The Art of the Frouds at Nafe Katter Theater

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     Join us this Wednesday, November 30, at 3 p.m. at UConn’s Nafe Katter Theater for The Art of the Frouds.
This presentation by Brian, Wendy, and Toby Froud will explore their work illuminating the realm of Faeries and other mystical beings, in their own publications and in collaboration with Jim Henson in The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and Jim Henson’s Storyteller series.  It precedes the December 2nd opening of their exhibition The Art of the Frouds at the Animazing Gallery in New York City.
     Brian Froud is the renowned author and illustrator of more than 30 publications which explore and illuminate the realm of the Faeries and other mystical beings.  Collaborating with Jim Henson, Brian Froud created the worlds and characters of The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, and contributed to Henson’s Storyteller series.
     Wendy Midener Froud is a life-long doll maker, sculptor and puppet fabricator.  Jim Henson, recognizing her exceptional abilities,  hired her to create the characters of “Jen” and “Kira” for The Dark Crystal.  She also fabricated “Yoda” for Star Wars and the Goblins for Labyrinth.  Her polymer sculpted faerie figures have been exhibited throughout the world, leading to many publications revealing the stories of her characters, as well as the methods of their creation.
     Toby Froud, first seen as the infant “Toby” in Labyrinth, has been surrounded and nurtured in the creative lives of his parents.  He has apprenticed in the Muppet Workshop, worked with WETA in New Zealand as a sculptor/fabricator on The Chronicles of Narnia and King Kong and created for numerous theatre and television productions.  Most recently, Toby has contributed to Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour and Laika Entertainment’s pending ParaNorman.
The event is sponsored by UConn Puppet Arts Program, Digital Media Center, Department of Dramatic Arts, and the Ballard Institute.

“World of Puppetry” Exhibition at Bradley International Airport extended through January 2012!

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A compelling exhibition of over 70 Ballard Institute puppets from around the world at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Connecticut (just north of Hartford) has been extended through January, 2012.  Originally scheduled to close in November, this popular display of world puppetry traditions will now be on display for holiday travelers.

The exhibition, titled The World of Puppetry, was curated by Nicole Hartigan, a graduate student in UConn’s famed Puppet Arts Program, and the graduate assistant to the Ballard Institute.  The exhibition fills four cases adjacent to Bradley Airport’s departure gates, and includes rod puppets, hand puppets, shadow puppets, oversized masks, and marionettes.

Click here to read more about the exhibition.

New children’s book about famed puppeteer Tony Sarg draws on UConn puppetry expertise

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Children’s book author and illustrator Melissa Sweet drew on UConn puppetry sources for her  celebrated new children’s book Balloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade, which chronicles the story of legendary American puppeteer Tony Sarg and his 1920s invention of the inflatable puppets for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parades.

Sweet, who did much of her research for the book at the The Nantucket Historical Association, the home of a large Tony Sarg collection, conferred with both Puppet Arts head Bart Roccoberton and Ballard Institute director John Bell to better understand Sarg’s innovative work from a puppeteer’s perspective.  Sarg, the most innovative and influential American puppeteer in the first half of the 20th century, was designing store windows and newspaper advertisements for Macy’s when the company asked him to create puppets for a new concept: a Thanksgiving Day parade.  Sarg’s designs for giant inflatable puppets have made the parade one of the most popular public spectacles in modern culture.

With captivating drawings and collages Sweet patiently and clearly tells the story of how Sarg’s experience with string marionettes allowed him to make a creative and conceptual leap to a new art form: helium-filled inflatable puppets operated from below–in other words, upside-down marionettes.  Sweet’s book has received glowing reviews from Publisher’s Weekly and from New York Times Book Review critic Pete Hamill, who wrote that Sweet’s “brilliant combination of collage, design, illustration and text gives Balloons Over Broadway an amazing richness,” adding that no one who reads the book “will ever see the parade in the same way.”

Fall Forum Series November 18 to December 7 features renowned puppeteers and scholars

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The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry’s 2011 Fall Forum series will feature talks with and by significant American scholars and puppeteers on Wednesday and Friday evenings from November 18th through December 7th.  Fall Forum speakers include Erminio Pinque, Dan Butterworth, John Emigh, Richard Termine and Bart Roccoberton.  This season’s forums are designed to complement the Ballard Institute’s current exhibitions devoted to Frank Ballard, the founder of the UConn Puppetry Program and namesake of the Institute.

