Tom Lee’s Tomte

Tomte is an intimate shadow puppet performance adapted from “The Tomten”  by Astrid Lindgren and the poem by Victor Rydberg.

A Tomte is a Swedish gnome, a quiet and unseen caretaker who watches over the lives of humans and animals.  On a cold winter night on a snow-covered farm, Tomte teaches us the importance of kindness and looking after living things.

Born in Korea and raised in Mililani, Hawai’i, Tom Lee is a director, designer, and puppet artist based in Chicago. Mr. Lee was in high school when he performed the left hand of a bunraku-style puppet in Momotaro with the SPEBE program at UH Hilo. Since then, Tom has performed nationally and internationally, including on Broadway in War Horse, at the Metropolitan Opera in Madama Butterfly and at Chicago’s Lyric Opera in Queen of Spades.

Tom Lee is a student of Japanese master puppeteer Koryū Nishikawa V, with whom he created Shank’s Mare (2015) and recently premiered Akutagawa (2023). Tom is co-director of the Chicago Puppet Studio & Puppet Lab and teaches puppetry manipulation and design extensively.