Month: February 2016

“ECHO” by Christopher D. Mullens, 3/24-4/3

Posted on by

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry is pleased to host the world première of ECHO, a multi-media immersive spectacle combining puppets, digital projection, and original music in a re-invention of the classic Greek tale of a mountain nymph who finds the true meaning of voice. Puppet Arts MFA candidate Christopher D. Mullens has teamed up with composer Colby Joseph Herchel and a team of students from UConn’s Puppet Arts Program and Digital Media and Design Department to create a dynamic world of myth and music in which the story of Echo, the nymph who could only repeat what is spoken to her, will unfold in front of and around the audience.

Performances will take place in the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry Theater located at 1 Royce Circle in Storrs Center according to the following schedule:

March 24         7:30pm March 31         7:30pm
March 25         8:00pm April 1             8:00pm
March 26         2:00pm April 2              2:00pm & 8:00pm
March 30         7:30pm April 3              2:00pm

 

Tickets will be $10 for adults and $7 for students/Connecticut Repertory Theatre subscribers. Tickets will be sold in advance through the Connecticut Repertory Theatre Box Office located in the lobby of the Nafe Katter Theatre at 820 Bolton Rd, Storrs CT 06269. Tickets may be purchased in person at the box office, by calling (860) 486-2113, or online at https://itkt.choicecrm.net/templates/UCRT/index.php?prod=bimp. A $3.00 surcharge will be added to any purchases made online or over the phone. Tickets may be purchased at the Ballard Institute on the day of performance. There will be a limited number of seats. This show is recommended for ages 12 and up. For more information about this show, visit http://bimp.uconn.edu or call (860) 486-8580.

ECHO will be performed in conjunction with the Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s MFA Puppet Arts Festival, featuring works by Ana Craciún, Gavin Cummins, and Kalob Martinez running March 24-April 3 in UConn’s Studio Theatre. On March 26 and April 1, 2, and 3 there will be additional free presentations of works by Anatar Marmol-Gagné and Krista Weltner at 5 p.m. in the Studio Theatre. For more information about these shows, visit crt.uconn.edu.

2016 UConn Winter Puppet Slam on 2/20 at 8 p.m.

Posted on by

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and the UConn Puppet Arts Program will present the 2016 UConn Winter Puppet Slam on Saturday, February 20 at 8:00 p.m. in UConn’s Studio Theatre. The UConn Winter Puppet Slam will feature short works by professional puppeteers and performers including Papel Machete (Puerto Rico); Great Small Works (Brooklyn); Kim Mikenis (Hamden, CT); and Zach Dorn (Florida), as well as new works for puppet and object theater by students and faculty from UConn’s School of Fine Arts, including object performance by Printmaking Professor John O’Donnell, new video animation by Digital Media and Design students; works-in-progress by Puppet Arts Program students, and a special appearance by UConn’s Rolling Tones a cappella group. The UConn Winter Puppet Slam is supported by the Puppet Slam Network.

The Puppet Slam movement is a nation-wide flowering of short puppet productions for adult audiences, encouraged by the Puppet Slam Network created by Heather Henson and Marsian De Lellis. UConn Puppet Slams have been taking place since 2008, thanks to the generous support of the Network. This year’s Winter Puppet Slam will again feature an exciting array of object-oriented performance forms that will expand the definitions of puppetry. Great Small Works’ Ode to Common Things is a “cranky” panorama performance based on a Pablo Neruda poem; Zach Dorn’s live webcast puppet video Jade features miniature cut-out puppets; and Papel Machete will perform a cantastoria picture performance about the Prison Industrial Complex titled If all lives matter ’cause we’re all created equal, why are some lives more equal than others? John O’Donnell’s Candle in my Carrot is an excerpt of a larger object performance piece he presented at the New Britain Museum of Art last fall; and New Haven-area puppeteer Kim Mikenis’s The Statue of Liberty Takes a Holiday combines puppets with live video projection. The Winter Puppet Slam will also feature sneak peaks of works from the upcoming MFA Puppet Arts Festival by Kalob Martinez, Anatar Marmol-Gagné, and Gavin Cummins; and Digital Media and Design professor Anna Lindemann’s students will present short digital animation films. The show will also include movement experiments by Puppet Arts students, and the dynamic unaccompanied singing of the Rolling Tones. The UConn Winter Puppet Slam is guaranteed to be visually and mentally captivating!

The UConn Winter Puppet Slam is free and open to the public; donations are greatly appreciated. The event will take place in the Studio Theatre located at 820 Bolton Rd, Storrs, CT. For directions to the Studio Theatre, visit crt.uconn.edu/directions/. These performances are recommended for mature audiences. For more information, call the Ballard Institute at (860) 486-8580 or email us at bimp@uconn.edu.