Events

Online Fall Puppet Forum: “Things That Act Shakespeare” with Dr. Jungmin Song on 11/12

As part of the online 2020 Fall Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry will host “Things That Act Shakespeare” with Dr. Jungmin Song on Thursday, November 12 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 and Museum of Puppetry YouTube channel (youtube.com/channel/UC3VSthEDnYS6ZjOwzT1DnTg).

Professor Song will discuss the ideas behind her current Ballard Institute exhibition Shakespeare and Puppetry, which questions our preconceptions of character and asks what it means for objects to have stage presence. Dr. Song 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. 

Dr. Jungmin Song completed a practice-as-research PhD titled Animating Everyday Objects in Performance at the University of Roehampton in 2014. 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. 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).  She has taught in the fields of theater and fine arts at the University of Roehampton, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Kent. 

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

Online Fall Puppet Forum: “The Renaissance of African American Object Performance” on 10/22

For its second online installment of the 2020 Fall Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry will host “The Renaissance of African American Object Performance” with noted puppeteers, artists, scholars Edna Bland, Paulette Richards, Schroeder Cherry, and Anwar Floyd-Pruitt on Oct. 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).
African American puppetry and object performance is in a state of rapid and profound change. As the organizers of this Puppet Forum describe it, African American puppeteers are “part of a movement rediscovering the art of puppetry,” while at the same time the world of puppetry is discovering African American puppeteers. The Ballard Institute’s “Renaissance of African American Object Performance” Puppet Forum will bring together four prominent figures of the African American puppet revival to discuss how they are working to change the nature of puppetry in the U.S., and how American puppetry is beginning to recognize the work of Black puppeteers. The forum will also mark the release of the Ballard Institute’s Living Objects: African American Puppetry online catalogue of images, artist biographies, video documentation, and over twenty new essays, scripts, and interviews about African American puppetry, based on the Ballard Institute’s 2018-2019 exhibition, symposium, and festival of the same name. Moderated by educator, teaching artist and puppeteer Edna Bland, this forum is co-sponsored by the UConn Department of Art and Art History (art.uconn.edu/).
Moderator Edna Bland is an educator, teaching artist, puppeteer and arts integration specialist who honed her knowledge and skills at such prestigious institutions as The Kennedy Center’s VSA and CETA programs, Lincoln Center Education’s Teaching Artist program at the Juilliard School, and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. Prior to becoming an educator, Edna worked in the entertainment industry at such organizations as the New York Emmy Awards and Sony Music Entertainment. As a puppeteer, she was mentored by the late Caroll Spinney (“Big Bird”) and Dr. Loretta Long (“Susan”) from Sesame Street, and was a touring puppeteer in Jane Henson’s Nativity. Her work has been exhibited at the Ballard Institute as part of the Living Objects: African American Puppetry exhibition, and as part of the South Florida Puppetry Guild exhibit at the Miramar Arts and Cultural Center. She has an M.F.A degree in Entertainment Creative Writing, and an M.S. degree in Entertainment Business from Full Sail University; a B.S. degree in Organizational Management from Nyack University, and an A.A.S. degree in Music Business from Five Towns College. 
Dr. Paulette Richards is an independent researcher and teaching artist who uses animatronic puppetry to introduce K-12 students to basic robotics concepts.  She has taught animatronic puppetry workshops at Decatur Makers, the Dekalb County Public Library, the Center for Puppetry Arts, and the Puppeteers of America 2017 National Festival.  She served as co-curator with Dr. John Bell of the Ballard Institute and Museum’s Living Objects: African American Puppetry exhibit and was recently elected to the board of UNIMA-USA, the U.S. chapter of the Union International de la Marionnette. “The Black Lives Matter movement,” she writes, “has made my research feel urgent and relevant for the first time in my life because I see puppet theater and object performance as a powerful mode of resistance to the objectification of Black bodies.” Richards is completing two essays, about blackface material characters and the ritual functions of white supremacy; and a community of African American doll collectors. She is currently planning an exhibition of African American puppetry that should open at the Center for Puppetry Arts in the fall of 2021, and researching a book on object performance in the Black Atlantic.
Dr. Schroeder Cherry began making art and playing with puppets as a child in Washington, D.C. Over time he incorporated his childhood pastime into his thirty years of professional museum work. Dr. Cherry has held positions at museums across the U.S., including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian Institution’s Anacostia Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the J. Paul Getty Museum in California, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and Maryland Historical Society. At The Lila Wallace Funds in New York he was a program officer for museums and arts organizations, and between 2002 and 2010 he served on staff at the Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington, D.C., first as Deputy Director for Museums and later as Counselor to the Director. Cherry earned a bachelor of arts in painting and puppetry from the University of Michigan; a masters degree in Museum Education from The George Washington University; and a doctorate in museum education from Columbia University. He has travelled nationally and internationally to speak on learning in museums. Cherry currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland.
Anwar Floyd-Pruitt is an interdisciplinary artist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, focusing on puppetry, self-portraiture, and community art. A 2020 MFA graduate of UW-Madison, Floyd-Pruitt also earned a BA in psychology from Harvard University and a BFA in sculpture from UW-Milwaukee. In addition to teaching puppetry workshops, Floyd-Pruitt produces and performs a family-friendly, hip-hop singalong called Hip Hop Puppet Party, which was awarded a Madison Arts Commission Blink Grant. Last winter, he was invited to participate in Roots of the Spirit-Imagine Puppets at ArtServe in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where he displayed a collection of puppets made with youth from the Dane County Juvenile Detention Center. Anwar is the winner of the 2020 Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize at the Chazen Museum of Art, where his first solo exhibition, Supernova: Charlotte & Gene’s Radical Imagination Station, opens this fall. Most recently, Floyd-Pruitt installed an abstract sculptural wildflower garden outdoors, as part of Wormfarm Institute’s Fermentation Fest.
For more information and to learn about other online programming, visit bimp.uconn.edu or email bimp@uconn.edu.

