The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut is proud to announce the return of its Summertime Saturday Puppet Show Series with a mix of virtual and outdoor performances at 11 a.m. ET on five consecutive Saturdays from July 10 through Aug. 7, 2021. To encourage safety of and accessibility to our audiences, some shows will be performed onsite in Betsy Paterson Square, while others will be performed live virtually via Zoom. The outdoors shows will be socially distanced and follow Town of Mansfield and UConn safety guidelines. In the event of inclement weather for outdoor performances, the show will be rescheduled for the following Sunday. All performances this summer will be free admission, donations greatly appreciated. Reservations are required for the virtual performances, but not for the outdoor shows. Outdoor performances are co-sponsored by the Mansfield Downtown Partnership.

The schedule of Summertime Saturday Puppet Shows includes the following:

July 10: Judy Saves the Day by Sarah Nolen, Puppet Showplace Theater
Outdoor performance in Betsy Paterson Square
No reservation required (first come, first seated)
Rain date: July 11 at 11 a.m. ET
After being pushed around for over 400 years, the famous hand-puppet heroine Judy has had enough! Cheer her on as she goes on a quest for respect, justice, and a well-deserved nap. Puppeteer Sarah Nolen delivers an astonishing one-woman performance in this modern feminist interpretation of the traditional Punch and Judy puppet show. Audiences young and old will laugh, cry, yell, and gasp in response to this highly-interactive, hilarious, hand-crafted farce. 

July 17: Anansi: Story-teller by String Theory Theater
Virtually via Zoom
Reserve a free household ticket at bimp.ticketleap.com
String Theory Theater presents a fresh take on the famous trickster spider from West Africa folk tales. Anansi is charged with weaving together all of the stories of life on earth and relaying the stories to the sky gods. Daunted by what seems like a never-ending task, Anansi seeks to simplify his effort with an innovative solution, which leads to unexpected results.

July 24: Our Magnificent Monster Circus by CactusHead Puppets
Outdoor performance in Betsy Paterson Square
No reservation required (first come, first seated)
Rain date: July 25 at 11 a.m. ET
Come one, come all, to a circus like no other! Encounter magnificent creatures from the wilds of your imagination as their quirky human caretaker tries to teach them new tricks. Kids can lend a hand to Eustice the Unicycling Unimonster, make friends with a Fiery Fanged Worm, cheer for Agnes the many-legged Acropod, and more! This colorful, silly, interactive show full of friendly monsters is a perfect match for young audiences.

July 31: ScreenPLAY!: Journey into Space by The Gottabees
Virtually via Zoom
Reserve a free household ticket at bimp.ticketleap.com
Hang onto your astronaut helmet as you blast off into outer space with Bonnie as your captain. While our rocket ship may be cozy, it does tend to veer off course where meteors and aliens come smashing into view.   

Aug. 7: Fox Fables by WonderSpark Puppets
Outdoor performance in Betsy Paterson Square
No reservation required (first come, first seated)
Rain date: Aug. 8 at 11 a.m. ET
What makes you – YOU? Fox Fables is a combination of several Aesop’s Fables, inspired by the works of the 12th century storyteller Rabbi Berechiah ha-Nakdan. The story is about a fox who loses his precious tail and with it his identity. He tries to be several other animals instead – with hilarious results – before realizing the moral lesson of this ancient fable. Themes in this tale include self-worth, anti-bullying, test taking, and the five senses.

Due to generous support during our 2021 UConn Gives campaign, admission is free to all shows, but donations are encouraged.

For virtual performances via Zoom, a household reservation must be made in advance due to limited availability. Reservations can be made by visiting bimp.ticketleap.com. A link to the Zoom event will be emailed to registrants an hour before the performance. 

For the outdoor performances taking place in Betsy Paterson Square, reservations will not be required. Chairs will not be provided, so groups are encouraged to bring their own blankets and chairs. Seating space will be first come, first served. To comply with Town of Mansfield and UConn safety guidelines, masks are required for all attendees and staff ages two and up at all times. For safety, six feet of space will be required between seated family groups. Hand sanitizer will be available at the entrance and exit of the seating area. Please note that public restrooms are not available. 

