Continuing to explore the rich legacy of Chinese performing arts in the United States presented in Red Gate: Pauline Benton and Chinese Shadow Theater, the Ballard Institute’s Spring Puppet Forum series will open this Wednesday at 7:30 with a special performance of classic Chinese handpuppetry by Margaret Moody’s celebrated Galapagos Puppet Theater from Boston. The Galapagos company will perform The Banana Princess, an episode from the classic Chinese epic The Journey to the West.
In the 1930s Pauline Benton’s Red Gate Players performed the same story themselves, with shadow figures, under the title Mountain of Fiery Tongues. The story, as Galapagos Puppet Theater tells it, concerns the travelling monk Tang and his retinue of colorful and magically endowed disciples, who find their path to India blocked by a blazing fire mountain. Only a magical fan owned by the powerful Banana Princess can put out the fire–but she doesn’t want to lend it. The disciples use their magical powers of transformation and persuasion in a struggle to win the fan.
Margaret Moody’s expertise in Chinese handpuppet performance stems from her three years of study with master puppeteer Li Tien-lu of Taiwan; a video she made for the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts about the famous Monkey King (one of Tang’s disciples) can be seen here.
This rare performance of Taiwanese Chang Chung Hsi (“theater of the palm of the hand”) will be an eye-opening introduction to Chinese handpuppetry, and a rich complement to the equally impressive display of Red Gate Chinese shadow figures now on display at the Ballard Museum.
Like all Spring Puppet Forum series events, this performance of Galapagos Puppet Theater is free and open to the public. The Ballard Museum will be open for viewing an hour before showtime, and refreshments will be served at the event.
The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut’s Depot Campus announces its Spring Puppet Forum Series, to be held Wednesday evenings from 7:30 to 9:30 at the Ballard Institute (except for the April 25th event, to be held at UConn’s Nafe Katter Theater). The Spring Puppet Forum Series will include puppet performances, talks on puppetry and teaching, and new films for puppet theater by UConn graduate Puppet Arts students and professional puppeteers from around the United States.
The schedule for the Spring Puppet Forum Series includes the following events:
1. Wednesday, April 11: Galapagos Puppets, The Banana Princess
Join us for an evening of traditional Chinese handpuppet theater as Margaret Moody and Madeleine Beresford of Boston’s Galapagos Puppets perform The Banana Princess, an episode from the epic Chinese classic Journey to the West. Margaret Moody’s expertise in Chinese handpuppet performance stems from her three years of study with master puppeteer Li Tien-lu of Taiwan.
In The Banana Princessthe travelling monk Tang and his disciples find their path to India blocked by a blazing fire mountain. Only a magical fan owned by the powerful Banana Princess can put out the fire, but she doesn’t want to lend it. The disciples use their powers of transformation and persuasion before finally winning the fan.
This rare performance of Taiwanese Chang Chung Hsi (“theater of the palm of the hand”) will be an eye-opening introduction to Chinese handpuppetry, and a rich complement to the current exhibition of Chinese shadow puppets (Red Gate: Pauline Benton and Chinese Shadow Theater) now on display at the Ballard Museum.
2. Wednesday, April 18: Carol Sterling, Puppetry in Education: New Opportunities
Join Carol Sterling and students and teachers from UConn’s Puppet Arts Program for a fascinating discussion of the opportunities and challenges of puppetry in education. Carol Sterling is a celebrated puppeteer, art educator, and longtime Director of Arts in Education for the Brooklyn Arts Council, as well as a recipient of the Distinguished Service Award for Arts Education from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
3. Wednesday, April 25: New Works in Puppet Film from UConn’s Puppet Arts Program*
See exciting new works in puppet film by graduate students from UConn’s famed Puppet Arts Program: Ki Hong Kim, Maya Ahuja, Travis Lope, Caitlin Shirts and Fergus Walsh. This event is co-sponsored by the Ballard Institute and the UConn Puppet Arts Program. (*Please note: this event will be help in the Nafe Katter Theater on UConn’s Main Campus.)
