The Puppeteer Against Border Militarization

It’s hard to get a 10-foot puppet in a truck. 

When I finally connect with the elusive Kill Joy, she’s working on that exact problem, shuffling her traveling circus all over Texas for shows in El Paso, Austin, San Antonio, and her current home, Houston. It’s also a potent metaphor. Her production is a piece of political performance art drawing attention to the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, which has reached a fever pitch under Governor Greg Abbott and the second Trump administration. Hundreds of migrants have been snatched off the streets by border enforcement in 2025. Turns out, it’s way easier to put families in the back of trucks than giant puppets. 

Kill Joy is part of ACLU Texas’s new artist in residence program. Born in Odessa to Filipino immigrants, she heads the Kitchen Table puppet collective, a loose group of movement artists that work in tandem with communities on social justice creations. The show is called “Recipes of Resistance/Recetas de Resistencia,” and involves dozens of giant puppets as well as smaller creations and shadows. Kill Joy derived the production from local community sources along the borderlands as well as her own immigrant experiences. Dozens of people across the state contributed to the show, including local workshops where volunteers paint and construct the large puppets.

“Bringing puppets to life addresses the issues at the border,” Kill Joy said in our interview. “Community groups at Brownsville and El Paso [wanted] to express the daily life at the militarized borderlands. We wanted this story to be community informed and community performed. We’re telling the story of how people wanted to connect to the land and how they’ve now been divided from the land and each other.”

Kill Joy, 37, is a severely guarded person. She does not allow her birth name to be used in articles and often appears in public gatherings with a face mask. In conversation, her passion for her work is tempered by a rhetorical wariness, like a martial arts master who approaches an opponent with light feints and strikes to gauge their level of danger. Her voice has the soft but sinister Texas drawl of someone who has used it as a final warning before defensive violence. 

She’s come by that caution honestly. Kitchen Table initially was going to perform their show in towns along the borderlands. They had to change that to appearances in big cities due to fears of retaliation from right wing groups and the state and federal government. The Trump Administration has already targeted non-citizen writers for deportation because of their views. Though an American citizen by birth, Kill Joy worries about her safety as well as the rest of the collective. Performances in the larger, bluer cities have their advantages as well.

“People in the larger cities are sometimes unaware of just how bad the problem is,” she said. “We can reach people here, too.”

“Recipes” (presented free of charge in English and Spanish with live sign language interpreters), follows five friends dealing with the militarization of the border. Some of these issues are surprising and presented with truly inventive puppets. For instance, Kill Joy says that El Paso has seen an explosion in new car wash companies, which use up a lot of water resources. In response, one of the puppets is a car wash-shaped monster.

Another addresses Elon Musk’s impact on Texas. President Trump’s adviser and head of the semi-official Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has his SpaceX rockets launched from Boca Chica, a small seaside community that has been negatively impacted by pollution and exploding spacecrafts. SpaceX, consequently, also gets a monster puppet.

“This shows feels very much full of community,” said Kill Joy. “It’s so personal to our lived experiences. In this time of violence, we have this need to come together as a community to turn destruction into creation.”

The ACLU of Texas has helped tremendously. Kill Joy said that the reach of the organization lets the show connect with more people who are actively fighting border militarization. The artist in residence program launched in 2022 with painter and sculptor Mathieu JN Baptiste. With her grassroots approach to art, Kill Joy was an obvious choice.

“The arts enhance our work in the courts, at the State Capitol, and in the streets to defend the rights of all Texans, no exceptions,’ Oni Blair, ACLU of Texas executive director, said in a statement. “Amid escalating anti-immigrant policies in Texas and across the country, Kill Joy and her giant puppets reach beyond language, culture, geography, and even time to remind us of our shared humanity — and the power we have to protect it.” 

Shared humanity is the core of Kitchen Table. Back on the road, Kill Joy sounds tired but proud. Moving her production around is its own form of co-opted militarization, organizing local volunteers and artisans while negotiating the logistics of moving her large puppets to the next show.  

It would be impossible without community input and support. At a Houston show, the workshop she staged included a crawfish boil potluck that filled four tables with food and drinks as members painted, sculpted, and organized against anti-migrant oppression through art. Appropriately, the ending of “Recipes” involves a giant soup pot that combines all the stories of the border together to form something empowering.

“Collectivism is hard,” she said. “We’re not taught to do it. The state doesn’t want us to. Having to figure it out on our own is not easy, but there is community here, in Texas and the south, in the borderlands that are fighting for our rights. I hate when people are called illegal. No one is illegal. You have rights and, more importantly, you have community gathered here in creativity in response to this horror.”