Online Halloween Shadow Stories Workshop on 10/23 from 6-9 p.m. ET

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will offer a free online Halloween Shadow Stories Workshop on Friday, Oct. 23 from 6 to 9 p.m. ET via Zoom led by UConn Puppet Arts students Elise Vanase and Felicia Cooper.
Worried about how you are going to get into the Halloween spirit this year without parties and trick-or-treating? We are too, which is why we are hosting the Halloween Shadow Stories Workshop! Use this opportunity to learn how to make a simple shadow puppet show that effectively tells the ghoulish story of your choice. Shadow puppets are the perfect medium for this subject–not only are they accessible, as shadows can be cast on any surface, but their aesthetic allows for great eerie story telling. We will show participants how to build a simple shadow screen and puppets, but we encourage participants to experiment with other methods of shadow puppetry if they so choose! Everyone is invited to come in a Halloween costume (but it is not required).
Participants will be encouraged to record a performance of their shadow stories after the workshop, to be shared on Ballard Institute social media on Halloween.
No experience is necessary to participate in this workshop and all ages may participate (adult supervision and assistance is required for children). There is no fee to participate (although donations are greatly appreciated!). Registration will be required by Thursday, Oct. 22. Once a participant is registered, Ballard Institute staff will help them pick a Halloween-inspired story for their piece. Story ideas can be ones you come up with on your own, those inspired by legends, folklore, ghost stories, horror films, or gothic tales, or your own take on a popular Halloween movie or show. To register for the workshop, please fill out the registration form below or found here: https://forms.gle/XSuZzqj4BhRSpsf17. Workshop registration will be limited.

Online Women’s Suffrage Puppet Pageant for Celebrate Mansfield on 9/26 at 4 p.m. ET

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will present a free online Women’s Suffrage Puppet Pageant on Facebook Live as part of the reimagined 17th annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival on Saturday, Sept. 26 at 4 p.m. ET on Facebook Live (facebook.com/BallardInstitute). The pageant will feature toy theater works created by amateur and professional puppeteers from around the world. 