4. Wednesday, May 9: Heather Henson presents Handmade Puppet Dreams V
Join us for a rare showing of 14 new, awe-inspiring, short, live-action puppet films from the latest edition of the acclaimed Handmade Puppet Dreams series, presented by Heather Henson and Ibex Inc. This touring festival of independent artists’ films explores innovative puppetry captured in spectacular real-time images, and will change your perception of puppetry in the 21st century.
The films of Handmade Puppet Dreams V include:
– Moonfishing (11:28), directed by David Michael Friend (Brooklyn, NY). A fisherman’s hobby of sculpting is interrupted when he must perform his monthly task of illuminating his town.
– Baby Trashes Bar in Las Palmas (1:21), directed by Johannes Nyholm (Sweden). A middle-aged lady on a holiday in the sun tries to make new friends and have a good time.
– Dirty Night Clowns (4:54), directed by Ryan Gibeau (Brooklyn, NY). We all have our childhood fears, and this short film explores one puppet’s reaction to an intruder in his house, discovering that what at first seems scary can sometimes be unexpectedly pleasant. .
– I’ll Forget You (3:16), directed by Natasha Pincus (Melbourne, Australia). A single-shot music video that tells a story symbolic of that told in the song I’LL FORGET YOU. The ‘lovers’ in the video are continually brought together and pulled apart until the man concedes to continue living as he had started out – on his own.
– InnerCity (8:21), directed by Alain Fournier (Quebec Canada). A boy with only pigeons for company tries to seduce his remote neighbor with wacky inventions.
– Nolan’s Cheddar (1:29), directed by John Nolan (London, England). A curious rat meets his untimely demise when he finds cheese in a trap. Or does he…?
– Douce Dame (4:34), directed by Bradley Kemp (NYC, NY). A young painter, obsessed with his muse, continually paints a memory of her… until she lures him away.
– Rocket Monkey (7:58), directed by Gwendolyn Warnock and Kirjan Waage (NYC, NY). Based on rocket launchings of animals in the 1930’s and 1940’s comes a story about our first space explorers.
– Wye Oak(4:40), directed by Katherine Fahey and Michael O’Leary (Baltimore, MA). Paintings by Katherine Fahey and photography by Michael O’Leary illustrate Wye Oak’s song “Fish”.
–Magical Sniffy Thing (2:54), directed by Jamie Shannon (Toronto, Canada). When you’re lost and hungry, make a wish to meet the Magical Sniffy Thing.
– Junk Palace (14:17), directed by Lyon Hill (Columbia, SC). Using elaborate paper puppets, Junk Palace takes you into the world of real-life hoarders the Collyer brothers and imagines what life was like for these unique individuals.
– Time Machine(4:52), directed by Vincent Bova (NYC, NY). Fafa builds a time machine and his dear friend Mario deals with the ripple effects on the space-time continuum.
– The Curse (5:05), directed by Liam Hurley (NYC, NY). The Curse is a waltz with a love story between an archaeologist and her mummy.
– Higgley Pigglety Pop! (24:00), directed by Chris Lavis and Maciaek Szczerbowski (Montreal, Canada). Based on the Maurice Sendak children’s book of the same title, this short film tells the fictional adventures of a dog named Jennie. Featuring the voices of Meryl Streep, Forest Whitaker and Spike Jonze.
Join us Saturday night, January 21st at 8 p.m. in the Studio Theater on UConn’s Main Campus to experience the Spring 2012 UConn Puppet Slam! See exciting new works by celebrated puppeteers from the Northeast, as well as new creations by emerging artists from UConn’s famed Puppet Arts Program.
