror and science fiction rock’n’roll musicals performed with puppets. The company was founded as a one-night-only cabaret show for Halloween 2015, but was so popular that its various members kept going and never looked back. In the time since, PFF has written and performed a half dozen original rock and roll musicals covering everything from supernatural monsters to killer robots to lonely sasquatches, and sold out venues all over the country with its innovative and hilarious combination of puppetry, video, and live music.