As part of the 2023 Spring Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry is pleased to host author and Jim Henson Society President Craig Shemin in a discussion of his new book, Sam and Friends: The Story of Jim Henson’s First Television Show,on Wednesday, March 29, 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).
Years before Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, Jim Henson began his television career while a student in the Washington, D.C. area. Alongside performing partner Jane Nebel (who would become his wife), Jim introduced Kermit and the Muppets to local viewers in a daily five-minute show which became a sensation and also led to a series of popular commercials — all before Jim graduated from college. Former Henson staff writer and current President of The Jim Henson Legacy Craig Shemin explores this early Henson history inhis book Sam and Friends: The Story of Jim Henson’s First Television Show. In this forum, Craig will discuss Jim and Jane Henson’s early television work as well as his research and writing process in bringing the story to life in print. Rare surviving Sam and Friends footage and new high-definition scans of early Henson commercials will be shown, as well as recently uncovered photos from the Jim Henson Company Archives and a re-creation of the show’s final episode made from its surviving audio track. Craig’s presentation will be followed by a book signing (books will be available for sale from the Barnes & Noble at UConn store).
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.
Join Ballard Institute Director John Bell in a discussion of his puppet performance, workshop, and exhibition projects at last fall’s Istanbul Biennial, in the first Ballard Institute 2023 Spring Puppet Forum: “Puppetry, Ritual, and Performance in Turkey: The Istanbul Biennial and Beyond” on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023 at 7 p.m. at the Ballard Institute Theater, located at 1 Royce Circle in Downtown Storrs.
In a conversation with Puppet Arts Interim Technical Supervisor Matthew Sorensen, Dr. Bell will discuss his work on Demons of Society, an outdoor Bread and Puppet Theater pageant production, as well as his two Biennial exhibitions—Annals of Object Performance: Puppetry, Street Performance, and Activism, and Peter Schumann’s Bedsheet Paintings; and his work with theater and arts organizations in Diyarbakir, Kurdistan. Dr. Bell’s talk will touch on the history of Turkey as a center of puppet and object performance from the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires to the present, and the ongoing challenges Turkish artists and performers face living and working within an authoritarian society.
Admission to this event is free (donations greatly appreciated!), and refreshments will be served. Forums will be broadcast via Ballard Institute Facebook Live (facebook.com/BallardInstitute). For more information or if you require accommodation to attend a forum, please contact Ballard Institute staff at 860.486.8580 orbimp@uconn.edu.
About the Speaker
Puppeteer and historian John Bell is Director of the Ballard Institute and 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. 1993. He is the author of American Puppet Modernism: Essays on the Material World in Performance and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance. John is a member of the Brooklyn-based theater collective Great Small Works, and one of the creators of the Honk! Festival of Activist Street Bands.
As part of its 2023 Spring Puppet Performance Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut is pleased to present The Baffo Box Show by the Vermont-based Modern Times Theater on Feb. 25, 2023 at 11 a.m. in the Ballard Institute Theater, located at 1 Royce Circle in Downtown Storrs.
Performed in a one-of-a-kind suit-stage by Modern Times Theater member Justin Lander, this show packs classic hand puppetry, Dadaist ventriloquism, and stand-up comedy into a cardboard box and delivers it, with impeccable timing, live on stage. Inside the box are the Baffos — two slapstick chaps who keep the sun, moon and everything else running on schedule. From the moment the lid opens, audiences are captivated as the Baffos juggle and dance their way through the day’s chores, despite the undeniable evidence that their world is changing. A daring work of puppetry and object manipulation, full of beautiful images, junk music sonatas, and Modern Times Theater’s unique brand of all ages comedy.
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 the 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. 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. Masks recommended but not required.
About the Company
Modern Times Theater has been making and touring puppet shows and variety acts, and creating public community events since 2007. They pursue a radically divergent model of art making, creating venues in unlikely locations, and revitalizing the historic, run-down, and defunct. Working in populist theater forms, they seek to reinvent and reimagine classic American entertainment. Co-founders Rose Friedman and Justin Lander are a husband and wife duo, producers for Vermont Vaudeville and alumni of the Bread and Puppet Theater.
As its final 2022 Fall Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host Topics in Japanese Puppetry moderated by Dr. Claudia Orenstein, with panelists Dr. Mari Boyd, Dr. Yoko Yamaguchi, and filmmaker Zach Dorn, on Tuesday, Dec. 6 at 7 p.m. ET. This forum will include a pre-recorded discussion followed by a live Q and A with the audience and will take place on Zoom (registration required) and Facebook Live and will be available afterwards on the Ballard Institute’s Facebook page and YouTube Channel.