The UConn Puppet Slam will include Lindsay McCaw and Adam Cook, who, as The Dolly Wagglers, will perform Polka Your Finger Out Polka (a cantastoria or picture performance) and Everything In Moderation All at Once (a cranky); Rose Friedman and Justin Lander of Vermont’s Modern Times Theater, performing The City, a toy theater show based on a story by Herman Hesse; Jim Napolitano (of Nappy’s Puppets) performing one his famed shadow puppet shows; and works by students from the renowned University of Connecticut Puppet Arts Program, including Carianne Hoff, Nicole Hartigan (joined by special guest performer Ryan Hartigan), Anna Fitzgerald, Leah Sylvain, Seth Shaffer and Kali Therrien.
Modern Times Theater
This event is free and open to the public–tell your friends, and better yet bring them with you for an exciting evening of surprising innovation and thought-provoking artistry. For directions to the Studio Theater see this site. The UConn Puppet Slams are supported by a generous grant from the Puppet Slam Network.
As part of its year-long “World of Puppetry in Hartford” project the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, Mi Casa Family Service & Education Center, and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art will present a free performance of Mi Casa es Su Casaon Saturday, February 11 as part of the Wadsworth Atheneum’s Second Saturdays for Families series. The entire Second Saturday event begins at 10 a.m. and ends at 12:30. Mi Casa es Su Casa will begin at 11:30. The Wadsworth Atheneum is located at 600 Main Street in Hartford.
The workshops and performance are all part of the Ballard Institute’s yearlong “World of Puppetry in Hartford” project, a series of exhibitions, workshops and performances dedicated to spreading the word about puppetry in Hartford, in collaboration with the UConn Health Center, the Mark Twain House and Museum, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and Billings Forge Community Works.
For more information see the Wadsworth Atheneum webpage for this event.
This project has been made possible by the generous assistance of the Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation and Judith Zachs.
If you have not yet had a chance to see our exhibition Frank Ballard: An Odyssey of a Life in Puppetry, we invite you to spend some time during the next two weekends at the Ballard Museum because it will be closing December 18th, 2011. Frank Ballard: An Odyssey of a Life on Puppetry is paired with our second exhibition, Frank Ballard: Roots and Branches, which will be on display when the spring 2012 season begins. The museum is open for visitors Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays 12-5 p.m.–please come by to see both exhibits, and to find some holiday gifts in our museum store. The Ballard Museum will reopen Sunday, March 25, 2012 with the return of Frank Ballard: Roots and Branches, and the premiere of a new exhibit of Chinese shadow puppets from the collection of 1930s and 40s puppet pioneer Pauline Benton.
String puppets from Roots and Branches exhibition. Photo by Richard Termine
Frank Ballard: An Odyssey of a Life in Puppetry
Frank Ballard’s rich career as a director, designer, and teacher is celebrated in this retrospective curated by UConn alumna Rolande Duprey. The exhibition presents the stories, designs, construction processes, and performance of Ballard’s many productions, including rare video footage, as well as the many personal challenges Ballard faced in his career. Featuring puppets and sets from The Bluebird, Two By Two, H.M.S. Pinafore, The Magic Flute,Peer Gynt, The Golden Cockerel and other productions.
Join us this Wednesday, November 30, at 3 p.m. at UConn’s Nafe Katter Theater for The Art of the Frouds.
This presentation by Brian, Wendy, and Toby Froud will explore their work illuminating the realm of Faeries and other mystical beings, in their own publications and in collaboration with Jim Henson in The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and Jim Henson’s Storyteller series. It precedes the December 2nd opening of their exhibition The Art of the Frouds at the Animazing Gallery in New York City.
Brian Froud is the renowned author and illustrator of more than 30 publications which explore and illuminate the realm of the Faeries and other mystical beings. Collaborating with Jim Henson, Brian Froud created the worlds and characters of The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, and contributed to Henson’s Storyteller series.
Wendy Midener Froud is a life-long doll maker, sculptor and puppet fabricator. Jim Henson, recognizing her exceptional abilities, hired her to create the characters of “Jen” and “Kira” for The Dark Crystal. She also fabricated “Yoda” for Star Wars and the Goblins for Labyrinth. Her polymer sculpted faerie figures have been exhibited throughout the world, leading to many publications revealing the stories of her characters, as well as the methods of their creation.
