The UConn Asian and Asian American Studies Institute, UConn Puppet Arts Program, and Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry present Tobacco: A Crankie Shadow Play with Gusti Sudarta and Rumput on March 27 at 7 p.m. at the Ballard Institute Theater located at 1 Royce Circle in Downtown Storrs. Shadow master Gusti Sudarta from Bali, Indonesia and the string-band group Rumput from Richmond, Virginia collaborate in an intercultural performance involving traditional arts from Indonesia—specifically wayang kulit (shadow puppet theatre) and keroncong (string-band music)—with crankies, or moving panoramas. This production will focus on the history of the global tobacco industry, with an emphasis on Virginia and western Indonesia. This performance is free and open to the public with a run-time of approximately 75 minutes. There are no age restrictions but parents should be aware that old American jingles will be sung.

When the American tobacco industry was hit with lawsuits in the late 90s, companies rebranded and reoriented towards international markets such as Southeast Asia. In Indonesia, tobacco is poorly regulated, ads regularly target children (remember the “smoking baby” on Youtube?), and lung cancer deaths have gone through the roof. Cigarette taxes are now an important source of national income and politicians receive regular kickbacks from the industry. The story of tobacco is a tale of global exploitation in which American capitalists have benefitted wildly from the suffering of Native Americans, African American slaves, blue-collar labor, and the engineered addiction of billions of smokers across the globe. This new “crankie” and shadow play about the story of tobacco, shows how Richmond, Virginia and, today, Indonesia are two of the most important chapters of tobacco as a global industry.

Tobacco: A Crankie Shadow Play will feature shadow puppetry by the renowned Balinese shadow master Gusti Sudarta. In addition to the main feature, there will also be several traditional and new works for keroncong (Indonesian string band music) and several other crankies included in the program.

The music ensemble Rumput plays keroncong (a string-band tradition from Indonesia) and explores parallel threads with other traditions, especially old-time string-band music of the United States and British Isles, and Indonesian gamelan. The company produces multimedia performances involving traditional and original music paired with shadow theater comprising elements of American and Indonesian traditions — crankies (scrolling panoramas) and wayang (shadow puppets). Rumput has performed internationally, including tours and residencies in Java in 2017 and 2018, performing with local artists at each stop, and collaborating with Indonesian master artists including Danis Sugiyanto, Peni Candrarini, Endah Laras, Ubiet Raseuki, and Gusti Sudarta.

Dalang (shadow master) I Gusti Putu Sudarta Ph.D., was born into a family of artists in Bedulu village and has been performing music, dance, and shadow theater since he was six years old. He is a permanent faculty member in the puppetry department at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Denpasar (Bali) and holds a master’s and Ph.D. in theater from the National Institute of Arts in Solo, Java. He regularly performs various forms of traditional Balinese music, mask dance, and wayang kulit (shadow puppet theater) in ceremonial contexts and has taken part in several international tours and inter-cultural experimental music and theater productions.

This performance is sponsored by the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut, in collaboration with the UConn Puppet Arts Program and the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry.

This performance is free and open to the public. Seating is on a first come, first served basis. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. For further information or if you require an accommodation to attend, please contact Dr. Matthew Cohen at matthew.i.cohen@uconn.edu.

For its second installment of the 2020 Spring Puppet Forum Series the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host “Puppets and Little Shop of Horrors” with Martin P. Robinson and UConn Puppet Arts graduate students Robert Ian Cutler and K. William Smith on Thursday, March 26 at 7 p.m. at the Ballard Institute Theater, located at 1 Royce Circle in Downtown Storrs.

Join famed Sesame Street puppeteer Martin P. Robinson and UConn Puppet Arts graduate students Robert Ian Cutler and K. William Smith in a discussion of puppetry and Little Shop of Horrors. Robinson, who designed, built, and performed all of the Audrey II puppets for the original Off-Broadway production of Little Shop, as well as for its Broadway incarnation, will talk with Cutler and Smith about the design and performance of puppets for the professional stage, in the context of Smith and Cutler’s work on the upcoming Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s April 23-May 3 production of Little Shop. Special ticket discounts for the CRT production will be available at this event!

