There’s a constant, childlike curiosity peering out from behind the black frames of his glasses and an unmistakable determination and fight in his spirit. He knows exactly what strings to pull.
So who exactly is Frank Ballard? Bart Roccoberton, former student and friend, chuckles at the question. “He’s a puppeteer,” he says simply after a moment of thought. “Ego is not involved. Frank, he has a good heart. He’s inspiring.”
It is thanks to Ballard that UConn students can explore their creativity and artistic passions through a major in puppetry. Goodbye history, and your mind-numbing lists of dates and events. So long business, with your endless calculations and profit-driven corporations. Hello puppetry performance class!
In 1964 Ballard taught the first puppetry classes ever administered at UConn and just a few years later created the first complete undergraduate and graduate degree program in puppetry, right here at the University of Connecticut, the only institution in the country offering masters degrees (both MA and MFA) in the field.
“None of us would be here if it wasn’t for Frank,” says Roccoberton, the current director of the UConn puppetry arts program.
Roccoberton, who studied under Frank in the 1970s, credits Ballard with some of the priceless professional opportunities he was given as a puppetry student at UConn. “I was suddenly working with people I’d never think I’d even talk to,” said Roccoberton who worked with puppetry pros like Margaret Rose, the co-designer of Howdy Doody, and Jim Henson, one of the most well-known puppeteers in modern American history.
In 1975, Ballard was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a degenerative disease of the central nervous system. It started with a twitch in two fingers on his right hand, and progressed to an uncontrollable shaking of his whole hand. While he may not be able to physically manipulate the puppets, Ballard remains dedicated to the puppetry program.”The mind is sharp. It’s the physical that is challenging,” says Roccoberton.
Now at almost 80 years old, Ballard has long since retired from teaching, though his mind still lingers in the world of puppetry. During a recent visit, Ballard insisted that it was time UConn hosted another national puppetry festival, according to Roccoberton, who chuckles at the memory. Even in his old age, Ballard is a force to be reckoned with.
By CARESSE SPENCER Puppetry is a very ancient art form originating centuries ago; with puppet shows existing in almost all civilizations and periods. There is even evidence that puppets were used in Egypt as early as 2000 BC when string-operated figures of wood were manipulated to perform the action of kneading bread. Puppets have been used since the earliest times not just to entertain, but also to animate and communicate the ideas and needs of human societies. Archaeologists have even uncovered wire- controlled, articulated puppets made of clay and ivory have also been found in Egyptian tombs. Most scholars agree that puppetry was popularized as an art form in China with the introduction of the shadow puppet during the Han Dynasty from 202 BC – 220 AD. These puppets were made from stretched donkey skins, dried sheep skin, water buffaloes, pigs, or fish. However, that is only one particular kind of puppet and one kind of puppetry. Puppetry seems to have existed in many other countries, in many other art forms, long before the formal introduction of the shadow puppet and shadow theater in China. Some of the earliest kinds of puppets had their beginning in the tribal society as ritual masks with hinged jaws or jointed skulls used in religious ceremonies. Native Americans also used puppets in their corn festivals and ceremonial dances. It suffices to say puppets have been a part of man's history. The Turkish puppeteers added waist movement to the Chinese shadow puppets and began controlling rod arm movements from the side, rather than the bottom, as the Chinese had done. Later, three dimensional rod puppets would evolve from shadow puppets. In The Middle Ages the Christian Church used puppets to spread church doctrine with monks and priests as the puppeteers. The Nativity, the story of the birth of Jesus, was a favorite play. Between the 14th and 15th century, puppeteers began to explore themes other than religious ones. The Church decided puppets were no longer suitable for their teaching. However, puppetry found a new home in the streets and fairs of the working class. By the sixteenth century, puppet theaters existed all over Europe.
In the 17th century, a comedic influence popularized hand puppets. They were also easier to operate, cheaper to make and more mobile as shows could be given from the back of wagons and from small portable stages. Puppet characters could comment on things the masses didn’t dare to as local politics became a common topic. “Puppetry has survived due to the efforts of all the world's puppeteers through the ages. When barbarians overran Rome and puppet theater vanished, it was the traveling puppeteers who kept the art and the craft alive. Troupes of puppeteers, jesters, jugglers and entertainers breathed new life into the world's tales and histories, as they moved from place to place and puppets found a home in folk art.”