Japanese puppetry is a diverse field that goes beyond the well-known bunraku tradition. Guests will present their current research related to Japanese puppetry including the influence of German modernism on the development of puppetry in twentieth-century Japan, the contemporary and traditional work of Youkiza marionette theater as a new generation prepares to take over, and Japan’s tradition of fusuma, shifting painted screen performances. Pre-recorded presentations will be followed by further live discussion on related topics and Q and A with the audience. This forum is co-sponsored by the UConn Asian American Cultural Center and Asian and Asian American Studies Institute.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Moderator – Claudia Orenstein, Theatre Professor at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, has spent nearly two decades writing on contemporary and traditional puppetry in the US and Asia. Recent publications include the co-edited volumes Women and Puppetry: Critical and Historical Investigations and The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance. She worked as dramaturg on Tom Lee and kuruma ningyō master Nishikawa Koryū V’s Shank’s Mare. She is a Board Member of UNIMA-USA and Associate Editor of Asian Theatre Journal. Current book projects are Reading the Puppet Stage: Reflections on Dramaturgy and Performing Objects and a two-volume co-edited anthology with Tim Cusack, Puppet and Spirit: Ritual, Religion, and Performing Objects. She received a 2021-22 Fulbright Research Fellowship for research on ritual puppetry in Japan.
Mari Boyd is Professor Emeritus at Sophia University, Tokyo and a researcher and translator of modern Japanese theatre including material performance. Mari Boyd is the author of The Aesthetics of Quietude: Ota Shogo and the Theatre of Divestiture (Sophia University Press, 2006) and Japanese Contemporary Objects, Manipulators, and Actors in Performance (Sophia University Press, 2020). She has contributed numerous articles to Japanese- and English-language theatre periodicals and books, such as “Modern Meta-patterns” in A History of Japanese Theater (Cambridge University Press, 2016). As translator, contributed to the 10-volume Half a Century of Japanese Theatre series (Kinokuniya, 1999-2008) and is on the editorial committee for the ENGEKI: Japanese Theatre in the New Millennium anthology series (Japan Playwrights Association, 2016-). She is also an editor of e-Journal (Japan Society of Theatre Research).
Zach Dorn is a filmmaker, performing artist, and writer. Dorn’s multimedia puppet performances and stop-motion films have premiered at Ars Nova (New York), St. Ann’s Warehouse (New York), REDCAT (Los Angeles), and The Toronto International Film Festival. In 2016, Dorn was selected as an inaugural Julie Taymor World Theater Fellow and spent one year studying the use of automata in festival performance. While in Tokyo, he apprenticed under psychoanalyst turned experimental theatre director, Kuro Tanino. In 2022, Dorn expanded his research into Japanese sliding panel theater, fusuma karakuri, on the island of Tokushima as an Ishibashi Foundation / Japan Foundation Fellow for Research on Japanese Art. Dorn received his MFA in Experimental Animation from Calarts in 2021 and is currently developing a new puppet performance in collaboration with the experimental musician Aron Dahl and the Norwegian Arts Council.
Yoko Yamaguchi is Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and Lecturer at Waseda University. She also serves on the editorial board of the Japan Unima Yearbook and is an international programmer of Puppet Theatre PUK, Tokyo. She earned her Ph.D. in Aesthetics from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2017, and received research fellowships from Klassik Stiftung in Weimar in 2019 and from Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich in 2022. Her current research focuses on the evolution of the discourse on puppet theater (ningyo-geki/ningyo-shibai) in Japan since the 1900s as well as the the formation of modern Japanese puppetry beginning in the 1920s under the influence of European puppetry.
As part of its 2022 Fall Puppet Shows, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry is pleased to present Sleeping Beauty by Massachusetts-based Tanglewood Marionettes on Dec. 3, 2022 at 11 a.m. in the Ballard Institute Theater, located at 1 Royce Circle in Downtown Storrs.
A classic tale that appeals to children of all ages, Sleeping Beauty begins in King Felix’s great hall with the celebration of Princess Aurora’s birth. The party goes awry when the Wicked Witch arrives and curses the princess. Will the curse come true? Will someone with a “true heart” appear? Join us as Tanglewood Marionettes performs this beloved fairy tale with beautifully handcrafted marionettes brought to life by a master puppeteer. Recommended for ages 4+. Masks recommended but not required.
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, by calling 860-486-8580, or online at bimp.ticketleap.com/sleeping-beauty-tanglewood. 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. 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.