For more information, or if you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact Ballard Institute staff at 860.486.8580 or bimp@uconn.edu.

The UConn Puppet Arts Program and Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry will host end-of-semester presentations of UConn Puppet Arts undergraduate and graduate work on Thursday, May 6 and Friday, May 7.  Presentations will begin at 7:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, May 6 and at 7 p.m. ET on Friday, May 7.  These presentations will take place on Ballard Institute Facebook Live (facebook.com/BallardInstitute/) and will be available afterwards on the Ballard Institute Facebook page and YouTube Channel (youtube.com/channel/UC3VSthEDnYS6ZjOwzT1DnTg). The performances are recommended for mature audiences.

On Thursday, May 6, Mask Fabrication students instructed by Professor Bart. P. Roccoberton, Jr. will present a portfolio exhibition of plaster face casts they made of themselves, papier måché portrait mask, worbla exaggerated portrait masks and leather Domino and Commedia masks. The Thursday performance will also feature work by Professor Nehprii Amenii’s Directing for the Puppet Theater class, which developed students’ imagination and instincts through experimentations with language and form, helping connect students to their authentic voice, generate work from their inner world, and expand their understanding of “the puppet” beyond conventional character. Professor Amenii’s students will be presenting original works reflecting some of their discoveries along the way. 

On Friday, May 7, final presentations and performances for History of World Puppetry, Toy Theatre, and Puppetry in Television will take place via Facebook Live. Presentations from the History of World Puppetry, taught by Professor John Bell, will examine puppetry in education and the influence of Japanese bunraku theater on U.S. puppetry. Students of Professor Matthew Cohen’s Toy Theatre class will present original performances using figures, sets, and staging constructed from paper and cardboard. Professor Bart. P. Roccoberton, Jr.’s Puppetry in Television class will demonstrate camera techniques developed with guest artist Martin P. Robinson, and offer a lip-sync song (composed by Puppet Arts graduate student Yanniv Frank) performed by foam moving-mouth puppets.

For more information, please contact Ballard Institute staff at bimp@uconn.edu. 

For its final online installment of the 2021 Spring Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host “Access to Puppetry for Native, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color,” with Chamindika Wanduragala on Thursday, May 13 at 7 p.m. ET. This forum will take place on Facebook Live (facebook.com/BallardInstitute/) and will be available afterwards on Facebook and the Ballard Institute YouTube Channel (youtube.com/channel/UC3VSthEDnYS6ZjOwzT1DnTg). 

Puppetry in the United States has often not been able to reach out to wider communities of performers and audiences, especially in terms of training new puppeteers. But Chamindika Wanduragala, a Sri Lankan American puppeteer, filmmaker, and DJ, has created and directs Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to support Native, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color puppeteers to develop the creative and technical means to tell new stories through puppetry. Join us for this fascinating discussion with Wanduragala about Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop, how it creates access to puppetry, and its processes for doing so. This forum is co-sponsored by the UConn Asian American Cultural Center.

Chamindika Wanduragala is a Sri Lankan American puppet artist/stop motion filmmaker with a visual arts background, and a DJ (DJ Chamun). She loves transporting people to another world through puppetry and music. Chamindika is the founder and Executive/Artistic Director of Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop, which supports Native, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in developing creative and technical skills in contemporary puppetry.  Chamindika’s work has been supported by the Henson Foundation, Jerome Foundation, the Twin Cities Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and Minnesota State Arts Board; and her last puppet theater production was presented by Pillsbury House Theatre. You can see her work (and hear some playlists!) at chamindika.com.

For more information and to learn about other online programming, visit bimp.uconn.edu or email bimp@uconn.edu. 

As part of its 2021 Spring virtual programming, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut is pleased to present The Perils of Mr. Punch by Modern Times Theater on April 24, 2021 at 4 p.m. ET via Zoom.

