Month: April 2023

“The Making of Feel Your Best Self: Puppet Building and Video Production” Forum on 4/26

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As part of the 2023 Spring Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry is pleased to host The Making of Feel Your Best Self: Puppet Building and Video Production on Wednesday, April 26, 2023 at 7 p.m. in the Ballard Institute Theater, located at 1 Royce Circle in Downtown Storrs. This forum will also be broadcast via Ballard Institute Facebook Live (facebook.com/BallardInstitute). 

In this forum, Ballard Institute graduate assistant and Feel Your Best Self Puppeteer Stoph Scheer leads a discussion with Director and Producer Sarah Nolen, Puppet Builder John Cody, and Supervising Producer Heather Asch about building the puppet characters and producing the videos that are a part of the award-winning Feel Your Best Self project, an interdisciplinary collaboration between UConn’s Collaboratory on School and Child Health and the Ballard Institute to promote emotional well-being in elementary-aged children. Hear the ins-and-outs of puppet filmmaking, from the puppet-build process through pre-production to production, and learn how the cast and crew came together to get the whole series shot in two weeks.

Feel Your Best Self is designed for elementary-aged kids as an educational toolkit for learning emotion-focused coping strategies to calm yourself, catch your feelings, and connect with others. The FYBS strategies offer fun and easy ways to help kids (and grown-ups) experience lifts in emotions, feeling, or mood. The toolkit, which features short videos, facilitator steps, reflection journals, strategy cards, and tip sheets, is free and accessible on the website. 

Admission to this event is free (donations greatly appreciated!), and refreshments will be served. For more information or if you require accommodation to attend a forum, please contact Ballard Institute staff at 860.486.8580 or bimp@uconn.edu. 

About the Speakers

Heather Asch (Supervising Producer; “Brianna”) Heather currently serves as Executive Director for No Strings Productions, a not–for–profit production company that creates puppet films that provide lifesaving information to at-risk children in the developing world. Film subjects include Malaria, Covid, HIV/AIDS, disaster preparation for earthquakes, tsunamis, flood, landslides, landmine safety, and peacebuilding. Heather has over 25 years of experience in the puppetry arts. Her career focus has been in film and television working as supervising producer, line producer, producer, puppeteer, voiceover artist, puppet designer, puppet builder, shop supervisor, build coordinator, wrangler, consultant, and photo stylist. Throughout her career, she has worked with various companies, including The Jim Henson Company, Sesame Workshop, Nickelodeon, Disney, WGBH, Three Design Studios, and others. Performance credits include Between the Lions, Johnny and the Sprites, Sesame Street, and Allegra’s Window.  She is a four-time Emmy Award winner for her work building and wrangling with Sesame Street and performing on Between the Lions. heatherasch.com  nostringsproductions.org

John Cody (Character Designer; Lead Puppet Builder; Puppet Captain; Puppet Wrangler; “Dance Teacher”) is a puppeteer, puppet builder, and writer from Katonah, New York. He graduated with a BFA from the UConn Puppet Arts program in 2017, and has gone on to work on projects for The Jim Henson Company, Sesame Workshop, Nickelodeon, The Walt Disney Company and more! You can check out more of his work on his Instagram, @puppetjohn, or on his website puppetjohn.com

Sarah Nolen (Director; Producer; Art Director; Script Writer) is a puppeteer and filmmaker known for her versatile and witty work across multiple puppetry styles. Originally from Texas, Sarah now resides in  Massachusetts, where she works as a freelance puppeteer, director, and puppet builder for both stage and screen through her company Puppet Motion. She received her MFA in Puppet Arts at the University of Connecticut in 2016. While at UConn, Sarah was awarded the 2015 Mister Rogers Memorial Scholarship in support of her MFA film project, TREEPLES, which premiered at  the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival. Sarah has trained at Sesame Workshop, the O’Neill Puppetry Conference, Sandglass Theater, the Brooklyn Puppet  Conspiracy, and completed a yearlong improvisational comedy program at the  Dallas Comedy House. Currently, she serves as Interim Co-Artistic Director at the Puppet  Showplace Theater in Brookline, where she tours her own solo puppet shows around New England. You can learn more about her work at her website:  sarahnolen.com 

Stoph Scheer (“CJ”) has trained with and puppeteered for the Jim Henson Company, and has also puppeteered for The Muppets, Banksy, and FailArmy. She is co-founder of Doppelskope Puppet Theatre and co-writes and produces The Creatures of Yes on YouTube. Learn more on her website: scheerbrilliance.com

CANCELED: Oma by Sandglass Theater on 4/22

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Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, we have had to cancel both performances of Oma by Sandglass Theater on 4/22. We greatly apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and hope to reschedule soon.

Tickets are now on sale for Please Ship This Wet Gift by Brave Bucket Co. on May 13 at 11AM: bimp.ticketleap.com/wet-gift

Thank you for your continued support!

“Jumaadi: From Wayang Kulit to Contemporary Art” Forum on 4/12

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As part of the 2023 Spring Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry is pleased to host Jumaadi: From Wayang Kulit to Contemporary Art on Wednesday, April 12, 2023 at 7 p.m. in the Ballard Institute Theater, located at 1 Royce Circle in Downtown Storrs, with artist Jumaadi joining us virtually from abroad. This forum will also be broadcast via Ballard Institute Facebook Live (facebook.com/BallardInstitute). 

