For its first installment of the 2022 Spring Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host “Puppetry and Production Design” with stage designer Carl Sprague on Thursday, Feb. 24 at 7 p.m. ET. This forum will take place on Zoom (registration required: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_zrMzhIPuTeOEaY9FtCrsvw) and Facebook Live (facebook.com/BallardInstitute/) and will be available afterwards on Facebook and the Ballard Institute YouTube Channel (youtube.com/channel/UC3VSthEDnYS6ZjOwzT1DnTg).  

In a conversation with Ballard Institute Director John Bell, puppeteer and production designer Carl Sprague will discuss the nature of images, objects, and puppet performance, in such films as The French Dispatch, Twelve Years a Slave, Amistad, and La La Land, as well as his own work as a puppeteer of Czech marionettes. This forum is co-sponsored by UConn’s Krenicki Arts and Engineering Institute.

Carl Sprague got his start in performance and scene design at age eight – playing with the Czech family marionette theater originally created by his great-grandfather. He went on to work in theater and film, taking a degree in Film (and Philosophy!) at Harvard, which began him on a long career in production design. Notable theater companies he has designed for include Berkshire Theatre, Oldcastle Theatre Company, Mixed Company, Music-Theatre Group, Hubbard Hall Opera, Shakespeare & Company, Moscow Ballet, and the Albany Berkshire Ballet.

Carl’s professional film career has taken him from a long association with special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull to big and small Hollywood features, including Martin Scorsese’s Age of Innocence, The Social Network, Twelve Years a Slave, and Tesla. He is fortunate to have worked with Wes Anderson on six films, beginning with The Royal Tenenbaums, and including Grand Budapest Hotel and The French Dispatch. He has designed three features with Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky. Documentary master Errol Morris has also called on him, and Woody Allen tapped him to design his series for Amazon. Carl’s sets for photographer Gregory Crewdson have been featured in the New York Times.

Carl continues to play with puppets.

For more information and to learn about other Ballard Institute online programming, visit bimp.uconn.edu or email bimp@uconn.edu.

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut celebrates the return of UConn students to the university’s Main Campus in Storrs with the re-opening of its ground-breaking exhibition Hecho en Puerto Rico: Four Generations of Puerto Rican Puppetry, curated by Dr. Manuel Morán and Deborah Hunt. The museum is open Wednesday-Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The exhibition is co-sponsored by the UConn Puerto Rican and Latin American Cultural Center (PRLACC) and El Instituto: Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies.

 Ballard Institute director Dr. John Bell said “we are very excited to once more share the amazing richness, color, and variety of Puerto Rican culture in this first-ever exhibition of historical and contemporary puppetry from the island.” Hecho en Puerto Rico invites the spectator to discover over fifty years of puppet productivity, by four distinct generations of builders and performers in and from Puerto Rico, from the 1960s to current times. Despite economic and political turmoil as well as natural disasters, the young and thriving Puerto Rican puppet movement continues to evolve and grow.

Hecho en Puerto Rico highlights the work of such puppeteers and companies as Agua, Sol y Sereno; Brenda Plumey; Daniel y sus Muñecos; Deborah Hunt; Edward Cardenales; El Mundo de los Muñecos; José López; Luis Villafañe; Mario Donate; Mary Anne Hopgood; Papel Machete; Poncili Creación; Pura Belpré; Santin y sus Muñecos; Teatro SEA and Manuel Morán; Tere Marichal; Vueltabajo Teatro; and Y No Había Luz.

Co-curator Deborah Hunt has lived and worked as a mask maker, mask and object theatre performance artist since 1973, creating and presenting original theatre works, performances and festivals or encounters in the South Pacific, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. Born and raised in Aotearoa New Zealand, she has been based in Borikén/Puerto Rico since 1990, where she founded Maskhunt Motions, a nomadic laboratory for experimental object theatre work. Hunt teaches mask work and puppetry in communities worldwide, in a practice exploring puppetry in public and private spaces. Her work ranges in scale from the miniature to creating giant puppets that transform into peepshows. She has created encounters and festivals to promote puppetry for adult audiences and published mask and puppetry manuals in Spanish and English. She is interested in performing in unconventional places and to very intimate audiences. Hunt characterizes her work as “theatre of the useless.”