All Fall Forum talks will start at 7:30 p.m. at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry on the University of Connecticut’s Depot Campus, and are free and open to the public.  Refreshments will be served.  The Fall Forum series includes the following presentations:

Friday, November 18: “Puppetry and Mask Performance Off Stage and Out of Bounds: Creature Theatre in a Human Landscape” with Erminio Pinque of Big Nazo

Creature creations by Big Nazo.

The series begins on Friday, November 18 with Erminio Pinque, the founder and director of Big Nazo, the Providence, Rhode Island-based international performance group of visual artists, puppet performers, and masked musicians who unite to create bizarre and hilarious larger-than-life sized characters, environments, and spectacles.

Wednesday, November 30: “Puppet Work with Inuit in the Far North” by Dan Butterworth

Based in Pascoag, Rhode Island, Dan Butterworth makes intricately hand carved puppets in a unique cacophony of puppet styles and genres.  Dan and his puppets have performed in movies, operas, classical music festivals and TV specials.  On Wednesday, November 30 at the Ballard Institute, Dan will speak about his recent work with Inuit people in the Arctic preserving ancient oral stories using marionettes made from native materials.  He will also discuss his work inventing “Wheelchair Theaters”: mobile effects platforms using wheelchairs, which he has performed in hospitals, schools, and with veterans groups.

Friday, December 2: John Emigh on Southeast Asian Puppetry

John Emigh thanking his audience at a Balinese Topeng performance.

On Friday, December 2, internationally renowned theater historian John Emigh of Brown University will discuss the influence of Southeast Asian puppetry on American puppet traditions of the 20th and 21st century.  Julie Taymor, Bread and Puppet Theater, San Francisco’s Larry Reed, and Frank Ballard himself were all affected by the stunning power and cultural significance of South Asian puppet traditions, which have seeped into their work and that of many other puppeteers.  Professor Emigh, himself a brilliant student of Balinese Topeng masked dance, will trace these connections and their importance to modern American culture.

Wednesday, December 7: Symposium on the work of Frank Ballard, with Bart Roccoberton, Richard Termine, and UConn Puppet Alumni

On the occasion of the late Frank Ballard’s 82nd birthday, Wednesday, December 7, former students and colleagues of this  influential puppet master will meet to talk about Professor Ballard’s work and its significance.  Join UConn Puppet Arts Program head Bart Roccoberton; celebrated Sesame Street puppeteer and New York Times photographer Richard Termine, and members of UConn’s large network of Puppet Alumni in a discussion of Frank Ballard’s influences, teaching, performance style, and production methods.

Richard Termine
Bart Roccoberton

On Puppets: A Conversation With Kenneth Gross and Liza Lorwin Wednesday, October 26, 4:00 pm, UConn Co-op, Upper Level Conference Room

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Kenneth Gross author of the just-published book Puppet: an Essay on Uncanny Life, and Liza Lorwin co-conceiver, adaptor of Mabou Mines’s Peter and Wendy, hold an open conversation about puppets and puppet theater.

Gross is Professor of English at the University of Rochester and author of The Dream of the Moving Statue and Shakespeare’s Noise; he has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEH, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Lorwin has worked in experimental theater in New York since 1979. The OBIE Award-winning Peter and Wendy premiered at Spoleto Festival USA in 1996 and was part of the Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater that year. Its most recent production was at New Victory Theater in 2011.

Of Gross’s new book, whose publication this event helps to celebrate, Basil Jones, co-founder of the Handspring Puppet Company, writes: “The book is the site of a constant flow of sharp observations and insights. It is part of the exciting exchange of ideas about objects in performance that is having a positive influence on the practitioners of contemporary theatre in general and puppeteers in particular.”
John Bell, Director of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, will introduce Gross and Lorwin.
Wednesday, October 26, 4:00 p.m., in the Upper Level Conference Room of the UConn Co-op, 2075 Hillside Road, on UConn’s Main Campus.   Google Map

Join us for the Fall 2011 UConn Puppet Slam, Saturday September 17, for Free!