The Perils of Mr. Punch features the one and only Punch and Judy, presented live, and updated for the 21st century. Allow Mr. Punch to deftly remove your bad mood, whilst he exhausts your child! Gawk as Judy struggles to balance a checkbook before being eaten by the carnivore du jour! Feast your eyes upon the diaper change that should not be! It’s a melodrama of epically small proportions but so funny that audiences forget they aren’t in the room. The hand puppets are created from up-cycled designer trash and performed in an eccentric itinerant puppet stage. The show is hosted per tradition by a “bottler”, the uku-lady Rose Friedman. Justin Lander, showman of the absurd, portrays all the characters. The program is rounded out with live music played on a variety of instruments, from the cornet to the bicycle pump. It’s a low-tech old-time spectacle, entertaining to people of all ages: from one to one hundred. This performance lasts approximately 45 minutes and will include time for questions and answers with Modern Times Theater after the show. 

Modern Times Theater has been adapting and updating Punch and Judy puppet shows for over a decade.  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. Parents themselves, they strive to present quality entertainment that the whole family can enjoy.

Ticket price: $10/household. Tickets can be purchased online at https://bimp.ticketleap.com/punch-virtual/. A surcharge will be added to online purchases. Attendees should purchase one ticket per household. While we ask for a minimum payment of $10/household, we greatly appreciate any additional support! A Zoom link will be emailed to households one hour before the performance. 

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 fourth online installment of the 2021 Spring Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host “Puppetry, Game Design, and Digital Performance” with Eddie Kim of EK Theater and UConn Digital and Media Design faculty Samantha Olschan and Kenneth Thompson, on Thursday, April 22 at 7 p.m. ET. This forum will take place on Facebook Live (facebook.com/BallardInstitute/) and will be available afterwards on Facebook and the Ballard Institute YouTube Channel (youtube.com/channel/UC3VSthEDnYS6ZjOwzT1DnTg). 

Innovations in digital culture, including motion capture technology and the use of avatars in video games have sometimes been labeled “digital puppetry”; but what exactly are the overlaps and differences between puppetry’s analog objects in motion and their cyber cousins in the digital world? This exciting puppet forum will examine these important connections by considering Eddie Kim’s retellings of classical stories through live acts of video game puppetry; Samantha Olschan’s storytelling projects combining animation, design, and experiential narrative; and video game designer Kenneth Thompson’s work pushing the boundaries of gameplay experience. This forum is co-sponsored by UConn’s Digital Media and Design Department.

Eddie Kim is a multimedia artist and the artistic director of EK Theater (ektheater.com), a video game puppetry troupe that he founded in 2007. The company’s mission is to retell classical stories through live acts of video game puppetry. His plays have been performed at venues such as the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA; the NRG Center in Houston, TX; and the Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The New York Times has called his work “an impressive feat of engineering, coordination and storytelling.”

Samantha Olschan is a transmedia artist with a M.F.A. in Film, Video, and New Media: Animation from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a B.F.A in Fine Arts: Electronic & Time-Based Media from Carnegie Mellon University. Having worked across broadcast design, animation, compositing and time-based visualization for television, films, documentaries and media agencies, she continues to research the future of storytelling through animation, design and experiential narrative.

Kenneth Thompson worked in the game industry for eight years as a Game Designer and Lead Designer before coming to the University of Connecticut. His responsibilities included directing game projects from start to finish, programming unique scenarios using game development tools, and working with publishers such as SEGA, Electronic Arts, and Activision. He has worked with Blockbuster franchises such as Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain America, Madagascar, Shrek, and over a dozen others. His work in the video game industry has received Nickelodeon’s Kids Choice Award for best video game, Indie Game of the Year, and Innovation Awards from industry publications. He works with students on creating engaging gameplay experiences and pushing the boundaries of play.

For more information and to learn about other online programming, email bimp@uconn.edu.

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and the University of Connecticut Puppets Arts Program, with the support of a UConn School of Fine Arts Anti-Racism Research Grant, are hosting a free international online symposium on systemic racism and the representation of foreigners and minorities in puppetry and allied art forms on April 9-10. The symposium is free but advanced registration is required. The “Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects” Symposium is organized by UConn School of Fine Arts professors Matthew Cohen, Jungmin Song, and Ballard Institute director John Bell. The symposium is free but advanced registration is required. 

