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“Strings, Rods, Robots: Recent Acquisitions” Showcases Global Puppet Traditions and Innovations

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Kathpulti Marionettes from Rajasthan, India

Puppets from around the world representing several centuries worth of global traditions, as well as as cutting-edge hybrids of puppetry and digital technology, make up the rich array of performing objects on display in the Ballard Institute’s new exhibition Strings, Rods, Robots: Recent Acquisitions.

 

Jim Henson’s “Wizard of Id”

The exhibition, curated by UConn Art and Art History graduate student Lindsay Simon, showcases an exhilarating diversity of puppets from around the world recently donated to the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry.  Strings, Rods, Robots exhibition brings together ancient puppet traditions and Modernist innovations, with objects ranging from Vietnamese water puppets, Persian ritual marionettes, and Javanese shadow puppets to 1930s Alabama marionettes, department store automata by Ellen Rixford, a lifesize robotic marionette by French media artist Zaven Paré, traditional Egyptian shadow puppets, a Dada-inspired marionette by Australian artist Sally Smart, a spectacular Danish toy theater, and a stunning array of global puppet forms collected by John E. and Marilyn O’Connor Miller.

 

Electronic Marionette by Zaven Paré

These visually striking–and sometimes startling–juxtapositions reveal the contemporary world of puppetry as a fecund and florid network of hybrid culture, where centuries-old traditions of epic, religious, comic, and political puppetry performed with wooden, cloth, and leather figures rub shoulders with mechanical or electronic puppets made of plastic, metal, and glass.  And yet, despite these fascinating contradictions, the old and new puppets continue to reveal to us what is happening in our societies, with insight, humor, and wisdom.

“Exceptional and Uncommon: The Puppetry of Dick Myers” Now on Exhibit

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An eye-opening exhibition of a ground-breaking 20th-century American puppeteer, Dick Myers, is now on display at the Ballard Museum.  ”Exceptional and Uncommon: The Puppetry of Dick Myers” is a fascinating in-depth look at a puppeteer’s puppeteer—an innovative and ingenious designer, builder, and performer whose work, while highly respected in the international world of puppetry, never brought him fame.

Curated by Puppet Arts Program graduate student Seth Shaffer, “Exceptional and Uncommon” brings together scores of rod puppets, marionettes, and hand puppets designed and performed by Myers; innovative sound, lighting, and stage equipment he designed; photographs of Myers at work and in performance; and a documentary video filmed and edited by Shaffer in which Myers’s friends and colleagues describe his work and his life.

Dick Myers was one of the leading American puppeteers of the later 20th century.  Although his work is now relatively unknown, in its time his puppet shows were highly respected by puppeteers around the world for the compelling and original design of the puppets, Myers’ skillful manipulation, and the challenging tasks he set out and achieved with his creations.

In the early years of his career Dick Myers worked with many well-known puppeteers including Connecticut’s Rufus and Margo Rose, and Martin and Olga Stevens of Indiana.  He was, however, best known for his unique solo rod puppet shows: Dick Whittington’s Cat (1966), Cinderella(1967), Beauty and the Beast (1969), Simple Simon (1976), and Divertissement (1978).

“Exceptional and Uncommon: The Puppetry of Dick Myers” is a revelatory and thought-provoking window into puppetry of the late 20th century, when American puppeteers combined technological innovations with home-grown humor and popular culture in order to re-define puppetry as an aspect of contemporary American culture.

Ballard Institute Moving to New Location in Downtown Storrs this Fall

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The new Ballard Institute at Downtown Storrs will be located in this complex.

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, part of the University of Connecticut’s world-renowned puppet programs in the School of Fine Arts, will become part of Downtown Storrs in the fall.

The museum will relocate from its current location at UConn’s Depot campus to a more accessible exhibition and performance space that is part of the new branch of the UConn Co-op in Downtown Storrs.

“Our move to Downtown Storrs is a great opportunity for the Ballard Institute to thrive in the middle of a busy community environment,” says John Bell, Director of the museum and a theater historian. “We are looking forward to expanding our hours of operation, presenting more puppet performances, forums, film showings, and symposia, and collaborating with other parts of the UConn and Mansfield community.”

In its new home, the Ballard Institute and Museum will occupy 4,332 square-feet of museum, performance, and support space on the first floor of the building, providing for an expanded space for one large exhibition or two smaller simultaneous exhibitions.

“We are very excited about the move,” says Cynthia van Zelm, Executive Director of the Mansfield Downtown Partnership, Inc. “We feel it will be a destination for visitors with a key location inside the UConn Co-op and near restaurants and other businesses in the downtown.”

The Museum’s permanent collection includes 2,500 puppets consisting of a wide variety of marionettes, hand puppets, shadow fingers, rod puppets, toy theaters, and other figures, as well as hundreds of traditional puppets from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. It also includes hundreds of books and more than 1,000 videos and other audio-visual resources.

William Simpson, President and Chief Operating Officer of the UConn Co-op, says working with the Museum in its new Downtown Storrs location will create an innovative experience for the UConn Co-op and its patrons.