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Katy Laguzza in a 2010 Slam

 

Join us on Saturday, September 17 on UConn’s Main Campus in Storrs for the Fall 2011 UConn Puppet Slam–an exciting array of bold new works for puppet theater by vibrant puppet artists from New York City, Boston, and the University of Connecticut!

The Ballard Institute and UConn’s Puppet Arts Program will host the Fall 2011 UConn Puppet Slam on Saturday, September 17 at 8 p.m. in the Studio Theater of UConn’s School of Dramatic Arts, on 820 Bolton Road in Storrs, Connecticut.

Video by Lani Asuncion from a 2010 Puppet Slam

This UConn Puppet Slam will feature the following artists:

–Jenny Romaine of Great Small Works: “La Ciudad: Magic Box of New York City”

—Alissa Hunnicutt: “The Red Dress”

–Sara Peattie and Theresa Linnihan of the Puppeteers Cooperative

… and a sparkling spectrum of new works by students from UConn’s famed Puppet Arts Program!

The performance is free and open to the public!

For more information, contact bimp@uconn.edu, or 860 486 0806.

Join us to build and perform puppets for the 2011 Celebrate Mansfield Parade!

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Puppet building workshop for 2010 Celebrate Mansfield Parade.

We invite YOU to join the Ballard Institute and the Mansfield Downtown Partnership on Saturday and Sunday, September 17 and 18, to build puppets celebrating Mansfield’s history; and then to parade with us the following Sunday, September 25 in the Ballard Institute contingent of the 2011 Celebrate Mansfield Parade, which starts at noon.

Our free puppet workshop sessions will once again be lead by nationally acclaimed puppeteer Sara Peattie of Boston’s Puppeteers Cooperative, and will be open to one and all–children, adults, and senior citizens.  The workshops will take place Saturday, September 17 and Sunday, September 18 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 2 p.m. – 5 p.m. each day, in the Arts and Crafts Room of the Mansfield Community Center, on 4 South Eagleville Road in downtown Mansfield.  Workshop participants can drop in anytime during the day to take part in the design and creation of puppets, masks, banners, and other parading elements.  We will once again collaborate with Ann Galonska of the Mansfield Historical Society to choose images, characters, and stories reflecting the rich history of Mansfield.

 

Matt Weathers on stilts in the Ballard Institute contingent of the 2010 Celebrate Mansfield Parade.

The following Sunday, September 25, we need YOU–children, adults, and senior citizens–to help us parade with the puppets we have made as a colorful and vibrant contingent of the Celebrate Mansfield Parade.  We will meet at  at 11:00 a.m. at the Storrs-Mansfield Post Office (2 South Eagleville Road Extension) for the parade, which will start at 12 noon and end about 25 minutes later in front E. O. Smith High School, where Mansfield’s Festival on the Green will be held.  The whole parade is less than a mile long.

For more information or to register for the workshops and parade, please contact the Partnership at 860 429 2740 or by email at mdp@mansfieldct.org.

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).

World of Puppetry exhibition at Bradley International Airport

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An Awaji Samurai and Javanese Wayang Golek puppets at Bradley International Airport

An exciting exhibition of over 70 Ballard Institute puppets from around the world is currently on display at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Connecticut (just north of Hartford) and will be on view for airport travelers from now until November.

The exhibition, titled The World of Puppetry, was curated by Nicole Hartigan, a graduate student in UConn’s famed Puppet Arts Program, and the graduate assistant to the Ballard Institute.  The exhibition fills four cases adjacent to Bradley Airport’s departure gates, and includes rod puppets, hand puppets, shadow puppets, oversized masks, and marionettes.

Ganesha marionette from India
Ganesha marionette from India

The first case features shadow puppets, and includes dramatic figures from the Tolu Bommalata tradition of Andhra Pradesh, as well as Javanese and Balinese wayang kulit figures, and puppets from similar traditions in Thailand and Malaysia.  This section also features colorful marionettes from Burma and China, and a four-armed, elephant-headed Ganesha marionette from Nepal, as well as masks from Bali, Java, and Mexico.

Handpuppets are featured in the exhibition’s second case, including Connecticut puppeteer Ray Mount’s colorful figures from Old Wive’s Tale, three vivid handpuppets from Haiti, a rare handpuppet from Poland’s Arlekin Theater of Lodz, a Chinese handpuppet, and one-of-a-kind figures by Cincinnati puppeteer Larry Smith for The Uncle Al Show, the longest-running American television series of the last century.

