This Summer, The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry will once again be presenting puppet shows for all ages performed by students from the famed UConn Puppet Arts Program.

Every Saturday from June 29th to July 27th at 3 pm, join us for these exciting and unique presentations.

Performances will take place at The Puppet Arts Complex (as the Thompson Building on this map) down the street from The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry on UConn’s Depot Campus off US-44.

Seth Shaffer will perform Dick Myers’ Cinderella

June 29th, 3 pm: Puppet Arts Family Friendly Potpourri! Vignettes from current Puppet Arts students including “The Fluff Catillion,” a meow-velous toy theater by Dana Samorski and Carianne Hoff, and “The Most Beautiful Tree” a toy theater production by Anna Fitzgerald.

July 6th, 3pm: Seth Shaffer performs Dick Myers’ Cinderella with Myers’ unique rod puppets. Come early or stay late and check out the Dick Myers exhibition at The Ballard Museum.

July 13th, 3pm: Xing Xin’s Shadow Show. Xing Xin Liu’s original pieces of shadow theater, inspired by her studies with Chinese Shadow Puppet masters.

July 20th, 3pm: Seth Shaffer performs Dick Myers’ Beauty and the Beast with Myers’ unique rod puppets. Come early or stay late and check out the Dick Myers exhibition at The Ballard Museum.

July 27th, 3pm: Sarah Nolen’s Tales from the Woods including her shadow puppet performance of “Lisa the Wise.”

 

Performances are $5  for Adults and $3 for children. Come early or stay late to see the current exhibitions at The Ballard Museum.

A Toy Theater by Dana Samborski and Carianne Hoff

 

Back in February our UConn Winter Puppet Slam was thwarted by snow. Thankfully, Spring is here and the event–now the UConn Spring Puppet Slam is back on for Friday May 3rd at 8pm.

The show will take place at a new location: the Palace Theater in Stafford, Connecticut, a few miles from the UConn Main Campus. Tickets are $5. You can buy them in advance here.

Our UConn Spring Puppet Slam performers will include Great Small Works, performing their toy theater spectacle Living Newspaper; Jana Zeller, performing a hand-puppet excerpt from her Spybird Theater production Eye of the Storm;  Jim Napolitano presenting a dynamic shadow theater show; and Puppet Arts students  Anna Fitzgerald, Carianne Hoff, Seth Shaffer, Dana Samborski, and Sarah Nolen all presenting new works for puppet and mask theater.  Join us for this exciting event!

Tony De Nonno and a Sicilian marionette. Photo courtesy Tony De Nonno.

Join us Wednesday, March 13 at 7:30 p.m. at the Ballard Institute to welcome producer-writer-director Tony De Nonno in a celebration of the Manteo Family Sicilian marionette tradition, which for many decades in the early 20th century was a hallmark of New York City’s cultural life.   De Nonno’s lecture, presentation, and marionette demonstration will feature live performances of the colorful and vivid Sicilian marionette tradition, as well as a screening of De Nonno’s film about the Manteo Family, It’s One Family: Knock on Wood.

Showcasing the extraordinary power of Sicilian marionettes with puppets from the Manteo Family collection, De Nonno will take us on an enlightening journey into the life and legacy of puppeteers Mike and Aida Manteo and their children and grandchildren, a family bound together by a Sicilian folk tradition that spans a century in America, from the moment when the Manteo Marionette Theater was first established on Mulberry Street in Manhattan’s Little Italy in 1918.

Aida Manteo Grillo with Orlando, hero of Sicilian puppetry. Photo courtesy Tony De Nonno.

De Nonno’s presentation will engage the audience as active participants to marvel at the marionettes, resplendent in their suits of armor, who will strut, walk, talk and engage in battle-ready combat stances with chivalrous aplomb.

De Nonno will then introduce It’s One Family: Knock on Wood, his award-winning, nationally broadcast PBS Network documentary about the Manteos.

“I am looking forward to sharing this magnificent and enduring art form with everyone in attendance at the Ballard Museum of Puppetry,” Mr. De Nonno has said; “and especially revealing to them how the glorious Sicilian Marionette tradition contributed greatly to the birth of literature, history and so much more. It will be a joyous and memorable experience for all.”

This event is free, and donations are greatly appreciated.  Refreshments will be served.  For directions to the Ballard Institute see this link.

For more info about Tony De Nonno please visit: www.denonnoproductions.com.

The Ballard Institute’s popular Puppet Forum programs about contemporary issues in the world of puppetry will take place on Wednesday evenings at 7:30 (except for Sunday, March 30) through May 1.  Most will take place at the Ballard Institute on UConn’s Depot Campus, except where noted. The schedule of other Spring Puppet Forums includes the following:

The People’s Puppets of the Occupy Wall Street Puppet Guild on Times Square.

– Wednesday, February 13: “Activist Puppet Theater and the Occupy Movement”, with Joseph Therrien (UConn Puppet Arts 2012), of the Occupy Wall Street Puppet Guild.

 

 

 

 

Seth Hunter and some of his digital puppets.

