As part of the 2022 Fall Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host “Maurice Sendak and the World of Puppetry” with panelists Jonathan Weinberg, Lynn Caponera, Tyler Fallas, and Nick Kraczyna on Thursday, Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. ET. This forum will take place on Zoom (registration required) and Facebook Live and will be available afterwards on the Ballard Institute’s Facebook page and YouTube Channel. 

Although Maurice Sendak was not a puppeteer, he understood the nature of puppetry’s never-ending fascination with objects, images, movement, music, and text, and how the creation of those combinations with a collaborative team of artists can make puppets come alive. This forum, moderated by Ballard Institute Interim Co-Director Matt Sorensen, will feature Jonathan Weinberg, Lynn Caponera, and Tyler Fallas of The Maurice Sendak Foundation, as well as Nick Kraczyna, husband of the exhibition’s prominently featured artist, the late Amy Luckenbach, to look at the various ways Sendak designed, collected, and collaborated with puppets and puppet productions. This forum is co-sponsored by The Maurice Sendak Foundation.

Forum Speakers

Jonathan Weinberg, Ph.D. is a painter, art historian and curator. He is Curator of the Maurice Sendak Foundation. He is the author of several books including Pier Groups: Art and Sex Along the New York Waterfront and Ambition and Love in American Art. He is the recipient of numerous grants, residencies and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship.  He was the lead curator for the touring exhibition Art After Stonewall, 1969-89 organized by the Columbus Museum of Art to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in 2019. He is the curator of Wild Things Are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak, which opens at The Columbus Museum of Art that runs from October 21, 2022-March 12, 2023. An exhibition of his GENESIS window paintings and prints is on view at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven until January.

Lynn Caponera President of the Board and Executive Director of The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Lynn met Maurice when he and Dr. Eugene Glynn moved to Ridgefield Ct in 1971.  Lynn spent her childhood at the Sendak / Glynn household helping in the garden playing with the dogs and modeling for Maurice for numerous books.  At 19 she moved in as caretaker and companion. Over the years she took on a more rigorous role in Maurice’s professional and personal life till his death in 2012.

Swietlan Nicholas Kraczyna is a painter/printmaker of Russian origin, raised in Poland and Germany, educated in the United States, and resident of Florence, Italy, since 1964. Best known for his multi-plate color etchings, his artwork can be found in private collections and galleries around the world, as well as in the Uffizi Gallery’s Permanent Collection of Prints and Drawings in Florence.Since graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1962, Kraczyna has held over 158 solo exhibitions across five continents. In 1963 he met and married Amy Luckenbach while studying for his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Southern Illinois. He has been Artist in Residence at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH (1988); Palacky University in Olomouc, CZ (1992); and Syracuse University in Syracuse, NY (2007-2008).

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and the UConn Puppet Arts Program will present the 2022 UConn Fall Puppet Slam in person on Friday, Oct. 21, 2022 at 7:30 p.m. in UConn’s von der Mehden Recital Hall, located at 875 Coventry Rd, Storrs, Conn. 06269. The UConn Fall Puppet Slam will feature short works by professional puppeteers and performers from around New England, including Cabot Parsons and Anatar Marmol-Gagne, as well as new works by UConn Puppet Arts students.

The 2022 UConn Fall Puppet Slam will showcase the work of Cabot Parsons, a New York-based visual theater artist and puppeteer who will perform Gemma’s Share, which tells the story of a sheltered suburban housewife who emotionally unravels in a twelve-step meeting at the state of the world. Anatar Marmol-Gagne, a puppeteer and UConn Puppet Arts alumna from New Haven, Conn. will present Sueños, an autobiographical story about a little girl arriving in a foreign land and her struggle to find her place in this world. The UConn Fall Puppet Slam will also feature new works by UConn graduate and undergraduate students from the university’s Puppet Arts Program. Funding for the UConn Fall Puppet Slam is made possible in part by the Puppet Slam Network.

The UConn Fall Puppet Slam is free and open to the public; donations are greatly appreciated. Seating is limited and is on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors open at 7:00 p.m. The event will take place in UConn’s von der Mehden Recital Hall located at 875 Coventry Rd, Storrs, Conn. For directions to the von der Mehden Recital Hall, visit vdm.uconn.edu. These performances are recommended for mature audiences. For more information about these performances or if you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact Ballard Institute staff at 860-486-8580 or bimp@uconn.edu.

In conjunction with its exhibition Swing into Action: Maurice Sendak and the World of Puppetry, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry will offer an afternoon of free tours and performances. Join Ballard Institute Interim Co-Director Matt Sorensen for free exhibit tours at noon, 2:00 p.m., and 4:00 p.m. UConn Puppet Arts graduate students Abigail Baird and Jaron Hollander present a brief toy theater performance based on Maurice Sendak’s 1993 book, We Are All in the Dumps With Jack and Guy on Oct. 8 at 1:00 p.m., 3:00 p.m., and 5:00 p.m. 

