The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will once again offer fall community puppet-building workshops to design and build life-size and over-life-size puppets for a new pageant production—The Conference of the Birds—to be performed at the Celebrate Mansfield Festival in Downtown Storrs. These free workshops will be led by internationally acclaimed puppeteer and pageant director Sara Peattie of Boston’s Puppeteers Cooperative, and will take place Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 14 and 15, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day at the Ballard Institute, located at 1 Royce Circle in Downtown Storrs.

 The Conference of the Birds puppet pageant, directed by Sara Peattie, and loosely based on the 12^th-century poem by Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar, will employ masks and puppets of all sizes, created by workshop participants, to celebrate specific birds of Connecticut, as well as endangered bird species and imaginary birds. The pageant will be performed outdoors in Betsy Paterson Square with live music as part of the 21^st-annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival on the afternoon of Saturday, Sept. 28.

 No experience is necessary to participate in these free community puppet-building workshops. Space is limited, so advance registration is strongly encouraged. Participants can come for one or both days but should register for the 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. or/and 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. time slot(s). Minors must be accompanied by an adult. To register for the workshop, visit bimp.ticketleap.com/2024-cmf. If you require accommodation to participate, contact the Ballard Institute at bimp@uconn.edu or 860-486-8580.

 This community puppet project is sponsored by the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and the Mansfield Downtown Partnership, Inc. For more information about the 21^st-annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival, visit downtownstorrsfestival.org.

The Ballard Institute’s newest exhibition, Wonderland Puppet Theater: Visions of the Beloved Community, curated by Dr. Paulette Richards, is now open!

In the summer of 1961 in the suburban community of Concord Park, near Philadelphia, Nancy Schmale persuaded her neighbor Alice Swann to put on The Magic Onion, a puppet show written by Bil and Cora Baird, even though neither Schmale nor Swann had any experience performing with puppets. This collaboration set into motion Wonderland Puppet Theater a fifty-year interracial puppetry collaboration that took place during—and reflected—the late-20th century’s experience of the Civil Rights movement, the Women’s movement, and the flowering of puppetry for children. With original puppets, photographs, audio-visual media, and archival documents Wonderland Puppet Theater: Visions of the Beloved Community chronicles Swann and Schmale’s collaboration in the context of residential desegregation, children’s media, and women’s careers in puppetry.

Swann and Schmale’s Concord Park subdivision had been designed in 1954 by Civil Rights activist-turned housing-developer Morris Milgram as an intentional interracial community. The Magic Onion’s themes of tolerance and understanding resonated deeply with the two Concord Park neighbors, who were trying to realize Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of “the beloved community,” which would remedy the “triple evils” of poverty, racism, and militarism. Swann and Schmale’s first puppet show was a hit, and it led them to form the Wonderland Puppet Theater, through which they continued performing together for twenty years, including regular appearances on Philadelphia public television station WHYY’s Story Corner. In 2006 The Magic Onion was revived to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Concord Park. Wonderland Puppet Theater: Visions of the Beloved Community will be on display through Dec. 15, 2024.

The museum will also have new hours for fall 2024!

Wednesday: 11:00am-5:00pm
Thursday: 11:00am-7:00pm
Friday: 11:00am-5:00pm
Saturday: 11:00am-7:00pm
Sunday: 11:00am-5:00pm
Monday-Tuesday: Closed