The Ballard Institute is closed through January 8 and will reopen for reservations on January 9. You can make your reservations to visit in January now!
While you can’t visit us in person, you can visit our Virtual Experiences page to see current and some past exhibitions online! We also have coloring pages and workshops for you to do at home!
Happy holidays from the staff at the Ballard Institute!
The UConn Puppet Arts Program and Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry will host the end-of-semester presentation of UConn Puppet Arts undergraduate and graduate class finals on Friday, December 18 and Saturday, December 19 at 7 p.m. ET. These presentations will take place on Ballard Institute Facebook Live (facebook.com/BallardInstitute/). Talkbacks led by famed puppeteer Paul Zaloom will also take place each night. These performances are recommended for mature audiences.
On Friday December 18, final presentations, performances, and talkbacks for Directing, Online Shadow Theater, and World Puppet Theater will take place via Facebook Live. Inspired by the radio sculptures of Tom Sachs and the African Sonic theories of puppet scholar Paulette Richards, Students in the Directing class will present their “ReInvention of the Radio Play”– experiments with sound as storytelling and puppet theater. Online Shadow Theater students will present their individual creations for the shadow theater, all performed solo and remotely! Introduction to World Puppet Theater students, who have been studying theories and histories of global puppet and object performance, will present short toy theater productions they created at the end of the semester.
On Saturday, December 19, final presentations, performances, and talkbacks for Object Theater and Paper Sculpture will take place via Facebook Live. Students in the Object Theater class will share a series of object theater performances in which ordinary household objects take on life to portray extraordinary events, confronting mortality, prejudice, phobias, and injustice in their own inimitable manner. Paper Sculpture students will present brief cameos with the characters they have created utilizing Albrecht Roser’s Papier Methode.
Paul Zaloom, a comedic puppeteer, political satirist, filmmaker, and performance artist, will join us both evenings as a Responder to the students’ work. Paul Zaloom, who lives and works in Los Angeles and tours his productions all over the world, has written, designed and performed 14 full-length solo spectacles, including Fruit of Zaloom, Zaloominations, Sick But True, Velvetville, The Mother of All Enemies and the current spectacle, White Like Me: A Honky Dory Puppet Show.
For more information, please contact Ballard Institute staff at bimp@uconn.edu.