Scholars and artists from Brazil, France, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Slovakia, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the US will be engaged for two days investigating how puppetry and allied forms in societies globally reflect and perpetuate systemic and pervasive racism and bias, imagine diversity, allow minorities to achieve visibility, play with and resist ethnic and racial identifications and categories, and problematize and challenge histories of representation of the Other. Puppets, masks, and other performing objects are used around the world to represent and stage the Other—various ethnicities and races considered different from dominant groups. Such dramatizations of alterity routinely involve exotification, exaggeration, and caricature. Puppetry and related forms also can transcend social categories and resist oppressive systems such as colonialism, often through humor. 

Highlights include a keynote address by Professor Marvin Carlson, Sidney E. Cohn Professor of Theatre, Comparative Literature and Middle Eastern Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, on the representation of foreigners in Arabic shadow puppet plays; and papers on the political use of effigies of Barack Obama, depictions of Muslims in traditional Sicilian puppetry, African-American ventriloquist John W. Cooper, contemporary artist and puppeteer Kara Walker, foreigners in Chinese puppet plays, foreign mercenaries in Javanese shadow puppetry, exhibiting blackface puppets in German museums, Romanis and Jews in Slovakian puppetry, the representation of foreign enemies in European puppetry of World War I, contemporary European puppetry dealing with Palestinian refugees, and Orientalism in the use of so-called bunraku puppetry in opera.

To register for sessions of this free symposium, and to view the entire symposium schedule, please visit bimp.uconn.edu/alterity-symposium. For more information about the event, please contact Ballard Institute staff at 860-486-8580 or bimp@uconn.edu.

For its third installment of the 2021 Spring Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host “Working on Race and Ethnicity in Puppetry” with curator Dr. Jungmin Song and Ballard Institute Director John Bell on April 8 at 7 p.m. ET. This forum will take place on Facebook Live (facebook.com/BallardInstitute/) and will be available afterwards on Facebook and the Ballard Institute YouTube Channel (youtube.com/channel/UC3VSthEDnYS6ZjOwzT1DnTg). 

This forum is a work-in-progress discussion about the challenging process of creating a puppet exhibition on race and ethnicity, focused on objects from Ballard Institute collections. Join curator Jungmin Song and Ballard Institute director John Bell in a discussion about the challenges they face navigating language, biases, objects, provenance, and databases as they try to re-think Ballard Institute collections for their next exhibition.

Dr. Jungmin Song is adjunct faculty at the University of Connecticut. Her writings have appeared in Performance Research, Artpress 2, Asian Theatre Journal, and Contemporary Theatre Review. In 2017 she edited a special issue of the British journal Puppet Notebook on Shakespeare and puppets, and was a researcher in residence at the Institut International de la Marionnette (IIM) in Charleville-Mézières, France to lay the ground for a book on Shakespeare and puppetry. She curated the Shakespeare and Puppetry exhibition at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry in 2020. As a puppet maker she has participated in numerous projects, including the Royal Shakespeare Company and Little Angel Theatre’s co-production of Venus and Adonis (2004). 

For more information and to learn about other online programming, visit bimp.uconn.edu or email bimp@uconn.edu.

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and the UConn Puppet Arts Program will present an online version of its popular UConn Spring Puppet Slam on March 26, 2021 at 8 p.m. ET on the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry Facebook Live (facebook.com/BallardInstitute/). The 2021 UConn Spring Puppet Slam: Online! will feature short works by professional puppeteers and performers from around the United States and across the world and new works by UConn Puppet Arts students.

The 2021 UConn Spring Puppet Slam: Online! will showcase the work of Puerto Rican puppeteer Brenda Plumey; the famed Boston-based Puppeteers Cooperative, led by Sara Peattie; Dawn Jordan String Theatre from Auburn, NY; director, designer, and puppeteer Jaerin Son of Chicago; Brooklyn-based puppeteer Dorothy James; Kettlehead Studios from Portland, OR; the puppet collective Eat Drink Tell Your Friends, based in Brooklyn, NY; Lormiga Títeres, a puppet company based in Sonora, Mexico; Mirek Trejtnar and Leah Gaffen’s Puppets in Prague; and recent UConn Puppet Arts graduate Hailey Bendar. 

The UConn Spring Puppet Slam will also feature fascinating new works by UConn graduate and undergraduate students from the UConn Puppet Arts Program. Funding for the UConn Spring Puppet Slam: Online! is made possible in part by the Puppet Slam Network.