Martin P. Robinson has written, designed, directed, and performed for Broadway, film, and television for many years, including such productions as Little Shop of Horrors, Muppets Take Manhattan, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Sesame Street, Allegra’s Window, and more. He has performed on Sesame Street as Mr. Snuffleupagus, Telly Monster, Slimey, and other characters since 1981. He acts as a Sesame Street International Senior Muppet Coordinator/Teacher in numerous countries worldwide. He recently wrote, designed, and directed the musical All Hallows Eve in New York City, and is currently performing as Mr. Primm in the Apple+ production Helpsters.

William Smith is a second-year UConn Puppet Arts MFA candidate. He received his BFA in puppetry at West Virginia University. Will is designing and fabricating new puppets for Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s upcoming production of Little Shop of Horrors. Will has worked as a staff member at the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, as a resident artist at WVU, and has been featured as puppeteer for various productions over his career. Favorites include Dr. Stein: A Puppet Prometheus (WVU), Spacebus 9 (UConn MFA Project),  and Calle Allende (Black Cherry Puppet Theatre).

Robert Ian Cutler is a second-year UConn Puppet Arts MFA candidate. Rob came to UConn following a career in Philadelphia as an actor, carpenter, improvisor, and puppeteer. Rob will be performing the puppets for CRT’s upcoming production of Little Shop of Horrors, as well as serving the production as dramaturg. Favorite credits include Spacebus 9 (UConn MFA project), Puppets: Here and There (ComedySportz Philly), Welcome to Ahnedonia (Monkey Boys Productions) and Waterbears in Space (Transmissions Theatre).  

Admission to this event is free (donations greatly appreciated!), and refreshments will be served. Come early, and experience our puppet exhibitions, as well as the video resources in our library nook. Forums will be broadcast via Facebook Live. For more information or if you require an accommodation to attend a forum, please contact Ballard Institute staff at 860.486.8580 or bimp@uconn.edu. 

For its first installment of the 2020 Spring Puppet Forum Series the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host Walt Whitman and Lively Materiality with Professor Jane Bennett on Thursday, Feb. 20 at 7 p.m. at the Ballard Institute Theater, located at 1 Royce Circle in Downtown Storrs, followed by a Colloquium with Jane Bennett on Friday, Feb. 21 at 9 a.m.

Dr. Bennett, of Johns Hopkins University, is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary political theorist and philosopher best known in the puppetry world for her work on “the material world in performance,” especially her influential bestseller Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Drawing from her forthcoming book Influx and Efflux: Writing Up with Walt Whitman, Professor Bennett will speak at the Thursday Puppet Forum about Whitman’s sense of “lively materiality” and the implications such ideas for puppetry studies and other subjects. Admission to this event is free (donations greatly appreciated!), and refreshments will be served. Come early, and experience our puppet exhibitions, as well as the video resources in our library nook. Forums will be broadcast via Facebook Live.

Dr. Bennett’s visit to the University of Connecticut will continue the following day with a Colloquium with Jane Bennett, Friday, Feb. 21, from 9 a.m. to noon at the UConn Humanities Institute on the 4th floor of UConn’s Homer Babbidge Library. The colloquium will include research presentations by UConn scholars including Associate Professor of English Kathleen Tonry, who will consider connections between Jane Bennett’s work and the 15th-century history of the book; Professor of Art History Elizabeth Athens, who will consider 18th-century naturalist William Bartram’s representations of nature; and Ballard Institute Director John Bell, who will examine Jane Bennett’s influence on contemporary puppetry studies. The presentations will also include short puppet responses to Walt Whitman poems by students in Dr. Matthew Cohen’s Hand Puppetry class. The colloquium offers an opportunity to engage in conversation about Walt Whitman and American poetry, political theory, puppetry studies, object-oriented ontology, and philosophy with Dr. Bennett. This event is free and open to the public. 

These Jane Bennett events at the University of Connecticut are co-sponsored by UConn’s departments of Philosophy, Political Science, and English, the UConn Humanities Institute, and UConn’s American Studies program. 

Jane Bennett is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Her recent essays have appeared in Grain/Vapor/Ray (on Kafka’s Odradek), Evental Aesthetics (special issue on Vital Materialism), and MLN (on mimesis). She is the author of Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010); The Enchantment of Modern Life (2001); Thoreau’s Nature (1994), and Unthinking Faith and Enlightenment, (1987). Her forthcoming book this spring is called Influx & Efflux: Writing up with Walt Whitman. 