Rufus Rose caricatures of 1960s Connecticut politicians

A case devoted to the Punch and Judy traditions of European and American puppetry includes rare 19th-century Punch puppets, an extensive array of puppets built and used by the Ridiculous Theater’s Charles Ludlam, a set of early 20th-century Guignol puppets, and a set of political caricature handpuppets of 1960s Connecticut politicians used by puppeteer Rufus Rose in the Connecticut Statehouse when he was a state legislator from Waterford.

Rod Puppets from Frank Ballard’s “Ring of the Nibelungen”

Rod puppets are featured in the last case of the exhibition, including three striking figures from Frank Ballard’s 1980 production of The Ring of the Nibelungen, a Samurai puppet from the Japanese inland island of Awaji, a clown and nobleman from Java’s wayang golek traditions, two modernist rod puppets by famed puppeteer George Latshaw, an African puppet from Mali, a Russian rod puppet, and three over-life-sized masks by Frank Ballard.

Summertime Saturday Puppet Shows at the Ballard Institute, June 25-July 23

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from Thomas Getchell’s “The Proleptic Voice: A Visual Poem”

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry will present its first-ever Summertime Saturday Puppet Shows, on Saturday afternoons from June 25 through July 23.  The series features performances of original works by students from UConn’s world-famous Puppet Arts Program, in an exciting variety of puppet forms: marionettes, toy theater, and handpuppets.

The shows will all take place at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry on UConn’s Depot Campus, Saturdays at 3:30 p.m. (except for the June 25th performance, which begins at 4 p.m.)  Admission is $3 for children, $5 for adults.

***In a special Ballard Institute arrangement with UConn’s Connecticut Repertory Theater, those purchasing tickets for the Saturday, June 25 productions of CRT’s production of Seussical the Musical (2 p.m. or 8 p.m.) at the Nafe Katter Theatre on UConn’s Main Campus will receive free admission to that day’s 4 p.m. Summertime Saturday Puppet Shows.  Show your Seussical the Musical tickets at the door, and see our Summertime Saturday Puppet Show for free!***

Each Summertime Saturday Puppet Show performance will be preceded by guided tours of the Ballard Institute’s current exhibitions—Frank Ballard: An Odyssey of a Life in Puppetry and Frank Ballard: Roots and Branches.  The performances will be hosted by puppeteer Joseph Therrien, who will also perform original songs and music, accompanied by Kali Therrien.

 

Here is the 2011 Summertime Saturday Puppet Show schedule:

The Enchanted Vanity Set

— Saturday, June 25, 4 p.m.— Travis Lope and Leah Sylvain, The Enchanted Vanity Set. A beautiful maiden escapes from a tyrant king with help from an enchanted vanity set—an expertly crafted toy theater full of magical transformations!  And: Travis Lope, Foolish Fortunes.  A gypsy fortune-teller reveals the future to lucky members of the audience!

 

 

The Proleptic Voice

— Saturday, July 2, 3:30 p.m.—Thomas Getchell, excerpts from The Proleptic Voice: A Visual Poem.  A marionette tour-de-force of vignettes revealing themes of Faith, Hope, and Charity in the poetry of one of America’s greatest poets, Emily Dickinson, inspired by her metaphor of life as a circus.

 

 

 

The Adventures of Doggy Poo.

— Saturday, July 9, 3:30 p.m.—Ki Hong Kim, The Adventures of Doggy Poo.  A stunning, vibrant, and humorous tabletop puppet version of a popular Korean children’s story about a lonely piece of poop who finds meaning and acceptance fertilizing a dandelion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

— Saturday, July 16, 3:30 p.m.—Nicole Hartigan, God Paints a Saint.  A marvelous and magical toy theater evocation of 16th-century Mexico, telling the history of the first appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe—Mexico’s patron saint.

— Saturday, July 23, 3:30 p.m.—Thomas Getchell, excerpts from The Proleptic Voice: A Visual Poem.  A marionette tour-de-force of vignettes revealing themes of Faith, Hope, and Charity in the poetry of one of America’s greatest poets, Emily Dickinson, inspired by her metaphor of life as a circus.