Co-curator Dr. Manuel Morán (www.manuelmoran.com) was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and studied at the University of Puerto Rico and New York University, where he earned a doctorate degree in Educational Theater. He is the Founder, CEO and Artistic Director of Society of the Educational Arts, Inc. (www.teatrosea.org). A writer, director, and producer for theater, television, and film, he is also an actor, singer and composer, and created the International Puppet Fringe Festival of NYC in 2018. He is a former Vice-President (2012-2021) of UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionnette). His three-part documentary film Títeres en el Caribe Hispano/Puppetry in the Caribbean premiered at the Havana Film Festival in Cuba in 2016 and has been screened in festivals around the world. Dr. Morán’s theater and literary work has been published in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the United States, including his books Migrant Theater for Children: A Caribbean in New York (2016), and Mantequilla/Butter; Adventures and Tribulations of a Puerto Rican Boy (2017). He is currently starring in the web series El Avión The Airplane (www.elaviontheairplane.com), and is the proud dad of Manuel Gabriel, with whom he lives in New York City and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Due to restrictions and safety precautions related to COVID-19, the museum will be open Wednesday through Saturday only, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., by reservation. One group of up to six visitors from a family or quarantine unit will be allowed in the museum at a time during each time slot. Face masks are required at all times when visiting the museum for ages two and up. Hand sanitizer is available throughout the museum and staff clean high-touch surfaces once per hour. To learn more about the Ballard Institute’s COVID-19 protocols and to reserve a time slot, visit: bimp.uconn.edu/visit/reservations/. Visitors may also reserve a time slot by calling 860.486.8580.

As part of its 2021 Fall virtual programming and in conjunction with the opening of Hecho en Puerto Rico: Four Generations of Puerto Rican Puppetry, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut is pleased to present The Pura Belpré Project by Teatro SEA on November 20 at 11 a.m. ET via Zoom. This event is co-sponsored by UConn’s Puerto Rican and Latin American Cultural Center (PRLACC).

Pura Belpré (1901-1982) was a talented author, collector of folktales, puppeteer, and storyteller who wrote and reinterpreted Puerto Rican folk tales. As the first Puerto Rican librarian in the New York Public Library system, she pioneered many programs for the Latino community. Teatro SEA’s The Pura Belpré Project is a re-enactment of her legendary “Bilingual Story Hour.” Her famous tales–Pérez & Martina, Juan Bobo, and The Three Magi–come to life in a creative and interactive experience that combines storytelling with puppets! Recommended for pre-k to 3rd grade. This is a bi-lingual performance.  

Established in 1985, SEA (Society of the Educational Arts, Inc.), is the premiere bilingual arts-in-education organization and Latino children’s theater in the United States. SEA has created and produced a combination of educational theater productions and art workshops/programs specifically designed to examine, challenge, and create possible solutions for current educational, social, and community issues. Its internationally celebrated programs include school, outdoor, community, and mainstage performances, workshops, and residencies, among others, reaching over 75,000 children and young adults every year. The organization, established by Dr. Manuel A. Morán, currently has offices in San Juan, New York, and Florida. Teatro SEA has its performance space at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Ticket price: $10/household. Tickets can be purchased online at bimp.ticketleap.com/pura-belpre/. A surcharge will be added to online purchases. Attendees should purchase one ticket per household. While we ask for a minimum payment of $10/household, we greatly appreciate any additional support! A Zoom link will be emailed to households one hour before the performance. 

For more information about these performances or if you require an accommodation to attend this event, please contact Ballard Institute staff at 860-486-8580 or bimp@uconn.edu.