For more information or if you require an accommodation to attend the forum, please contact Ballard Institute staff at 860.486.8580 or bimp@uconn.edu. For more information or if you require an accommodation to attend the colloquium, please contact Dr. Matthew Cohen at matthew.i.cohen@uconn.edu.

 

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and the UConn Puppet Arts Program will present the 2020 UConn Winter Puppet Slam on Friday, Feb. 7, 2020 at 8 p.m. in UConn’s von der Mehden Recital Hall, located at 875 Coventry Rd, Storrs, Conn. 06269. The UConn Winter Puppet Slam will feature short works by professional puppeteers and performers from around New England, including BodyWave and Amy West, as well as new works by UConn Puppet Arts students.

The 2020 UConn Winter Puppet Slam will showcase the work of BodyWave, a Boston-based collective of artists and performers who will present The Good Oak, a crankie (or moving scroll performance) inspired by Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac which incorporates live music and over 30 puppets to show the life of one tree over more than a century. Come early to the von der Mehden lobby to see BodyWave’s Miniature Migration, an audience-of-one show about Sandhill Cranes on Nebraska’s Platte River.  

Amy West, a puppeteer, alumna of the UConn Puppet Arts certificate program, and a writer, photographer, and wedding DJ from Boston, will perform her new work Coming Home to You, a shadow crankie celebrating the annual Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in the Berkshires.

The UConn Winter Puppet Slam will also feature new works by UConn graduate and undergraduate students from the university’s Puppet Arts Program. Funding for the UConn Winter Puppet Slam is made possible in part by the Puppet Slam Network.

The UConn Winter Puppet Slam is free and open to the public; donations are greatly appreciated. Seating is limited and is on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. The event will take place in UConn’s von der Mehden Recital Hall located at 875 Coventry Rd, Storrs, Conn. For directions to the von der Mehden Recital Hall, visit vdm.uconn.edu. These performances are recommended for mature audiences. For more information about these performances or if you require an accommodation to attend this event, please contact Ballard Institute staff at 860-486-8580 or bimp@uconn.edu.

For its 2020 Spring Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host four free scintillating discussions with nationally and internationally acclaimed puppeteers, scholars, and artists on Wednesday and Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. in February through April in the Ballard Institute Theater, located at 1 Royce Circle in Downtown Storrs. The forums will illuminate new perspectives on the creation, history, aesthetics, and performance of puppetry today. 

The Spring Puppet Forum schedule will include the following talks: 

Thursday, Feb. 20: “Walt Whitman and Lively Materiality” with Jane Bennett

Internationally famed scholar Jane Bennett, of Johns Hopkins University, is an interdisciplinary political theorist and philosopher best known in the puppetry world for her work on “the material world in performance,” especially her influential bestseller Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Drawing from her new book Influx and Efflux: Writing Up with Walt Whitman, Professor Bennett will speak about Whitman’s sense of “lively materiality” and the implications such ideas for puppetry studies and other subjects. Co-sponsored by UConn’s Philosophy, Political Science, and English Departments, Humanities Institute, and American Studies Program. 

CANCELLED: Thursday, March 26: “Puppets and Little Shop of Horrors” with Martin P. Robinson, Rob Cutler, and Will Smith

Join famed Sesame Street puppeteer Martin P. Robinson and Puppet Arts graduate students Rob Cutler and Will Smith in a discussion of puppetry and Little Shop of Horrors. Robinson, who designed, built, and performed all of the Audrey II puppets for the original Off-Broadway production of Little Shop, as well as for its Broadway incarnation, will talk with Cutler and Smith about the design and performance of puppets for the professional stage, in the context of Smith and Cutler’s work on the upcoming Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s April 23-May 3 production of Little Shop. Special ticket discounts for the CRT production will be available at this event!

CANCELLED: Thursday, April 2: “Things That Act Shakespeare” with Jungmin Song

Professor Jungmin Song discusses the ideas behind her new Ballard Institute exhibition Shakespeare and Puppetry, which questions our preconceptions of character and asks what it means for objects to have stage presence. Jungmin will consider Shakespeare productions by such puppeteers and performers as Forced Entertainment, Hogarth Puppets, and the Little Angel Theatre from England; ShadowLight Productions, Fred Curchack, Jim Rose, Bread and Puppet Theater, and Great Small Works from the U.S.; and Dov Weinstein from Israel. 

