UConn will host the 2015 National Puppetry Festival of the Puppeteers of America from August 10 to August 16, 2015.
For more information about public events and ticket sales, visit nationalpuppetryfestival2015.com
News
2015 Spring Puppet Forum Series
2015 Spring Puppet Forum Series
Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. (note new time)
Ballard Institute Theater at Storrs Center
Wednesday, February 11: Matthew Cohen, “Playing with Shadows in the Dark”
Scholar and puppeteer Matthew Cohen, an expert historian and performer of Javanese wayang golek rod puppet theater and other forms, talks about his research and performance work. Co-sponsored by the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute.
Wednesday, March 11: Anne Cubberly, “Making Art with Your Community”
Acclaimed Hartford visual artist and spectacle-maker Anne Cubberly, voted “Best Artist” in a 2014 Hartford Magazine poll, talks about her extensive work in Hartford, always with a focus on creativity, process, community, and re-purposed materials.
Wednesday, April 8: Fred Thompson, “Masters of the Marionette: Rufus and Margo Rose”
Puppeteer and teacher Fred Thompson, a mainstay of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Puppetry Conference, first saw Rufus and Margo Rose perform in 1947, and has had a long and illustrious career in Connecticut as a teacher and maker of dance, theater, and puppetry.
Wednesday, April 15: Hua Hua Zhang, “My Work in Chinese and American Puppetry”
UConn Puppet Arts alumna Hua Hua Zhang first studied classic Chinese puppetry techniques at the Beijing Art Academy in her home city. After receiving many awards for her performances as a member of the China Puppet Arts Troupe, she came to UConn’s Puppet Arts Program, earning her MFA degree in 2000. Currently the director of the Philadelphia-based company Visual Expressions, she designs and performs her own work in the U.S. and China, collaborates with such artists as composer Tan Dun. Co-sponsored by the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute.
Admission to these events is free (donations greatly appreciated!), and refreshments will be served. Forums will also be live-streamed on our page: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/forum-live-stream. For more information, call 860.486.8580 or email bimp@uconn.edu.
2015 Spring Puppet Performance Series
Afternoon shows for family audiences!
The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host its Spring Puppet Performance Series on four Saturdays from February to May 2015, featuring outstanding works for puppet theater by professional puppeteers. There will be two showings of each production, at 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m., in the Ballard Institute Theater located at 1 Royce Circle in Storrs Center. Productions and dates include:
February 21: The Lion and the Mouse and Other Tales by Crabgrass Puppet Theatre.
With beautiful puppets and scenery, and their signature hilarious style, the award-winning Crabgrass Puppet Theatre presents tales from Africa, Asia and Europe that will inspire and enthrall children of all sizes.
March 14: Squirrel Stole My Underpants by They Gotta Be Secret Agents.
A lonely, awkward girl is sent out to the backyard to hang up the laundry and keep herself busy. The moment Sylvie’s back is turned, a mischievous squirrel appears, steals her favorite piece of clothing and runs off. When the girl gives chase, she finds herself lost in strange lands. As the story unfolds, an entire world emerges from her laundry basket and Sylvie learns that she is a strong girl with magic within herself.
April 11: Hao Bang Ah, Sheep! by Chinese Theatre Works.
Co-sponsored by the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute. This variety-style program directed by Kuang-Yu Fong and Stephen Kaplin, features a jolly selection of hand-puppet vignettes, many based on popular songs and well-known Chinese sayings. While some parts of the program are performed in Chinese, all include English translations and explanations. The audience will be introduced to other animals of the Chinese zodiac, and also learn about Chinese New Year customs and foods. Audience participation makes this Chinese culture and language-learning experience accessible to even the youngest audience member.
May 2: Arjuna’s Meditation by Matthew Cohen, with Gamelan Si Betty, directed by Jody Diamond.
Co-sponsored by the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute. Renowned scholar and Javanese wayang kulit shadow puppet performer Matthew Cohen is joined by Harvard University’s Gamelan Si Betty, directed by Jody Diamond, to present a classic Javanese puppet play about one of the great heroes of the Hindu epic The Mahabharata.
Ticket Prices: Adults: $10; Students: $7; Kids: $5
Tickets will be sold in advance through the Connecticut Repertory Theatre Box Office located in the lobby of the Nafe Katter Theatre at 820 Bolton Rd, Storrs CT 06269. Tickets may be purchased in person at the box office, by calling (860) 486-2113, or online through the CRT website. A $3.00 surcharge will be added to any purchases made online or over the phone. Tickets may be purchased at the Ballard Institute on the days of performances. There will be a limited number of seats. For more information about these shows, call (860) 486-8580.
2015 UConn Winter Puppet Slam, Friday, February 6 at 8 p.m.
- James Godwin in performance. Photograph by Jim Moore.
The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and the UConn Puppet Arts Program will present the 2015 UConn Winter Puppet Slam on Friday, February 6 at 8:00 p.m. in the Dramatic Arts Department’s Studio Theatre. The UConn Winter Puppet Slam will feature short works by professional puppeteers, including famed New York City performer James Godwin, and the Semi-Upright Puppet Theater (UConn Puppet Arts graduate Joe Therrien and Bread & Puppet Theater veteran Jason Hicks), as well as new works by talented students from UConn’s Puppet Arts, Digital Media & Design, and Art Programs. The UConn Winter Puppet Slam is supported by a generous grant from the Puppet Slam Network.