The theme for this year’s Ballard Institute community pageant for the Celebrate Mansfield Festival is a celebration of the women’s suffrage movement. The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment in the United States, which guarantees and protects women’s constitutional right to vote. The Ballard Institute will use this anniversary to acknowledge the complex history of the women’s suffrage movement, and the leadership of women of color, Native women, working-class women, and immigrant women in the struggle for suffrage; as well as the movement’s intersections with abolitionism and other movements. To honor this milestone we will celebrate women’s suffrage heroes from around the world, including Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Jovita Idár, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Mai Ziadeh, and Luisa Capetillo, among others, noting the successes of the movement, and also its challenges in the face of racism and forces opposed to suffrage.  

All workshop participants will perform their short works (three to five minutes long) as part of the pageant, which will be streamed live on the Ballard Institute’s Facebook page  (facebook.com/BallardInstitute) on Saturday, Sept. 26 at 4 p.m. ET and will be available afterwards on both the Ballard Institute’s Facebook page and YouTube channel (youtube.com/channel/UC3VSthEDnYS6ZjOwzT1DnTg). 

This community puppet project is sponsored by the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut and the Mansfield Downtown Partnership, Inc. For more information about the 17th Annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival, visit downtownstorrsfestival.org.

The Mansfield Downtown Partnership is an independent, non-profit organization comprised of the Town of Mansfield, the University of Connecticut, and individual business members and residents. The Partnership seeks to foster the continued development, management, and promotion of Downtown Storrs. For more information about the Partnership, visit mansfieldmdp.org.

2020 UConn Fall Puppet Slam: Online! on Friday, 9/25 at 8 p.m. ET

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and the UConn Puppet Arts Program will present, for the very first time, an online version of its popular UConn Fall Puppet Slam on Friday, Sept. 25, 2020 at 8 p.m. ET on the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry Facebook Live (facebook.com/BallardInstitute/). The 2020 UConn Fall Puppet Slam: Online! will feature short works by professional puppeteers and performers from around the United States and across the world, including Linda Wingerter of the Stringpullers Puppet Company, Flock Theatre, Campfire Tales, House of Funny Noises, and new works by UConn Puppet Arts students and recent alumni.

The 2020 UConn Fall Puppet Slam: Online! will showcase the work of Campfire Tales, a transcontinental company made up of Ali DeRegt, Emma Fisher, and Monica Ila; the UK-based company House of Funny Noises; Derron Wood and Flock Theatre of New London, Connecticut; Bonnie Kim of Keaau, Hawaii; Florida-based puppeteer Jack Fields; Linda Wingerter of the Stringpullers Puppet Company; and UConn Puppet Arts alumni Maggie Flanagan, Esme Roszel, and Austin Costello.

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

The UConn Fall Puppet Slam is free, but donations are greatly appreciated. These performances are recommended for mature audiences. The UConn Fall Puppet Slam will be available through Oct. 31, 2020 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.

2020 Fall Puppet Forum: “Out of the Shadows: the Henson International Puppet Festivals” with Leslee Asch on 9/17 at 7 p.m.

For its first online installment of the 2020 Fall Puppet Forum Series the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host “Out of the Shadows: the Henson International Puppet Festivals” with Leslee Asch on September 17 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 and Museum of Puppetry YouTube Channel (youtube.com/channel/UC3VSthEDnYS6ZjOwzT1DnTg).

Join famed puppeteer Leslee Asch and Ballard Institute Director John Bell for an in-depth discussion about her new book Out of the Shadows: The Henson Festivals And Their Impact on Contemporary Puppet Theater. Between 1992 and 2000, the Jim Henson Foundation hosted five International Festivals of Puppet Theater in New York City, and developed a national touring program. The Jim Henson Foundation’s International Puppet Festivals brought puppet theater into mainstream American theater. Leslee Asch served as Producing Director, working with Jim’s daughter Cheryl, who served as Executive Producer, to present five award-winning festivals that would equal European festivals and put U.S. puppet artists on the international stage. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the last Henson Festival and the 30th Anniversary of Jim Henson’s death. Taking this timely opportunity for reflection and drawing from a wealth of first-hand experience, in Out of the Shadows Asch presents a visually rich narrative of the festivals and their continued legacy, including a comprehensive look at the contemporary puppet theater landscape. This forum is co-sponsored by the UConn Arts Leadership and Cultural Management program (sfa.uconn.edu/arts-leadership-cultural-mgmt/).

