Madeleine Dauer
Madeleine Dauer is an actress (known for her frequent collaborations with Erik Bloomquist) and puppeteer.
She'll be appearing at the 2025 Chicago Internation Puppet Theater Festival as part of Josh Rice Projects' Kayfabe.
She joined me via video chat to discuss her career and upcoming peformance.
You can watch/listen to that interview below.
To watch the interview with Madeleine Dauer, click the play button below (or click here to open the video player in a new tab/window).
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Josh Rice Projects' Kayfabe will be performed at the The Chopin Theatre in Chicago, Ill. from Thursday, January 23 through Saturday, January 25, 2025, as part of the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival.
More information, including ticket availability, can be found on the festival website.
Madeleine Dauer is a supporter of Interdisciplinary Medical & Patient Alliance for Care Transformation (IMPACT) in Healthcare.
If you'd like to donate, you can do so here.
Please note that interviewees select their own charity. Any charities mentioned or linked are neither vetted, nor endorsed, by the author or this site.
Mike Reflects
I was super excited to get to do this one.
In addition to long being fascinated by puppetry as a narrative artform, I'm also a fan of Madeleine's Christmas movie, Christmas on the Carousel.
When I saw she'd be performing in the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival right after the holidays, I thought it'd be great to kill 2 birds with one stone and discuss both, as well as her overall career.
And she certainly didn't disappoint.
I don't remember how I first found Christmas on the Carousel. I think it was on Prime streaming a few years ago during the holiday season when I was going through and watching different (mostly independent) Christmas movies.
I checked out the trailer before I watched the movie, and I thought it seemed like a decent Hallmark-style Christmas movie like I'd been watching, so I turned it on.
I'll be completely honest with you: I remember my first impression as the movie started. The opening credits were rolling and the New England Carousel Museum was credited as a producer.
And my first thought was “I think I'm about to watch a 1 hour infomercial for a carousel museum—this is either going to be awesome or terrible.”
I don't think this is going to come as a shock to anyone, given what it is and how Madeleine described the production, but this is movie is not an Oscar contender.
It looks like exactly what it is: a bunch of talented people who got together to have fun and tell a story on film.
And, as I watched it, I felt it.
If you've watched Hallmark-style Christmas movies, you know that even the ones that aren't made by Hallmark are generally formulaic, and, frankly, forgettable. While I respect the work that goes into them, they often blend together and, very rarely, does one separate itself from the rest.
I can't say this one didn't follow a similar for the most part, but I can and will say that, for whatever reason, it's absolutely not forgettable, and it definitely stands out from the pack.
I don't know if it's the (somewhat creepy) carousel museum that provides the setting for a lot of the movie or Erik's tendency toward horror movies that I do think informed some of his choices—or perhaps it was just my own memories of my first Christmas back home from college back when—but this movie did something that others in that class don't, and it made me feel.
That ability to connect with my emotions is what makes it one of my favorite Christmas movies.
And Madeleine's performance was a big part of that.