CANCELLED: Wednesday, April 29: “Engineering in Puppetry” with Ed Weingart

Preceded by a special 6 p.m. reception for Engineering and Fine Arts students, faculty, staff, and the general public, this forum features Professor Ed Weingart, Technical Director of UConn’s Connecticut Repertory Theatre. Weingart will discuss how engineering and puppetry have been deeply intertwined in his work with famed puppeteer Basil Twist’s 2015 New York production of Sisters Follies: Between Two Worlds, and visual artist Jordan Wolfson 2016 puppet installation Colored Sculpture. The essence of puppetry is the movement of objects in time and space, practices which are also at the heart of mechanical engineering and the theatrical work of rigging. How is such movement achieved in modern art and theater in the performance of engineering in puppetry?  Co-sponsored by the UConn Schools of Engineering and Fine Arts. 

Admission to these events is free (donations greatly appreciated!), and refreshments will be served. Come early, and experience our puppet exhibitions, as well as the video resources in our library nook. Forums will be broadcast via Facebook Live. For more information or if you require an accommodation to attend a forum, please contact Ballard Institute staff at 860.486.8580 or bimp@uconn.edu.

 

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host its 2020 Spring Puppet Performance Series on four Saturdays from February to May 2020, featuring outstanding works of puppet theater by professional puppeteers from across New England and beyond. Each show will be performed twice, at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. All performances will take place at the Ballard Institute Theater located at 1 Royce Circle in Downtown Storrs. 

The schedule of the Spring Puppet Performance Series includes the following:

Feb. 29: Paul Vincent Davis’s Raccoon Tales performed by Brad Shur of Paper Heart Puppets

The animals in the forest are always getting into trouble playing tricks on each other. Will they learn their lessons? This hand-puppet show by famed Boston puppeteer Paul Vincent Davis includes three humorous tales inspired by Native American stories of the Seneca Tribe: How the Fox and the Raccoon Trick Each Other; Why the Blue Jay is Blue and the Gray Wolf Isn’t; and Why the Bear has a Stumpy Tail. This show is 45 minutes long and is recommended for ages 4+. Presented in conjunction with the grand opening of two new exhibits, including Paul Vincent Davis and the Art of Puppet Theater, on Feb. 29 at noon! 

CANCELLED: March 14: She Thinks She’s Queen Elizabeth But She’s Dirty Gerts To Me by PuppetKabob

Have you ever heard the phrase: “She thinks she’s Queen Elizabeth, but she’s Dirty Gerts to me!”? No? Well now that you have, come and explore the story behind the saying in PuppetKabob’s latest pop-up creation Dirty Gerts—a show about growing pains. Made entirely out of repurposed paper products! This show is 50 minutes long and is recommended for ages 5+. 

CANCELLED: April 18: Mr. Cuddles is Missing created by Faye Dupras, with music by Max Weigert 

Have you seen Mr. Cuddles? Join the friends at Cozy Corner as they search hither and thither for Rory’s missing lovie and best friend, Mr. Cuddles. In this family-friendly show audiences are invited into an interactive magical world full of eclectic neighborhood friends, delightful puppet pals, and live movement-based music. This show is 45 minutes long and is recommended for ages 3+.

CANCELLED: May 2: Kitty’s Corner and Other Stories by Dirk Joseph and String Theory Theater

Kitty’s Corner and Other Stories is a puppet show featuring several short vignettes which are sure to delight the entire family. Audiences will be treated to a variety of puppetry formats including marionettes, hand and rod puppets, shadow puppetry, and crankies performed by Dirk and Azaria of Baltimore’s String Theory Theater. This show is 40 minutes long and is recommended for ages 3+.

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 bimp.ticketleap.com. A surcharge will be added to any purchases made online. Tickets may also be purchased at the Ballard Institute on the day of performance starting at 10 a.m. There will be open seating and no reservations. Visitors can park in the Storrs Center Garage located at 33 Royce Circle. Parking is free for the first two hours and $1 per hour thereafter, with a daily maximum charge of $8. For more information about these performances or if you require an accommodation to attend an event, please contact Ballard Institute staff at 860-486-8580 or bimp@uconn.edu.