Kenneth Gross author of the just-published book Puppet: an Essay on Uncanny Life, and Liza Lorwin co-conceiver, adaptor of Mabou Mines’s Peter and Wendy, hold an open conversation about puppets and puppet theater.
Gross is Professor of English at the University of Rochester and author of The Dream of the Moving Statue and Shakespeare’s Noise; he has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEH, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Lorwin has worked in experimental theater in New York since 1979. The OBIE Award-winning Peter and Wendy premiered at Spoleto Festival USA in 1996 and was part of the Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater that year. Its most recent production was at New Victory Theater in 2011.
Of Gross’s new book, whose publication this event helps to celebrate, Basil Jones, co-founder of the Handspring Puppet Company, writes: “The book is the site of a constant flow of sharp observations and insights. It is part of the exciting exchange of ideas about objects in performance that is having a positive influence on the practitioners of contemporary theatre in general and puppeteers in particular.”
John Bell, Director of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, will introduce Gross and Lorwin.
Wednesday, October 26, 4:00 p.m., in the Upper Level Conference Room of the UConn Co-op, 2075 Hillside Road, on UConn’s Main Campus. Google Map