Abigail Baird is a tenacious and dedicated arts educator, director, choreographer, and acrobatic-actor. Her most notable and successful artistic creation is Aerial Animation, a modern adaptation of silent film storytelling which competed through the semifinals on America’s Got Talent and La France a un Incroyable Talent. For over a decade Abigail was the Creative Director of Educational Programming at Kinetic Arts Center in Oakland, California for ten years. She has a self-designed BFA in technical theatre, sculpture and puppetry from the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico. She is returning to her roots to study puppetry at UConn as a graduate student.

Jaron Aviv Hollander is a circus and theater performer, director, teacher, and now a student at UConn to pursue an MFA in puppet arts. He is the founding Artistic Director (now emeritus) of Kinetic Arts Center, a circus center in Oakland where he has been teaching and directing circus for 12 years. He is also known as the co-creator and co-performer of “The Submarine Show” an internationally award-winning, critically acclaimed physical comedy. His 30-year career includes performing in Cirque Du Soleil, The Aurora Theatre, Make*A*Circus and Impact Theatre, to name a few. Jaron has a BA in theatre from the University of California Santa Cruz and studied at Dell’arte School of Physical Theatre, The San Francisco Circus Center (under master Lu Yi) and Circo Arts New Zealand.

Swing into Action, created in partnership with The Maurice Sendak Foundation, looks at the various ways Sendak designed, collected, and collaborated with puppets and puppet productions, from his childhood days making mechanical toys with his brother, to his collections of Mickey Mouse memorabilia, his inventive collaborations with puppeteer Amy Luckenbach, his puppet designs for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Mozart Opera Goose of Cairo, and the way Sendak’s book inspired Sonny Gerasimowicz’s creatures for Spike Jonze’s film Where the Wild Things Are. 

Reservations are not required. Masks are recommended but not required. 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.

As a special Fall Online Puppet Forum event, in conjunction with its current exhibition Swing Into Action: Maurice Sendak and the World of Puppetry, the Ballard Institute will present “Spike Jonze, Maurice Sendak, and the World of Puppetry,” a discussion with the famed director of Where the Wild Things Are, Being John Malkovich, and other acclaimed films, including Tell Them Anything You Want, a documentary portrait of Sendak. In conversation with Ballard Institute director John Bell, Jonze discusses his artistic relationship with Maurice Sendak, the making of his film Where the Wild Things Are, his other film work that incorporates puppets and objects, and the nature of objects in performance. This Puppet Forum will be available online on the Ballard Institute’s Facebook page and YouTube channel, beginning Sept. 22, at 7 p.m.

Spike Jonze’s arms, legs, head, shoes, teeth, and thoughts are copyrighted and controlled by Universal Comcast Disney Corporation trademark 2019. He’s a Fulbright scholar, an MIT Media Lab guest, and half a MacArthur genius. He’s made 84 movies and three birthday cakes and has cried at 32% of the movie trailers on YouTube. He’s not allowed in the city of Vancouver.

Swing Into Action, on display at the Ballard Institute Wednesday-Friday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday-Sunday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Dec. 16, 2022, looks at the various ways Sendak designed, collected, and collaborated with puppets and puppet productions, from his childhood days making mechanical toys with his brother, to his collections of Mickey Mouse memorabilia, his inventive collaborations with puppeteer Amy Luckenbach, his puppet designs for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Mozart Opera Goose of Cairo, and the way Sendak’s book inspired Sonny Gerasimowicz’s creatures for Spike Jonze’s film Where the Wild Things Are.

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will present two performances of Migraciones / Migrations by Paradox Teatro on Saturday, August 20 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, August 21 at 2 p.m. In addition, Paradox Teatro will lead a puppet building and performance workshop on Saturday, Aug. 20 from 1-3 p.m. All events will take place at the Ballard Institute Theater located at 1 Royce Circle, Storrs, CT 06268.  

Migraciones / Migrations follows a photojournalist’s journey to learn the story of refugees migrating across sand, water, and shadows. The theme of migrations in the production is informed by the increasing border conflicts between the Paradox Teatro co-founders’ home countries, the United States and Mexico. This performance creates a unique layering of hybrid body puppets, sand drawings, and shadow puppetry projections to reveal each character’s search for a new home. These visual mediums are scored by live music and poetry in English and Spanish so that Migraciones / Migrations can communicate with audiences across languages and cultures. To learn more about the performances and purchase tickets, visit bimp.ticketleap.com/migraciones/.

Paradox Teatro will also lead a two-hour workshop to demonstrate techniques and technologies for sand drawing and shadow puppetry on light tables, as well as camera techniques for large-scale video projection in live performance. Spaces for the workshop are limited. Registration is $15/person. To reserve a spot, visit bimp.ticketleap.com/paradox-workshop/. 

Paradox Teatro is a multidisciplinary performing arts company founded in 2017 by Artistic Co-Directors Sofía Padilla and Davey T Steinman. They have toured performances and taught artistic residencies in Europe, United States, and Mexico.

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.

Paradox Teatro’s visit is funded in part by the Mexican Coinversiones Grant from the Sistema de Apoyos a la Creación y Proyectos Culturales, the Jim Henson Foundation, and the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies.