The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will once again offer fall community puppet-building workshops with acclaimed Boston puppeteer Sara Peattie, to design and build life-size and over-life-size puppets of Shakespeare characters for the Celebrate Mansfield Parade in downtown Storrs, Connecticut. These free workshops will take place Saturday and Sunday, September 10 and 11 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day at the Ballard Institute workshop space in Storrs Center. Workshop participants will be invited to parade with their puppets as part of the Celebrate Mansfield Parade on Sunday, September 18 at noon (Line-up begins at 11:00 AM at Farrell Field near the Post Office), and then help perform iconic Shakespeare monologues, dialogues, and fight scenes on the Town Square. The Parade is a part of the 13th Annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival.
As part of university-wide events celebrating the September exhibition of Shakespeare’s First Folio at UConn, this year’s puppet-building workshops will focus on the creation of eminent characters from Shakespeare’s tragedies and comedies. Which Shakespeare characters would you like to see larger than life in downtown Storrs? Romeo and Juliet? Hamlet? Lady Macbeth? Othello? Join us and Sara Peattie to realize your Shakespearean dreams! Published in 1623, the First Folio is the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, and only 235 copies are known today. This year, to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the Folger Shakespeare Library is sending a First Folio to every state in the United States, and UConn has been selected as the host site for Connecticut. Join us in September 1-25, 2016 in celebrating the greatest playwright of the English language with this exhibit from the world’s largest Shakespeare collection.
Celebrated in a recent front-page Boston Globe article as “the legendary keeper of one of the Back Bay’s best-kept secrets,” Sara Peattie and her dramatic puppet creations have been central features of community parades and pageants across the United States. Long a mainstay of Boston First Night festivities and the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in New York City, Sara Peattie’s work–through her Boston-based Puppeteers Cooperative company and Puppet Free Library–combines community participation; simple, cheap, and practical puppet-building techniques; and a brilliant design sense to allow community members of all ages to take part in the age-old pleasures of participatory puppet performance in public spaces.
No experience is necessary to participate in these free community puppet-building workshops with Sara Peattie. Minors must be accompanied by an adult. To register for the workshop, contact the Ballard Institute at bimp@uconn.edu or 860.486.8580.
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 13th Annual Celebrate Mansfield Festival, visit www.downtownstorrsfestival.org.
First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare, on tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library, is a national travelling exhibition organized by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, to commemorate the 400th anniversary in 2016 of Shakespeare’s death. It is produced in association with the American Library Association and Cincinnati Museum Center. First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare, on tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library, has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor, and by the support of Google.org, The Lord Browne of Madingley, Vinton and Sigrid Cerf, British Council, Stuart and Mimi Rose, Albert and Shirley Small, and other generous donors. To learn more about the First Folio at UConn, visit www.shakespeare.uconn.edu.
September 24: The Pirate, the Princess and the Pea by Crabgrass Puppet Theatre
October 15: Rumpelstilskin by Dream Tale Puppets
November 5: The Doubtful Sprout by Liz Joyce & A Couple of Puppets
December 3: The Snowflake Man by Puppetkabob
Ana Crăciun-Lambru is a Romanian puppeteer, actress, and director currently living in the United States. In Romania, she worked as a freelance puppeteer and actress since 2007. Her work included commedia dell’arte and puppet theatre performances, and she collaborated with dancers from the National Bucharest Opera in various contemporary dance productions. In 2013 Ana participated with her group, Uninvented Theatre, in Romania’s Got Talent and brought new ideas to the local puppetry scene. In the United States Ana performed in Goblin Market (Connecticut Repertory Theatre) and in The Puppetmaster of Lodz (UConn Dramatic Arts Department). Other credits include: shadow master for Band of the Black Hand (Connecticut Repertory Theatre), puppeteer for L’enfant et les sortilèges, Noah’s Ark, and Hansel and Gretel (UConn Opera), puppeteer for Puppets Take the Pops (Boston Pops Orchestra), dancer and puppeteer for Gladys-A life of Confinement (Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry), and creator and performer for her Master of Fine Arts project Dust(Connecticut Repertory Theatre).
Shane McNeal, a third-year MFA candidate in the UConn Puppet Arts Program and native of Bristol, CT has been interested in the art of puppetry for well over a decade. Coming from a background in early childhood education, McNeal has always enjoyed entertaining children of all ages with puppets and storytelling. Over the last two years, McNeal has acted as a puppeteer in several projects, including the children’s television pilot of Treeples and in Hartford’s annual performances of Night Fall and Envision Fest. More recently, he performed in ECHO, the UConn Puppet Arts MFA puppet production by Christopher D. Mullens; and assisted with creating, designing, and performing a puppet production with the Boston Pops in this May. McNeal also performed Canteen Tales: Quest for the Golden Spork as part of the 2016 Summertime Saturday Puppet Show Series.
UConn Puppet Arts MFA candidate Krista Weltner was recently seen performing in a UConn Puppet Arts and Boston Pops collaboration called Puppets Take The Pops. She also completed a stop-motion animated short film entitled Partially Compensated, which she presented this past semester in partial completion of her MFA degree. Last summer she performed in Reverse Cascade at the Puppeteers of America National Puppetry Festival and the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.
During his three years of study at UConn’s Puppet Arts Program, Gavin Cummins has worked as a Graduate Assistant at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry. He is delighted to once again be part of the Summertime Saturday Puppet Show series, while also serving as technical assistant for the entire project. He has previously performed George and Martha and The Nature of Nature at the Ballard Institute. Gavin began puppeteering in Seattle, and has presented works as a puppet slam performer across the country, including at La Mama Theater, Puppet Showplace Theater, and the 2013 National Puppet Slam. He is the founder of the Salmagundi Puppet Cabaret at the Ballard Institute and the Fussy Cloud Puppet Slam in Seattle. In 2015 he was named an Emerging Artist at the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. Gavin recently presented his MFA production Ok, Love You, Bye as part of the Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s MFA Puppet Arts Festival.
Gwendolyn Rooker is an actor, clown, writer, and musician who holds a Certificate of Training from the Dell‘Arte International School of Physical Theatre. As a volunteer for Clowns Without Borders, Gwen shares laughter with children whose communities are in crisis in Egypt, Sudan, Colombia, Kenya, Haiti, and the U.S. She has worked for Brat Productions as a puppeteer in Haunted Poe, as a sassy singer in Three Chord Fiction, and as Dagoo in Moby Dick Rehearsed. She is one of the Six Lady Dancers for singer Johnny Showcase, has appeared in Shakespeare in Clarke Park’s productions of Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
As part of its popular Summertime Saturday Puppet Shows for family audiences by UConn Puppet Arts students, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will present Jacks in the Box by UConn Puppet Arts MFA student Mark Blashford on Saturday, July 9 at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the Ballard Institute Theater located at 1 Royce Circle, Storrs, CT.
uly 16 – The Wonderful World of Wonder by Gavin Cummins and Gwendolyn Rooker
July 30 – Luminary by Ana Crăciun-Lambru
August 6 – Superheroes, Villains, and Spaceships, Oh My!–The Return by Anatar Marmol-Gagné and Zach Broome