Join us Saturday night, January 21st at 8 p.m. in the Studio Theater on UConn’s Main Campus to experience the Spring 2012 UConn Puppet Slam!  See exciting new works by celebrated puppeteers from the Northeast, as well as new creations by emerging artists from UConn’s famed Puppet Arts Program.

The UConn Puppet Slam will include Lindsay McCaw and Adam Cook, who, as The Dolly Wagglers, will perform Polka Your Finger Out Polka (a cantastoria or picture performance) and Everything In Moderation All at Once (a cranky); Rose Friedman and Justin Lander of Vermont’s Modern Times Theater, performing The City, a toy theater show based on a story by Herman Hesse; Jim Napolitano (of Nappy’s Puppets) performing one his famed shadow puppet shows; and works by students from the renowned University of Connecticut Puppet Arts Program, including Carianne Hoff, Nicole Hartigan (joined by special guest performer Ryan Hartigan), Anna Fitzgerald, Leah Sylvain, Seth Shaffer and Kali Therrien.

This event is free and open to the public–tell your friends, and better yet bring them with you for an exciting evening of surprising innovation and thought-provoking artistry.  For directions to the Studio Theater see this site.  The UConn Puppet Slams are supported by a generous grant from the Puppet Slam Network.

As part of its year-long “World of Puppetry in Hartford” project the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, Mi Casa Family Service & Education Center, and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art will present a free performance of Mi Casa es Su Casa on Saturday, February 11 as part of the Wadsworth Atheneum’s Second Saturdays for Families series.  The entire Second Saturday event begins at 10 a.m. and ends at 12:30.  Mi Casa es Su Casa will begin at 11:30.  The Wadsworth Atheneum is located at 600 Main Street in Hartford.

The workshops and performance are all part of the Ballard Institute’s  yearlong “World of Puppetry in Hartford” project, a series of exhibitions, workshops and performances dedicated to spreading the word about puppetry in Hartford, in collaboration with the UConn Health Center, the Mark Twain House and Museum, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and Billings Forge Community Works.

For more information see the Wadsworth Atheneum webpage for this event.

This project has been made possible by the generous assistance of the Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation and Judith Zachs.

If you have not yet had a chance to see our exhibition Frank Ballard: An Odyssey of a Life in Puppetry, we invite you to spend some time during the next two weekends at the Ballard Museum because it will be closing December 18th, 2011.  Frank Ballard: An Odyssey of a Life on Puppetry is paired with our second exhibition, Frank Ballard: Roots and Branches, which will be on display when the spring 2012 season begins.   The museum is open for visitors Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays 12-5 p.m.–please come by to see both exhibits, and to find some holiday gifts in our museum store.  The Ballard Museum will reopen Sunday, March 25, 2012 with the return of Frank Ballard: Roots and Branches, and the premiere of a new exhibit of Chinese shadow puppets from the collection of 1930s and 40s puppet pioneer Pauline Benton.

Frank Ballard: An Odyssey of a Life in Puppetry

Frank Ballard’s rich career as a director, designer, and teacher is celebrated in this retrospective curated by UConn alumna Rolande Duprey.  The exhibition presents the stories, designs, construction processes, and performance of Ballard’s many productions, including rare video footage, as well as the many personal challenges Ballard faced in his career.  Featuring puppets and sets from The Bluebird, Two By Two, H.M.S. Pinafore, The Magic Flute,Peer Gynt, The Golden Cockerel and other productions.

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

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.

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.