James Godwin is renowned in New York’s prolific downtown performance scene, writing and performing in such popular productions as Uncle Jimmy’s Dirty Basement; but also works regularly with the Muppets, Julie Taymor, and such musical acts as David Bowie and Aerosmith. At the UConn Winter Puppet Slam Godwin will present Rooty, the story of a lonely plant who finds itself in a battle to save his sanity in the face of solitary confinement; and Simulation Theory, a poetic visual narrative that explores identity, reality and possession in the American workplace. Jason Hicks and Joe Therrien’s Semi-Upright Puppet Theater, also based in New York City, will return to UConn with their own lively brand of activist “cheap art” puppetry that brings the iconoclastic spirit of Punch and Judy into the 21st century with such popular favorites as their super-hero serial Weasel. In addition to new works by UConn’s acclaimed Puppet Arts Program students, the UConn Winter Puppet Slam will also feature new works for film animation by Art and Digital Media students.
The Puppet Slam movement is a nation-wide flowering of short puppet productions for adult audiences, encouraged by the Puppet Slam Network created by Heather Henson and Marsian De Lellis. UConn Puppet Slams have been taking place since 2008, thanks to the generous support of the Puppet Slam Network.
The UConn Winter Puppet Slam is free and open to the public; donations are greatly appreciated. The event will take place in the Studio Theatre located at 820 Bolton Rd, Storrs, CT. For directions to the Studio Theatre, visit crt.uconn.edu/directions/. For more information, call the Ballard Institute at (860) 486-8580 or email us at bimp@uconn.edu.
Sketches of Frank Ballard’s Queen of the Night
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[/one_half][/row]By Bryanna, a student and Ballard Institute volunteer
The figure sketched here is the villainous Queen of the Night from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s famous opera, The Magic Flute. First debuted in 1791, the story was originally written as an opera in the form of a “singspiel,” meaning that the play was performed containing both periods of singing and periods of speaking.Frank Ballard of the University of Connecticut presented this opera using puppets in 1986. These sketches are based upon Ballard’s design of the Queen of the Night character. With her lavish hat and dress and exaggerated facial features, the puppet brilliantly reflects the baroque time period in which the opera was first written.
The design of this puppet was one of the things that stood out most to me upon choosing a puppet on display to interpret and sketch. The Queen of the Night’s dramatically angular face with half-lidded eyes that seemed to constantly say “I am unimpressed” gave the character a unique expressive nature. She seemed so very characteristically proud, posted there on her display pedestal so I knew she’d be fun to characterize into a drawing where I could give her the different facial and body expressions that she could not change as a puppet. The Queen puppet seemed an even more perfect fit when I realized she was from The Magic Flute play that had coincidentally been involved in my life several times before. My father and I saw the opera live at Jorgensen Theater when I was a little girl where my dad bought the soundtrack to the opera and played it over and over for me. Years later, I also found myself performing a piece from the play in my school orchestra. The Queen of the Night seemed like a perfect fit for me to sketch.
Ballard Institute on Fox CT Morning News!
On Monday, May 19, 2014, Ballard Institute Director Dr. John Bell and Puppet Arts graduate student Sarah Nolen appeared on Sarah Cody’s Fox CT Morning News segment Mommy Minute. Watch the video by visiting: UConn’s New Puppet Museum.
UConn Puppet Forum Series will feature rich new facets of puppetry studies
The Ballard Institute’s Spring 2014 Puppet Forum Series will feature an array of fascinating approaches to the world of puppetry from renowned scholars, puppeteers, writers, and photographers in a program of Wednesday evening events at the new Ballard Institute at Storrs Center, 1 Royce Circle in downtown Storrs. Each puppet forum will begin at 7:30 p.m., and will also be streamed on the internet. These events are free and open to the public; donations are gratefully accepted. Refreshments will be served.
The Puppet Forum series includes the following presentations:
March 26: “Rod Puppets and the Human Theater: Frank Ballard Productions at UConn”
Join a panel discussion with student curator Sarah Nolen, Puppet Arts faculty, and alumni about Frank Ballard’s rod puppet productions at UConn, the nature of rod puppetry, and the design, construction, and performance processes of this work.
April 9: Robert Herr, “Puppets and Proselytizing: Politics and Nation-Building in Post-Revolutionary Mexico’s Didactic Theater”
Co-sponsored by El Instituto. Dr. Robert S. Herr, from Dartmouth College’s Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies Program, discusses the nature of 1920s and 30s activist puppet theater in Mexico, when artists, teachers and state officials collaborated to stage educational plays in working class neighborhoods and rural communities in an effort to foster revolutionary citizens.
April 16: Richard Termine, “Puppets Through the Lens: Photography and the Performing Object”
Acclaimed photographer and UConn Puppet Arts graduate Richard Termine discusses the dynamics of capturing puppet performance via the camera, and his photographs in the current Ballard Institute exhibition devoted to his
April 30: Roman Paska, “The Quintessence of Puppetry”
Internationally acclaimed puppeteer, director, and writer Roman Paska discusses his work for live performance and film, as well as his theoretical writings about the nature of puppet performance.
“Strings, Rods, Robots: Recent Acquisitions” Showcases Global Puppet Traditions and Innovations
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
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
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.
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.