Month: April 2026

“Badger Meets the Fairies” by Margaret Moody Puppets on 4/18

Posted on by

As part of its 2026 Spring Puppet Performance Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut is thrilled to welcome Massachusetts-based Margaret Moody Puppets to perform Badger Meets the Fairies on Saturday, April 18, 2026 at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. in the in the Ballard Institute Theater, located at 1 Royce Circle in Downtown Storrs.

Join Margaret Moody for an exciting puppet show based on European fairy lore and Margaret Moody’s expertise in Chinese hand-puppet techniques. In Badger Meets the Fairies, Mr. Badger is thrilled to meet Blossom, a flower fairy, in his garden. He flies away with her to help the fairies build a playground. And then it gets complicated: the fairies won’t use cement, and Mr. Badger himself wants to learn to fly. Badger Meets the Fairies is best for ages 4 to 10 and lasts 35-40 minutes. Fairy puppets and sets for their garden were built by visual artist Sandra Pastrana and Margaret Moody. Alison Plante of Berklee School of Music composed original music for the piece, based on Celtic melodies.  

Arlington, MA-based puppeteer Margaret Moody works with Bu Dai Xi-style Chinese hand puppets and techniques based on her studies with the I Wan Jan Traditional Hand Puppet Troupe in Taiwan. Margaret performs in libraries, schools, theaters and at private events throughout New England. She also enjoys collaborating with Dream Tale Puppets, led by Jacek Zuzanski and Galapagos Puppets, a New Jersey troupe led by Madeleine Beresford. Margaret lives in Arlington, MA and is a studio artist at Arlington Center for the Arts.

­­­Ticket Prices: Adults: $12; Members/Seniors: $10; Students: $8; Kids: $6 (12 years and under). Tickets can be purchased in advance at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, by calling 860-486-8580, or online at ticketleap.events/tickets/bimp-0/badger-fairies. A surcharge will be added to any purchases made online. Tickets may also be purchased at the Ballard Institute on the day of the performance starting at 10 a.m. There will be open seating and no reservations. Visitors can park in the Downtown Storrs Garage located at 33 Royce Circle. 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.

Becoming Modern: U.S. Puppetry in the Twentieth Century Forum on 4/22

Posted on by
Machine #14 by Basil Milovsoroff. Photo credit: Jack Rowell.

As part of its 2026 Spring Puppet Forum Series the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut is pleased to host “Becoming Modern: U.S. Puppetry in the Twentieth Century,” a discussion with Dr. Claudia Orenstein, Bart Roccoberton, and John Bell on April 22 at 7 p.m. in the Ballard Institute Theater, located at 1 Royce Circle, Storrs, CT. This forum will also be broadcast via Ballard Institute Facebook Live. 

This forum will celebrate the Ballard Institute’s new exhibition of the same name, with acclaimed puppet scholar Dr. Claudia Orenstein of the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, UConn Puppet Arts Program Head Bart Roccoberton, and John Bell, Director of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry. The speakers will explore the ways that puppetry in the United States transformed during the twentieth century from a popular low-culture entertainment to an accepted form of legitimate theater and a massively influential mass-media phenomenon.

The Becoming Modern exhibition, curated by Professor Bell, includes examples of early 20th-century work by Yiddish puppeteers Zuni Maud and Yosl Cutler, and Russian émigré Basil Milovsoroff; but focuses specifically on innovations in puppetry beginning in the 1960s by such puppeteers as Bob Baker, Robert Anton, Charles Ludlam, Brad Brewer, Dan Hurlin, Stephen Kaplin, Janie Geiser, Larry Reed, Theodora Skipitares, Sandy Spieler, Amy Trompetter, and Charles Ludlam. What made U.S. puppetry “modern,” and how has twentieth-century U.S. puppetry affected what we see today in person and on our screens? 

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

Claudia Orenstein is an acclaimed scholar of puppetry, performing objects, and material performance, both in regard to contemporary practices globally and to traditional forms in India and Japan. She is the Founding Editor of Puppetry International Research, an online, peer-review, scholarly journal devoted to puppets, masks, and related arts, and author of Reading the Puppet Stage: Reflections on the Dramaturgy of Performing Objects. Dr. Orenstein has co-edited several scholarly anthologies devoted to puppetry: Puppet and Spirit: Ritual, Religion, and Performing Objects, with Tim Cusack, Women and Puppetry: Critical and Historical Investigations, with Alissa Mello and Cariad Astles, The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance, with Dassia Posner and John Bell. She has also worked as dramaturg on Stephen Earnhart’s multimedia production Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and on Tom Lee and kuruma ningyō master Nishikawa Koryū V’s Shank’s Mare. 

Bart Roccoberton is Program Head of UConn’s internationally renowned Puppet Arts Program and has been a professional puppet artist for nearly fifty years. He studied puppetry at UConn under Professors Frank Ballard and Albrecht Roser, and has toured popular puppet performances to schools, libraries, colleges, theaters and museums with his troupe The Pandemonium Puppet Company and with the students of The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s Institute of Professional Puppetry Arts and The University of Connecticut’s Puppet Arts Program. Bart has created and performed characters for television programs, Broadway productions and special commissions, and conducted workshops for elementary, secondary and college students and teachers across the United States. 

John Bell is the director of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, teaches at UConn’s Puppet Arts Program, and is a puppeteer and theater historian. He is the author of American Puppet Modernism and other books and articles about puppetry. A member of the Bread and Puppet Theater company from 1976 to 1986, and a founding member of the Great Small Works theater collective in New York City, he is also a founder of the Honk! Festival of Activist Street Bands in Somerville, Massachusetts.  

B*tch Eat Dog by UConn Puppet Arts student Mel Carter on April 3, 4, 10, and 11

Posted on by
Photograph by Richard Termine
© 2025 RICHARD TERMINE.

The UConn Puppet Arts Program and Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry present B*tch Eat Dog, a puppet-y sketch show exploring girl bosses, tradwives, and the existential abyss, by UConn Puppet Arts MFA candidate Mel Carter on April 3, 4, 10, and 11 at 7 p.m. in the Ballard Institute Theater, located at 1 Royce Circle in Downtown Storrs.

Through grotesque fantasy, irreverent satire, and adaptations of classical texts, B*tch Eat Dog offers a frenetic and pungent interrogation of the gendered ethics of pursuit. B*tch Eat Dog is a puppet-filled sketch show that marries classical texts, feminist theory, and singing dicks. Punch and Judy puppets perform a gender-swapped adaptation of Moby Dick that explores the fallacies of girlboss feminism. A tradwife named Felicity Groundwater hawks her questionable raw milk wares and ultimately breastfeeds a member of the audience with one of her nine pendulous burlap boobs. A new kind of IUD insertion escalates until rats are being shoved down a woman’s cervix.  The evening is hosted by a hapless, well-intentioned white man who flails wildly as his misguided attempts at allyship lead to a painful realization. The show runs for 90 minutes, with a question-and-answer session to follow. Content warning: violence, sexual content, sexual assault, puppet nudity. Recommended for ages 17+.

Tickets are free but seating is limited, so reservations are required: https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/bimp-0/b-tch-eat-dog. Visitors can park in the Downtown Storrs Garage located at 33 Royce Circle. 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.

About Mel Carter

Mel Carter began her professional career in Washington, D.C., where she was a resident artist with the 4615 Theatre Company. While there, she performed with Imagination Stage, Spooky Action Theatre, and Pointless Theatre Co, among others. while simultaneously creating visual art. Her work has been featured in multiple publications, including the Washington Post. Mel has been awarded an Arts and Humanities Fellowship and a Color the Curb grant by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Since discovering puppetry, she has built and/or performed puppets with Pilobolus Dance Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, Mosaic Theatre, Paloma Puppet Theatre, and the OddFellows Playhouse, among others. Mel is currently a graduate student at the University of Connecticut where she is on track to receive her MFA in Puppet Arts.