Ballard Institute director Dr. John Bell will host this Puppet Forum conversation with Jumaadi, a contemporary Indonesian-Australian artist, and UConn professors Dr. Matthew Cohen and Dr. Macushla Robinson. The discussion will probe a particular aspect of Jumaadi’s creative process: how wayang kulit, the tradition of Javanese shadow puppet theater, provides a key source for inspiration and techniques, and how Jumaadi’s own shadow puppet plays (performed mainly using overhead projectors and other modern technologies) depart in significant ways from this tradition. The conversation will consider the nostalgic pull of wayang kulit, conditions of art making in both Indonesia and Australia, and the possibilities opened up through travel and cosmopolitanism. This conversation coincides with the opening of Jumaadi’s solo exhibition Migration of Flora at the Contemporary Art Galleries of the University of Connecticut, located at 830 Bolton Rd, Storrs, Conn. To learn more about the exhibit, visit contemporaryartgalleries.uconn.edu.

Admission to this event is free (donations greatly appreciated!), and refreshments will be served. For more information or if you require accommodation to attend a forum, please contact Ballard Institute staff at 860.486.8580 or bimp@uconn.edu. 

About the Speakers

Jumaadi is a multi-disciplinary artist working in various mediums ranging from small, poetic gouache on paper works to large scale drawings which can exceed 3 x 20 metres. His paintings are comprised of mixed media executed on plywood, timber, cloth, canvas and buffalo hide. Jumaadi is also recognised for his sculptural works in wood and metal, as well as installation and performance work. Jumaadi currently lives and works between Yogyakarta, Indonesia and Mosman, Sydney, and is represented by King Street Gallery. 

Dr. John Bell, a puppeteer and historian, is Director of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and an Associate Professor of Dramatic Arts at the University of Connecticut. A member of the Bread and Puppet Theater company from 1976 to 1986, he received his Ph.D. in theater history from Columbia University in 1993. He is the author of American Puppet Modernism: Essays on the Material World in Performance and other books and articles about puppets and performing objects, and is a founding member of the Brooklyn-based Great Small Works theater collective.

Dr. Matthew Isaac Cohen is a Professor of Theater Studies and Puppet Arts at the University of Connecticut. He has published extensively on Indonesian performing arts and performs wayang kulit under the nom-de-stage Kanda Buwana. He is currently working on a book on the history of puppet theater in Indonesia based on the Dr. Walter Angst and Sir Henry Angest Collection of Indonesian Puppets at Yale University Art Gallery.   

Dr. Macushla Robinson is Assistant Professor in Residence, and Director of the Contemporary Art Galleries at the University of Connecticut. A curator, writer and teacher with a strong interdisciplinary practice, she founded in·ter·sti·tial press –– a small publishing organization dedicated to cultivating conversations that exist in the margins of major disciplines, and is also Managing Editor of Design and Culture journal. She has worked for over a decade across museums and contemporary art spaces, focusing on working with contemporary artists to develop new works, and in this respect her curatorial practice entwines with her pedagogical practice.

With degrees in philosophy and fine arts (printmaking), an MA in liberal studies and a PhD in politics, she is relentlessly committed to stretching across disciplines and discourses. Her doctorate confronted issues of slavery and decorative arts from the perspective of reparations and political economy. She works at the intersection of objects and politics, facing questions of commemoration and reparations.

 

2023 UConn Spring Puppet Slam on 4/7

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The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and the UConn Puppet Arts Program will present the 2023 UConn Spring Puppet Slam in person on Friday, April 7, 2023 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. in UConn’s Studio Theatre, located at 802 Bolton Rd, Storrs, CT 06269. 

The 2023 UConn Spring Puppet Slam will showcase the work of Nate Puppets, a Cleveland-based artist and puppeteer who will perform Petey the Puppet’s Tribute to Bimbo the Clown, featuring Petey the Puppet, the enchanted stringless marionette, who pays homage to the famous Bimbo the Clown arcade game in an interpretive dance to honor the clown who spent decades behind glass entertaining countless thousands. Nate Puppets will also perform The Over at the Frankenstein Pitch!, in which Skuzzle the Sugar Beast wants to push his creative desires in what he would want in his own paper doll production of The Rocky Horror Show! The UConn Spring Puppet Slam will also feature new works by UConn graduate and undergraduate students from the university’s Puppet Arts Program. These performances are recommended for mature audiences. Funding for the UConn Spring Puppet Slam is made possible in part by the Puppet Slam Network.

The UConn Spring Puppet Slam is free and open to the public; donations are greatly appreciated. Seating is limited, so reservations are required. Please reserve a ticket here: bimp.ticketleap.com/2023-spring-slam/. 

Doors open at 6:40 p.m. and 8:40 p.m. Reservations that do not arrive by 6:50 p.m. or 8:50 p.m. will be released.

 The event will take place in UConn’s Studio Theatre, located at 802 Bolton Rd, Storrs, Conn. 06269. For directions to the Studio Theatre, visit crt.uconn.edu. For more information about these performances or if you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact Ballard Institute staff at 860-486-8580 or bimp@uconn.edu.