El Proyecto Pura Belpré Comunicado de Prensa

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will present the grand opening of its new exhibition Hecho en Puerto Rico: Four Generations of Puerto Rican Puppetry, curated by Dr. Manuel Morán and Deborah Hunt, on Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021, with a virtual tour led by the curators on Ballard Institute Facebook Live that day at 5 p.m. ET. The exhibition will be on display through May 8, 2021 at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, located at 1 Royce Circle, Storrs, CT 06268. This exhibition is co-sponsored by the UConn Puerto Rican and Latin American Cultural Center (PRLACC) and El Instituto: Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies.

Hecho en Puerto Rico invites the spectator to discover over fifty years of puppet productivity, by four distinct generations of builders and performers in and from Puerto Rico. Although puppetry first appeared on the island of Puerto Rico in the 19th century, this exhibit is divided into four periods of creation from the 1960s to current times, demonstrating a shift in focus from purely educational content, to culturally and politically relevant themes, to a focus on adult audiences, and now into the current generation of emerging puppeteers. A young but thriving puppet movement, despite economic and political turmoil as well as natural disasters, Puerto Rican puppetry continues to evolve and grow.  

The exhibition highlights the work of such puppeteers and companies as Agua, Sol y Sereno; Brenda Plumey; Daniel y sus Muñecos; Deborah Hunt; Edward Cardenales; El Mundo de los Muñecos; José López; Luis Villafañe; Mario Donate; Mary Anne Hopgood; Papel Machete; Poncili Creación; Pura Belpré; Santin y sus Muñecos; Teatro SEA and Manuel Morán; Tere Marichal; Vueltabajo Teatro; and Y No Había Luz.

Deborah Hunt has lived and worked as a mask maker, mask and object theatre performance artist since 1973, creating and presenting original theatre works, performances and festivals or encounters in the South Pacific, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. Born and raised in Aotearoa New Zealand, she has been based in Borikén/Puerto Rico since 1990, where she founded Maskhunt Motions, a nomadic laboratory for experimental object theatre work. Hunt teaches mask work and puppetry in communities worldwide, in a practice exploring puppetry in public and private spaces. Her work ranges in scale from the miniature to creating giant puppets that transform into peepshows. She has created encounters and festivals to promote puppetry for adult audiences and published mask and puppetry manuals in Spanish and English. She is interested in performing in unconventional places and to very intimate audiences. Hunt characterizes her work as “theatre of the useless.” 

Dr. Manuel Morán (www.manuelmoran.com) was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and studied at the University of Puerto Rico and New York University, where he earned a doctorate degree in Educational Theater. He is the Founder, CEO and Artistic Director of Society of the Educational Arts, Inc. (www.teatrosea.org). A writer, director, and producer for theater, television, and film, he is also an actor, singer and composer, and created the International Puppet Fringe Festival of NYC in 2018. He is a former Vice-President (2012-2021) of UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionnette). His three-part documentary film Títeres en el Caribe Hispano/Puppetry in the Caribbean premiered at the Havana Film Festival in Cuba in 2016 and has been screened in festivals around the world. Dr. Morán’s theater and literary work has been published in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the United States, including his books Migrant Theater for Children: A Caribbean in New York (2016), and Mantequilla/Butter; Adventures and Tribulations of a Puerto Rican Boy (2017). He is currently starring in the web series El Avión The Airplane (www.elaviontheairplane.com), and is the proud dad of Manuel Gabriel, with whom he lives in New York City and San Juan, Puerto Rico. 

In conjunction with the exhibition opening and as part of 2021 Fall Puppet Performance Series, the Ballard Institute will present a virtual performance of The Pura Belpré Project by Teatro SEA via Zoom on Saturday, Nov. 20 at 11 a.m. ET. To learn more and make a reservation, visit bimp.ticketleap.com. The Ballard Institute will also host Dr. Manuel Morán, Deborah Hunt, Pedro Adorno, and Tere Marichal for a 2021 Online Fall Puppet Forum titled “Contemporary Puppetry in Puerto Rico” on Thursday, Dec. 2 at 7 p.m. ET to discuss the situation of Puerto Rican puppetry today and its possibilities for the future.