“This will offer the bookstore customer/museum patron a unique environment that they will want to experience again and again. We can’t wait,” says Simpson.

Tony Sarg marionettes from “The Mikado” (1936).

Current exhibitions at the Museum at the Depot campus include “Exceptional and Uncommon: The Puppetry of Dick Myers,” the first-ever exhibition devoted to the unique puppetry of Dick Myers, whose one-man shows excited audiences around the world in the mid-20th century; and “Strings, Rods, and Robots: Recent Acquisitions,” which showcases the exhilarating diversity of puppets from around the world recently acquired by the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry.

UConn is one of only two universities in the country offering a bachelor’s of fine arts in puppet arts and the only one offering master’s degrees in puppet arts. Graduates of the program perform and design for many theatres around the world. Shortly before her death earlier this month, Jane Henson, a puppeteer and original collaborator with Muppets creator Jim Henson, donated $100,000 to establish a scholarship fund for students majoring in puppet arts.

Downtown Storrs is a new mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented downtown in Mansfield, Connecticut.  The downtown features shops, restaurants, services, and apartment homes that are interspersed with a town square and public areas in a new neighborhood located at the intersection of Storrs Road and the University of Connecticut.

 

UConn Puppetry Programs Make a Strong Showing at World Puppet Congress and Festival in China

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UConn’s famed puppetry programs are once more having a global impact, this time in Chengdu, China at the 21st UNIMA (Union International de la Marionnette) Congress and World Puppetry Festival.

Four of the Eight Immortals by Bart Roccoberton at Chengdu’s National Shadow Puppetry Museum.

— Eight rod puppets designed and built by Puppet Arts Program director Bart Roccoberton are on display in the Puppet Shadow Theatre exhibition of the National Shadow Puppetry Museum in Chengdu.  The puppets represent the legendary Eight Immortals, revered in Taoist beliefs dating back to the Han Dynasty.  Professor Roccoberton built them especially for the National Shadow Puppetry Museum, and they will become part of that institution’s permanent collection.

— Current students and alumni of the Puppet Arts Program, led by Bart Roccoberton, are performing Butterfly Dreams, a mask and life-size puppet spectacle created in 2001 by Hua Hua Zhang, David Regan and Professor Roccoberton, which uses dreams as a vehicle to explore humanity and its multiple levels of meaning and purpose.  The production is inspired by a tale from Taoist philosophy about a sage, Zhuang Zi, who after dreaming he had become a butterfly, awakes to wonder if he is a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he is a man.

— UConn Puppet Arts alumnus Stephen Kaplin, the Co-Artistic Director of Chinese Theatre Works, is performing Songs from the Yellow Earth, a collaboration with the world-renowned Bread and Puppet Theater, and the first shadow theater production directed by the theater’s founder, Peter Schumann.  The show incorporates literary and operatic ruminations on war and peace drawn from classic Chinese opera and poems referring to Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China.

Dr. John Bell with Iranian UNIMA members Dr. Hamidreza Ardelan and Poupak Azimpour Tabrizi.

— Ballard Institute Director John Bell is representing the U.S. branch of UNIMA as a counselor in that organization’s world Congress, participating in congress sessions and as a member of the UNIMA Publication and Communication Commission, currently charged with creating the English-language World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts, an on-line global resource.

Burns School Student Videos at Billings Forge Community Works Cap “World of Puppetry in Hartford” Project

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Burns School students make frog masks at Billings Forge Community Works.

The Ballard Institute’s “World of Puppetry in Hartford” project concluded in May with an exciting video project at Billings Forge Community Works in Hartford’s Frog Hollow neighborhood with 8th-grade students from the Burns School and the Compass Youth Collaborative program.  The students worked with puppeteer Sara Peattie, Billings Forge resident artists James Holland and Alycia Bright Holland, and Ballard Institute director John Bell in weekly afternoon sessions in April and May.

The Billings Forge project began with paper-mache mask and puppet building workshops led by Peattie, the director of the Boston-based Puppeteers Cooperative.  Drawing on the theme “El Coqui meets Frog Hollow”–referencing both the official frog mascot of Puerto Rico and the history of the once-marshy lowland neighborhood of Frog Hollow–the students built frog masks and puppets.  In the following weeks the students developed frog-centric scenarios and storyboards for videos about Frog Hollow, the Burns School, and teen-age life in general, which were then filmed, editing in-camera.

James Holland and Sara Peattie edited the films, which can be viewed online at this site.

“The World of Puppetry in Hartford” was a year-long effort to bring different aspects of world puppetry to the Hartford area through exhibitions, workshops and performances at the UConn Health Center, the Mark Twain House and Museum, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and Billings Forge.  The project was sponsored by grants from the Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation and Judith Zachs.

Alycia Bright Holland and James Holland make frog masks with Burns School students.