The UConn Spring Puppet Slam is free, but donations are greatly appreciated. These performances are recommended for mature audiences. The UConn Spring Puppet Slam will be available through April 30, 2021 on the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry Facebook page (facebook.com/BallardInstitute/) and the Ballard Institute YouTube channel (youtube.com/channel/UC3VSthEDnYS6ZjOwzT1DnTg). 

For more information about these performances, please contact Ballard Institute staff at 860-486-8580 or bimp@uconn.edu.

For its second online installment of the 2021 Spring Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host “Puppet and Spirit: Living Gods, Demonic Snakes, Robotic Buddhas, and Migrant Relics” with puppetry studies scholars Claudia Orenstein, Tim Cusack, Ana Martinez, and Deepsikha Chatterjee on March 25 at 7:30 p.m. ET, one half hour later than the usual forum start time. This forum will take place on Facebook Live (facebook.com/BallardInstitute/) and will be available afterwards on Facebook and the Ballard Institute YouTube Channel (youtube.com/channel/UC3VSthEDnYS6ZjOwzT1DnTg). 

Join these four distinguished scholars as they explore the diverse relationships that exist between the spiritual world and performing objects, in both traditional forms of puppetry and contemporary artistic expressions. This forum is co-sponsored by the UConn Asian American Cultural Center, Asian and Asian American Studies Institute, Puerto Rican and Latin American Cultural Center, and El Instituto.

Why and how do we turn to the material world to connect with spiritual and supernatural dimensions of experience? How are performing objects used in ritual activities or other performative acts that touch on our deepest beliefs and questions about the nature of human existence? What religious and ontological perspectives frame these endeavors in both religious and non religious contexts? Our Forum participants will address these issues in terms of their own research into: the objects migrants have left behind on the southern U.S. border; the ritual use of oversize animal puppets in Assam, India; humanoid android characters in the HBO series Westworld; and other ways that puppets are considered powerful spiritual entities with a consciousness.

Claudia Orenstein, Theater 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: 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, is Board Member of UNIMA-USA and Associate Editor of Asian Theatre Journal. Current book projects: Thinking Through the Puppet: Essays on Puppet Dramaturgy and a two-volume co-edited anthology with Tim Cusack, Puppet and Spirit: Ritual, Religion, and Performing Objects.

Tim Cusack is an adjunct lecturer in the Hunter College Theatre Department, where he teaches basic acting techniques. He was a founding artistic director of the downtown indie company Theatre Askew, which was twice nominated for the GLAAD Media Award in the Outstanding Off-Off Broadway Production category. He was the assistant editor on both the Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance and Women and Puppetry. His essay analyzing Susan Sontag’s celebrity persona through the lens of queer performativity was published in the anthology Susan Sontag and the Camp Aesthetic: Advancing New Perspectives. He has a BFA from NYU/TSOA and an MA from Hunter/CUNY. 

Dr. Ana Martínez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Texas State University. Her book Performance in the Zócalo: Constructing History, Race, and Identity in Mexico’s Central Square from the Colonial Era to the Present (University of Michigan Press, 2020) addresses the ways in which the material center of the Mexican capital, the Zócalo, manifests and contests its symbolic power through performance practices. Dr. Martínez’s fields of specialization are theatre practices in Mexico, Latinx drama, and performance design. Her current research and upcoming article focuses on migrancy’s material traces in performance. She holds a degree in Theatre Studies from the City University of New York Graduate Center, and MA in Scenography from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, and an Architecture degree from Universidad Anahuac in Mexico City.  

Deepsikha Chatterjee teaches at Hunter College CUNY. She has a Bachelors in Fashion Design from India, her MFA from Florida State University, and is now pursuing her PhD from CUNY Graduate Center. Her costume designs received the Best Costume Design award at United Solo 2014 and 2017. Her designs have been seen at various New York venues, and she has worked in many regional theaters. She has published about costumes of Indian film and dance and has presented at USITT, Costume Society of America and the Rubin Museum of Art. She serves as Dance Director for Indo-American Arts Council’s Erasing Borders Dance Festival.

For more information and to learn about other online programming, email bimp@uconn.edu.