Leslee Asch began her career as a puppet builder and went on to serve as the Director of Exhibitions for Jim Henson Productions, curating and managing exhibitions world-wide. Asch later worked as the Executive Director of the Jim Henson Foundation and Producing Director of the Henson International Festivals of Puppet Theater. Asch has been a long-time trustee of the Jim Henson Foundation. She is a recognized expert in the field and has published articles and catalogs on the subject, including The Art of Contemporary Puppet Theater, for the Katonah Museum of Art.

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

Women’s Suffrage Toy Theater Workshops and Pageant for Celebrate Mansfield!

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry will offer free online toy theater workshops to design and build scenes for a new Women’s Suffrage Puppet Pageant to be performed Saturday, September 26 at 4 p.m. on the Ballard Institute’s Facebook Live as part of the reimagined 17th annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival.

These free theater workshops will take place Saturday and Sunday, September 19 and 20 via Zoom. Registrants will build puppets and theaters on Saturday, Sept. 19 from 10 a.m. to noon ET, and then learn to perform and share their work with other participants on Sunday, Sept. 20 from 2 to 4 p.m. ET. Workshop participants will be invited to perform their short toy theater shows (three to five minutes) in the community Women’s Suffrage Puppet Pageant on Saturday, September 26 at 4 p.m. on Facebook Live.

The theme for this year’s Ballard Institute community pageant for the Celebrate Mansfield Festival is a celebration of the women’s suffrage movement. The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment in the United States, which guarantees and protects women’s constitutional right to vote. The Ballard Institute would like to use this anniversary to acknowledge the complex history of the women’s suffrage movement, and leadership of women of color, Native women, working-class women, and immigrant women in the struggle for suffrage; as well as the movement’s intersections with abolitionism and other movements. To honor this milestone we propose to celebrate women’s suffrage heroes and achievements around the world, including Ida B. Wells, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Jovita Idar, Zitkala-Sa, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Susan B. Anthony and others, noting the successes of the movement, and also its challenges in the face of racism and the strong forces opposed to suffrage.

No experience is necessary to participate in this two-part toy theater workshop and all ages may participate (adult supervision and assistance is required for children). There is no fee to participate (although donations are greatly appreciated!). Registration will be required by Wednesday, September 16. To register for the workshop, please fill out the registration form found below or here: https://forms.gle/ZcfLxmx9dBc1AiSZ6. Workshop registration will be limited.

This community puppet project is sponsored by the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut and the Mansfield Downtown Partnership, Inc. For more information about the 17th Annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival, visit downtownstorrsfestival.org.

Summer Online Puppet Forum #13: “The Puppet and the Director” with Dassia Posner on 8/27

Join the Ballard Institute for our twelfth Summer 2020 Online Puppet Forum Series event on Facebook Live! These forums, hosted by Ballard Institute director and puppet historian John Bell, will consist of discussions with notable scholars and practitioners around the world about the past, present, and future of puppetry and puppetry studies.

On August 27 at 4 p.m. ET, join Ballard Institute director John Bell and Dassia Posner as they discuss the nature of “The Puppet and the Director.” She will speak first about early 20th-century Russian puppeteer Nina Efimova, as an early director of puppet theatre whose work is particularly responsive to materials. The discussion will then focus on later puppet directors, and productions into the contemporary era.