 

Advisory Board member Vivian Putnam named “Volunteer of the Year”

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Ballard Institute Advisory Board member emeritus Vivian Putnam has been awarded a “Outstanding Volunteer of the Year” award from UConn’s School of Fine Arts for her long and notable record of service to the School of Fine Arts and to the University of Connecticut as a whole.  The award was presented April 24th at the UConn School of Fine Arts Awards Ceremony in the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts, where Ballard Institute Advisory Board member Patricia Verde accepted it on Vivian Putnam ‘s behalf.  On May 16, at Ballard Institute Director John Bell celebrated the award again at an informal gathering with family and friends at the Village at Buckland Road in South Windsor.

Vivian Putnam and family

 

Vivian first came to UConn from the Midwest before World War Two, with her husband, who taught as a member of the UConn faculty for many years.  Vivian Putnam then taught textile courses at UConn’s School of Home Economics for years.  As a member of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry Advisory Board, and a tireless and visionary supporter, Vivian Putnam’s volunteer work has been central to its sustenance and growth.

Ballard Institute Director awarded research prize from the Institut International de la Marionnette

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On September 19, 2011, the Institut International de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mézières, France (France’s premiere puppet institute) awarded Ballard Institute Director John Bell the “Prix de la Recherche” (research prize) for his book American Puppet Modernism (published by Palgrave/Macmillan in 2008). This award comes soon after Dr. Bell was given the Jalal Sattari prize at Iran’s Third International Traditional-Ritual Performances Seminar in July for his essay “Shalako Puppets and Nineteenth-Century Ritual,” which appears in American Puppet Modernism.

Ballard Institute Director awarded Jalal Sattari Prize for Shalako Puppet Essay

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Dr. John Bell, Director of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, was given Iran’s Jalal Sattari award for his essay “Shalako Puppets and Nineteenth-Century Ritual” at the Third International Traditional-Ritual Performances Seminar in Tehran on July 16, 2011.  The award, according to Dr. Hamid Reza Ardalan, the Seminar’s organizer, is “one of the most prestigious scientific and scholarly awards of our country.”  Jalal Sattari is a prominent Iranian scholar in the areas of mythology, philosophy of art and ritual dramatic arts.  Dr. Bell’s essay appears in his 2008 book American Puppet Modernism: Essays on the Material World in Performance (Palgrave/Macmillan).

Ballard Institute to participate in Heritage Preservation’s Conservation Assessment Program

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The Ballard Institute has been named one of 101 museums across the United States to participate in the Conservation Assessment Program (CAP) funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

According to a statement from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, “the Conservation Assessment Program assists small museums in providing appropriate care for endangered collections. In 2011, 101 museums in 36 states and Puerto Rico will have the condition of their collections and historic structures assessed. CAP is administered by Heritage Preservation and funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through its National Leadership Grants program.

“The wide array of 2011 recipients includes the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut; the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta, Georgia; Waikiki Aquarium in Honolulu, Hawaii; the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, Illinois; and the Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center in Lawton, Oklahoma.

The CAP program will help the Ballard Institute develop its plans and policies for maintaining its collections of over 2,700 puppets, as well as books, manuscripts, and audio-visual resources documenting the global history of puppet theater.

Roberts Foundation to Support Ballard Institute’s “World of Puppetry in New Haven” Project

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The Edward C. & Ann T. Roberts Foundation of West Hartford has announced it will support the Ballard Institute’s World of Puppetry in Hartford project, with a generous grant for this 2011-2012 collaborative effort with four of Hartford’s great cultural institutions: the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, the UConn Health Center, Billings Forge Community Works, and the Mark Twain House and Museum.

—   The World of Puppetry in Hartford project begins at the UConn Heath Center with Epic Shadows an exhibition of rare South Indian Tolu Bommalata shadow puppets from Andhra Pradesh in two of the Health Center’s exhibition spaces.  This exhibit is now open, and will be up through July 21.

— In late August the World of Puppetry in Hartford continues in late August at Billings Forge Community Works in the Frog Hollow neighborhood in downtown Hartford, with a community puppet-making workshop led by renowned puppeteer Sara Peattie, of Boston’s Puppeteers Cooperative.  Peattie will lead puppet-building and performance workshops with UConn Puppet Arts students members of the Frog Hollow community. The project will culminate in a procession and street theater performance on the occasion of Billings Forge’s major fundraising Farm- to-Table Dinner on September 15, 2011.

—   A Ballard Institute and Puppet Arts Program collaboration with the Mark Twain House will involve an exhibition of puppets from two productions based on Mark Twain’s novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, in the Great Hall of the Mark Twain House, from November 4, 2011 to March 5, 2012, as well lectures and puppet demonstrations during the run of the exhibition. Accompanying the puppets will be a display of objects relating to “A Connecticut Yankee” from the Museum’s collections, including first editions, original illustrations by artist Dan Beard, and ephemera relating to modern adaptations of Twain’s novel.  Impromptu performances and workshops may also be presented.

—   The Ballard Institute’s collaboration with the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art will be a mask-making and performance project conducted in conjunction with a local community group such as Mi Casa or a Caribbean-based organization, to create a Carnival mask performance.  It will be presented at a “Free Saturdays for Families” community event at the Atheneum in mid-February 2012 in conjunction with the Carnival season.