Toby Froud, first seen as the infant “Toby” in Labyrinth, has been surrounded and nurtured in the creative lives of his parents. He has apprenticed in the Muppet Workshop, worked with WETA in New Zealand as a sculptor/fabricator on The Chronicles of Narnia and King Kong and created for numerous theatre and television productions. Most recently, Toby has contributed to Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour and Laika Entertainment’s pending ParaNorman.
The event is sponsored by UConn Puppet Arts Program, Digital Media Center, Department of Dramatic Arts, and the Ballard Institute.
The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry’s 2011 Fall Forum series will feature talks with and by significant American scholars and puppeteers on Wednesday and Friday evenings from November 18th through December 7th. Fall Forum speakers include Erminio Pinque, Dan Butterworth, John Emigh, Richard Termine and Bart Roccoberton. This season’s forums are designed to complement the Ballard Institute’s current exhibitions devoted to Frank Ballard, the founder of the UConn Puppetry Program and namesake of the Institute.
All Fall Forum talks will start at 7:30 p.m. at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry on the University of Connecticut’s Depot Campus, and are free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. The Fall Forum series includes the following presentations:
Friday, November 18: “Puppetry and Mask Performance Off Stage and Out of Bounds: Creature Theatre in a Human Landscape” with Erminio Pinque of Big Nazo
Creature creations by Big Nazo.
The series begins on Friday, November 18 with Erminio Pinque, the founder and director of Big Nazo, the Providence, Rhode Island-based international performance group of visual artists, puppet performers, and masked musicians who unite to create bizarre and hilarious larger-than-life sized characters, environments, and spectacles.
Wednesday, November 30: “Puppet Work with Inuit in the Far North” by Dan Butterworth
Based in Pascoag, Rhode Island, Dan Butterworth makes intricately hand carved puppets in a unique cacophony of puppet styles and genres. Dan and his puppets have performed in movies, operas, classical music festivals and TV specials. On Wednesday, November 30 at the Ballard Institute, Dan will speak about his recent work with Inuit people in the Arctic preserving ancient oral stories using marionettes made from native materials. He will also discuss his work inventing “Wheelchair Theaters”: mobile effects platforms using wheelchairs, which he has performed in hospitals, schools, and with veterans groups.
Friday, December 2: John Emigh on Southeast Asian Puppetry
John Emigh thanking his audience at a Balinese Topeng performance.
On Friday, December 2, internationally renowned theater historian John Emigh of Brown University will discuss the influence of Southeast Asian puppetry on American puppet traditions of the 20th and 21st century. Julie Taymor, Bread and Puppet Theater, San Francisco’s Larry Reed, and Frank Ballard himself were all affected by the stunning power and cultural significance of South Asian puppet traditions, which have seeped into their work and that of many other puppeteers. Professor Emigh, himself a brilliant student of Balinese Topeng masked dance, will trace these connections and their importance to modern American culture.
Wednesday, December 7: Symposium on the work of Frank Ballard, with Bart Roccoberton, Richard Termine, and UConn Puppet Alumni
On the occasion of the late Frank Ballard’s 82nd birthday, Wednesday, December 7, former students and colleagues of this influential puppet master will meet to talk about Professor Ballard’s work and its significance. Join UConn Puppet Arts Program head Bart Roccoberton; celebrated Sesame Street puppeteer and New York Times photographer Richard Termine, and members of UConn’s large network of Puppet Alumni in a discussion of Frank Ballard’s influences, teaching, performance style, and production methods.
Kenneth Gross author of the just-published book Puppet: an Essay on Uncanny Life, and Liza Lorwin co-conceiver, adaptor of Mabou Mines’s Peter and Wendy, hold an open conversation about puppets and puppet theater.