Due to restrictions and safety precautions related to COVID-19, the museum will reopen on Nov. 19 on Wednesday through Saturday only, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., by reservation. Only one group of up to six visitors from a family or quarantine unit will be allowed in the museum at a time during each time slot. Face masks are required at all times when visiting the museum for ages two and up. Hand sanitizer is available throughout the museum and staff clean high-touch surfaces once per hour. To learn more about the Ballard Institute’s COVID-19 protocols and to reserve a time slot, visit: bimp.uconn.edu/visit/reservations/. Visitors may also reserve a time slot by calling 860.486.8580.

Hecho en Puerto Rico Comunicado de Prensa

For its second installment of the 2021 Fall Puppet Forum Series, and in conjunction with its Puppetry’s Racial Reckoning exhibition, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host “The Doll Plays” Reunion with Alva Rogers, Heather Henson, and Holly Laws on Thursday, Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. ET. This forum will take place on Zoom (registration required: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ewzeFqjpTDa0IcZCbOURSg) and Facebook Live (facebook.com/BallardInstitute/) and will be available afterwards on Facebook and the Ballard Institute YouTube Channel (youtube.com/channel/UC3VSthEDnYS6ZjOwzT1DnTg). This forum is co-sponsored by the UConn Department of Art and Art History and Africana Studies Institute. 

Playwright Alva Rogers based The Doll Plays on the true story of African American doll collector Lenon Holder Hoyte (1905-1999) and her museum in Harlem. When she passes, the dolls in Ms. Hoyte’s collection seek to keep their beloved museum founder alive in their world by transforming her into a doll. The Doll Plays Reunion brings together the creative team of the original production: director Heather Henson, playwright Alva Rogers, and artist Holly Laws, to discuss The Doll Plays’ historical and cultural context, their experience of creating the play, and its relevance today. Shadow puppets made by artist Kara Walker which featured in the original production of 1998 are on display at the exhibition Puppetry’s Racial Reckoning at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry (closing October 30).

Alva Rogers is the descendant of James Rogers, one of the earliest black landowners in Cary, North Carolina, and Jordan Harrison McNair. Rogers, a descendant of George Rogers, slave, was the property of plantation owner Felix Rogers in Durham/Wake County. McNair, her maternal great, great, grandfather, was a Civil War soldier and then a landowner in Hoke/Robeson County, NC.

Her writing career began with Rodeo Caldonia, a performance/theater collective she co-founded in 1985 (their work was in the traveling exhibit We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-85, at the Brooklyn Museum). Following an influential early career as a performance artist and film actor (Spike Lee’s School Daze, Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust), Rogers concentrated more on writing, earning MFAs in Musical Theatre Writing (NYU/Tisch; 1995) and Playwriting (Brown University; 1998). Rogers lived in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, enjoying traditional Indonesian wayang kulit shadow puppet theater, and wayang golek rod puppetry. Her collaborations with Heather Henson and Holly Laws began in 1997 (@alvasworld/www.alvasworld.com).

Heather Henson is a contemporary puppet artist whose work promotes harmony and healing for the planet through artistic spectacle and discussion. Heather graduated with a degree from Rhode Island School of Design and studied at the California Institute of the Arts. Heather founded IBEX Puppetry (www.ibexpuppetry.com) in 2000, a multi-platform production company dedicated to promoting the fine art of puppetry in all of its mediums, honoring her work as well as that of other puppetry artists around the world.

Artist and designer Holly Laws’ professional experience is wide and varied. Her work runs the gamut from sculpture and multi-media installation, to puppetry and theater design. She is most interested in exploring work overlapping these disciplines. Laws received a BFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, and an MFA in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in Philadelphia. She moved to Arkansas in 2008 for a faculty position at the University of Central Arkansas, where she teaches in the Department of Art and Design.

For more information and to learn about other Ballard Institute online programming, visit bimp.uconn.edu or email bimp@uconn.edu.

Due to inclement weather, the performance of “Bugsy and Friends” by Pumpernickel Puppets scheduled for this Saturday, along with the Sunday rain date, have been canceled.

We hope to bring Pumpernickel Puppets back to Storrs in the Spring!