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

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.

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.

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.