Gross is Professor of English at the University of Rochester and author of The Dream of the Moving Statue and Shakespeare’s Noise; he has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEH, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Lorwin has worked in experimental theater in New York since 1979. The OBIE Award-winning Peter and Wendy premiered at Spoleto Festival USA in 1996 and was part of the Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater that year. Its most recent production was at New Victory Theater in 2011.
Of Gross’s new book, whose publication this event helps to celebrate, Basil Jones, co-founder of the Handspring Puppet Company, writes: “The book is the site of a constant flow of sharp observations and insights. It is part of the exciting exchange of ideas about objects in performance that is having a positive influence on the practitioners of contemporary theatre in general and puppeteers in particular.”
John Bell, Director of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, will introduce Gross and Lorwin.
Wednesday, October 26, 4:00 p.m., in the Upper Level Conference Room of the UConn Co-op, 2075 Hillside Road, on UConn’s Main Campus. Google Map
Join us on Saturday, September 17 on UConn’s Main Campus in Storrs for the Fall 2011 UConn Puppet Slam–an exciting array of bold new works for puppet theater by vibrant puppet artists from New York City, Boston, and the University of Connecticut!
The Ballard Institute and UConn’s Puppet Arts Program will host the Fall 2011 UConn Puppet Slam on Saturday, September 17 at 8 p.m. in the Studio Theater of UConn’s School of Dramatic Arts, on 820 Bolton Road in Storrs, Connecticut.
Video by Lani Asuncion from a 2010 Puppet Slam
This UConn Puppet Slam will feature the following artists:
–Jenny Romaine of Great Small Works: “La Ciudad: Magic Box of New York City”
Puppet building workshop for 2010 Celebrate Mansfield Parade.
We invite YOU to join the Ballard Institute and the Mansfield Downtown Partnership on Saturday and Sunday, September 17 and 18, to build puppets celebrating Mansfield’s history; and then to parade with us the following Sunday, September 25 in the Ballard Institute contingent of the 2011 Celebrate Mansfield Parade, which starts at noon.
Our free puppet workshop sessions will once again be lead by nationally acclaimed puppeteer Sara Peattie of Boston’s Puppeteers Cooperative, and will be open to one and all–children, adults, and senior citizens. The workshops will take place Saturday, September 17 and Sunday, September 18 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 2 p.m. – 5 p.m. each day, in the Arts and Crafts Room of the Mansfield Community Center, on 4 South Eagleville Road in downtown Mansfield. Workshop participants can drop in anytime during the day to take part in the design and creation of puppets, masks, banners, and other parading elements. We will once again collaborate with Ann Galonska of the Mansfield Historical Society to choose images, characters, and stories reflecting the rich history of Mansfield.
Matt Weathers on stilts in the Ballard Institute contingent of the 2010 Celebrate Mansfield Parade.
The following Sunday, September 25, we need YOU–children, adults, and senior citizens–to help us parade with the puppets we have made as a colorful and vibrant contingent of the Celebrate Mansfield Parade. We will meet at at 11:00 a.m. at the Storrs-Mansfield Post Office (2 South Eagleville Road Extension) for the parade, which will start at 12 noon and end about 25 minutes later in front E. O. Smith High School, where Mansfield’s Festival on the Green will be held. The whole parade is less than a mile long.
For more information or to register for the workshops and parade, please contact the Partnership at 860 429 2740 or by email at mdp@mansfieldct.org.
Continuing to explore the rich legacy of Chinese performing arts in the United States presented in Red Gate: Pauline Benton and Chinese Shadow Theater, the Ballard Institute’s Spring Puppet Forum series will open this Wednesday at 7:30 with a special performance of classic Chinese handpuppetry by Margaret Moody’s celebrated Galapagos Puppet Theater from Boston. The Galapagos company will perform The Banana Princess, an episode from the classic Chinese epic The Journey to the West.
Join us this Wednesday, November 30, at 3 p.m. at UConn’s 