Dassia N. Posner is a theatre historian at Northwestern University specializing in Russian avant-garde theatre, the history of directing, production dramaturgy, and world puppetry history and performance. She teaches undergraduate courses in Theatre and in Slavic Languages and Literatures and graduate courses in the MFA in Directing and the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama (IPTD). She is currently Director of IPTD and Vice President for Awards of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. Posner’s award-winning books include The Director’s Prism: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde; The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance (co-edited with Claudia Orenstein and John Bell, 2014); and Three Loves for Three Oranges: Gozzi, Meyerhold, Prokofiev (co-edited with Kevin Bartig and associate editor Maria De Simone; under contract with Indiana University Press). Her web-based archive companion to The Director’s Prism features over a hundred multimedia Russian theatre sources: www.fulcrum.org/northwestern. Her current book-in-progress, The Moscow Kamerny Theatre: An Artistic History in Political Times, examines the Kamerny Theatre’s innovations and international influence in the artistic and political context of the Soviet 1920s and 30s.

Forums will be available afterwards on our Facebook page and YouTube channel.

CANCELLED: Summer Online Puppet Forum #12: “Between Archives, Lived Experience, and Digital Humanities: Weaving Histories of Puppetry” with Raphaèle Fleury on 8/20

Join the Ballard Institute for our twelfth Summer 2020 Online Puppet Forum Series event on Facebook Live! These forums, hosted by Ballard Institute director and puppet historian John Bell, will consist of discussions with notable scholars and practitioners around the world about the past, present, and future of puppetry and puppetry studies.

On August 20 at 4 p.m. ET, join Ballard Institute director John Bell and Dr. Raphaèle Fleury, the director of Research and Innovation at France’s famed Institut International de la Marionnette, in a discussion about current French and European puppetry studies, the development of digital resources via the PAM web portal she oversaw, and her recent anthology Marionnettes & Pouvoirs: censures, propagandes, resistances (Puppets and Power: Censorship, Propaganda and Resistance).

A Doctor in French Literature and Civilization from Paris Sorbonne University, Raphaèle Fleury is director of Research and Innovation at the Institut International de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mézières, France, where she developed the PAM web portal of puppetry arts (lelab.artsdelamarionnette.eu) to create a new international digital perspective on puppetry. She is a co-founder of the “Innovation in Circus and Puppetry” research program of the National Center for Circus Arts and the Institut International de la Marionnette; and, with Julie Sermon co-edited the 2019 anthology Marionnettes & Pouvoirs: censures, propagandes, resistances (Puppets and Power: Censorship, Propaganda and Resistance). She has also worked as a dramaturg and librettist, for the Opéra National de Paris and the Angers Nantes Opéra, and her earlier research focused on dramatist Paul Claudel’s theater and the history of French puppetry in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Forums will be available afterwards on our Facebook page and YouTube channel.

Summer Online Puppet Forum #11: “Wayang: Indonesian Puppet Traditions in Global Modernity” with Matthew Cohen on 8/13

Join the Ballard Institute for our eleventh Summer 2020 Online Puppet Forum Series event on Facebook Live! These forums, hosted by Ballard Institute director and puppet historian John Bell, will consist of discussions with notable scholars and practitioners around the world about the past, present, and future of puppetry and puppetry studies.  

On August 13 at 4 p.m. ET, join Ballard Institute director John Bell and his UConn Puppet Arts colleague Dr. Matthew Cohen for “Wayang: Indonesian Puppet Traditions in Global Modernity.” They will discuss Dr. Cohen’s ongoing work as a historian and anthropologist of Southeast Asian theater and world puppetry, his training and practice as a dalang, or puppeteer in the Indonesian tradition, and his work as a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Yale University Art Gallery, where he has been researching and helping to curate the Dr. Walter Angst and Sir Henry Angest collection of over 20,000 Javanese rod puppets and shadow figures—the world’s largest collection of puppets.

Matthew Isaac Cohen is a professor in the Department of Dramatic Arts at the University of Connecticut. His research concerns Indonesian performing arts, traditions of puppetry in global modernity, and international theatre.  He is currently working on a visual history of Indonesian puppetry which takes as its primary source material the Dr. Walter Angst and Sir Henry Angest Collection of Indonesian Puppets at Yale University Art Gallery, the largest wayang collection in the world and the largest collection of puppets in North America. He also performs wayang on occasion under the company banner Kanda Buwana. Before arriving at UConn in August 2019, he was professor of international theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he was the founding director of the Centre for Asian Theatre and Dance and an active contributor to the UK’s puppetry scene.