– Wednesday, February 27: “Innovations in Digital Puppetry”, with Seth Hunter, MIT Media Lab.  In this forum Seth will provide insight into the best practices and guidelines for designers and artists interested in incorporating digital assets for live animation, performance, and storytelling purposes.   This forum is co-sponsored by the UConn Digital Media Center, and will take place in Room 228 of the Art Building on UConn’s Main Campus.  See this linkfor directions.**

– Wednesday, March 13: “Sicilian Marionette Theater in New York City”, Tony DeNonno and his film It’s One Family Knock on Wood, about the famed Manteo family and their storefront puppet theater and traditional Sicilian marionette shows on New York City’s Lower East Side.

 

 

– Saturday, March 30: “Exceptional and Uncommon: the Puppetry of Dick Myers”, with Allelu Kurten and Seth Shaffer, on the occasion of the opening of the Ballard Museum and its two new exhibitions: Strings, Rods, and Robots: Recent Acquisitions, and  Exceptional and Uncommon: The Puppetry of Dick Myers.

 

 

 

 

A scene from Kara Walker’s 2004 shadow puppet film “Testimony.”

– Wednesday, April 17: “Women on the Verge: Visual Artists Approaching Puppetry”, with famed New York puppeteer and performance artist Theodora Skipitares.  This talk will consider Kiki Smith, Kara Walker, Cao Fei, and Janine Antoni: women visual artists who “suddenly find themselves working with puppets, even though they often won’t admit that’s what they’re doing.”  This forum is co-sponsored by the UConn Art + Art History Department, and the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program.

**Please note:  “Women on the Verge: Visual Artists Approaching Puppetry” will take place in The Pit in the Art + Art History Building on UConn’s Main Campus.  See this link for directions.**

The Spring Puppet Forum Series is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.  The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry is at 6 Bourn Place, Mansfield, Connecticut, just off Route 44, 2 miles south of Route 195. For more information see bimp.uconn.edu or contact bimp@uconn.edu.

Join us on selected Friday evenings this fall for exciting and scintillating discussions about the complex, colorful, and thought-provoking world of puppetry around the globe–from Hartford to Mexico City, from New York City to Java–as performers, playwrights, filmmakers, artists, and scholars appear in our compelling Fall Puppet Forum series.  All forum presentations begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Ballard Institute on UConn’s Depot Campus.  **The Eric Bass Forum will be in the Puppet Arts Complex on Depot Campus

— Friday, October 12, Winnie Lambrecht, Los Cueto: Four Generations of Puppeteers: The History of a Family of Mexican Artists

Filmmaker and Rhode Island School of Design Senior Lecturer Winnie Lambrecht presents her film about the Cueto family of puppeteers from Mexico City, who over four generations, from the 1930s to the present, have been inventing and performing puppet shows and training puppeteers to create the modern face of Mexican puppetry.

— Friday, October 19, Sumarsam, Cultural Encounters: Javanese Puppetry and the West

Gamelan musician, amateur dalang, and Wesleyan University Professor of Music Sumarsam will discuss the fascinating and complex relationships between traditional Javanese puppetry and the West, based on Professor Sumarsam’s extensive research and personal experience.

— Friday, November 2: Anne Cubberly, How I Became the Puppet Lady: Art Performance, and Giant Puppets

Hartford visual artist and puppeteer Anne Cubberly talks about her work in kinetic sculpture, installation art, parades, and performance.

— Friday, November 16: Eric Bass, Cross-Cultural Connections in Puppet Theater

Eric Bass, co-founder and director of Vermont’s Sandglass Theater, is an internationally renowned puppeteer whose innovations in puppet and object design, manipulation, and dramaturgy have garnered multiple awards and honors in Europe and the United States. He will talk about the influence of such global puppet traditions as Japanese bunraku on contemporary western puppet theater.

**The Eric Bass Puppet Forum will be held in the Puppet Arts Complex on Depot Campus**

— Friday, November 30: Erik Ehn, Puppets and Extreme Violence: How They Withstand and What They Teach

Brown University professor and acclaimed playwright Erik Ehn will discuss his ongoing Soulographie project, a seventeen-part series of puppet plays about the history of the U.S. in the 20^th Century, from the point of view of its genocides.  It will be produced at La MaMa Theater in New York City this November.  Ehn conducts annual trips to Rwanda/Uganda, taking students and professionals in the field to study the history of these countries, and to explore the ways art is participating in recovery from violence.   He is also the producer the annual Arts in the One World conference at Brown University, which engages themes of art and social change. 

 

— Friday, December 7: Allelu Kurten, A Life in Puppetry

One of America’s most revered puppeteers, Allelu Kurten, will talk about her 50 years at the center of the development of United States puppetry, her work with husband John Kurten in the Kurten Puppets, with Jim Henson, Dick Myers, the Puppeteers of America, Bread and Puppet Theater, UNIMA (the Union Internationale de la Marionnette) and other fascinating aspects of American puppetry in which she has played a central role.

 

 

The Fall Forum Series is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.  Our current exhibitions–Red Gate: Pauline Benton and Chinese Shadow Theater and Frank Ballard: Roots and Branches–will be open to view immediately before and after the events.

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry is at 6 Bourn Place, Mansfield, Connecticut, just off Route 44, 2 miles south of Route 195.

For more information see bimp.uconn.edu or contact bimp@uconn.edu.