Before computer animation, before animation itself, there were puppets. Dating back to 1100 B.C. in India, puppets were used to reenact sacred stories for entertainment. Today we reminisce about “Howdy Doody” of the 1950s, and the Muppets of the 1960s which pioneered the way in children’s television entertainment in the United States. But who were the artists pulling the strings? Buffalo Bob Smith, born Robert Emil Schmidt, created Howdy Doody in 1947. Howdy himself was a red-headed, freckle-faced, gap-toothed boy marionette which took eleven strings to operate. Joined by puppeteers Scott Brinker, Rufus Rose, and Velma Dawson, Smith and Howdy entertained kids through 1960 in both black and white, and color television. Upon entering the University of Connecticut’s coveted puppet lab you are first met by a mural of a clown holding an umbrella riding a bicycle across a tight rope,. This mural was on the wall between Smith’s home and his studio, which in 1958 caught fire. The studio was lost, and the mural was the only thing standing between his home and the flames. The flame retardant material saved Smith’s home. Now the mural hangs encased in glass, with a very charred background, to inspire puppetry students “to be innovative and creative but above all have fun” said Michael Bush, a puppetry graduate student. In the sixties Jim Henson cut the strings, and began creating his Muppets out of flexible fabric covered foam rubber allowing mouth movements and facial expressions that were never possible with marionettes. Henson created The Muppets, Fraggle Rock, The Muppet Show, and the puppets of Sesame Street, playing Kermit the Frog, Bert (of Bert and Ernie), and several other characters himself. Henson also created several movies such as The Muppet Movie, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and collaborated with George Lucas to create Jedi Master Yoda for Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back. He was nominated for and won several Oscars and Emmys, along with the Courage of Conscience Award in 1992 for being a “humanitarian, muppeteer, producer, and director of films for children that encourage tolerance, interracial values, equality and fair play” according to the recipients list. Both Smith and Henson are recognized as innovators in puppetry because they loved what they did, believed in entertaining, and never let anyone else pull the strings.
By JOSHUA CLARKE Although people upon hearing the word “puppet,” might think it describes a single entity, there are actually many different types of puppets. Humans have been making puppets for thousands of years, and over that time they have invented different kinds of puppets. On a recent tour of the University of Connecticut’s Puppet Lab, where students learn to make and perform with puppets, several different types of puppets were present. Michael Bush, a graduate student earning an MFA in puppetry, described the various types of puppets. “A puppet is any object moved through space with a sense of life,” Bush said. For example, “a rock could be a puppet”, he added. A puppeteer doesn’t even have to be hidden from the audience because usually the audience focuses on the puppet and ignores the puppeteer.
Hand and mouth puppets (Two person hand and mouth puppets)
The hand and mouth is one type of puppet that is very familiar to American audiences. One hand of the puppeteer holds two arm rods. The fingers of the puppeteer’s hand move to cause various movements of the puppet’s head and limbs. They are often made of either poly foam or reticulated foam. Reticulated foam is heavy duty and higher quality. Often, the poly foam is used for a prototype puppet, and reticulated foam is used for the final copy.
Glove puppets (hand puppets) Glove puppet is the preferred term, Bush said, explaining that this type of puppet is familiar to American audiences who have seen “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” The puppeteer’s hand – two fingers (index and middle) go in the puppet’s head, the thumb goes in one arm and two fingers (ring and pinky) go in the other arm.
Marionettes Marionettes are another kind of puppet. Each limb of the puppet is connected to a string that is descended from a crossbar held by the puppeteer. The head can also have one or more strings, allowing it to move up or down and left or right. A puppeteer manipulates the marionette by pulling strings that move the head and limbs. Simple marionettes may have only one crossbar, but more complex ones have two crossbars to control the marionette. In that case, one crossbar usually manipulates the puppet’s head and the other manipulates its body.
Stop Motion Puppets
Stop motion puppets are used in filmmaking projects, such as television shows or movies. The stop motion puppets contain full wire armature, which allows them to have a full range of possible movements, Bush explained. The full wire armature allows the puppet to be posed and bent into any necessary shape for the video. The puppet is put in a certain pose and photographed, then it is moved slightly and photographed again. Then it is moved again and photographed. The process is repeated many times, and when all the pictures are put together in a video it looks like the puppet is moving. Stop motion puppets are built by shaping a wire armature into the desired shape of a human, animal or fantasy creature, then covering it with clay, foam or other materials, Bush said. One example of a stop motion puppet in the lab is a dog puppet, about a foot tall, by Fergus Walsh, a student in the puppetry program. It is made from foam, clay and wire armature.
Shadow Puppets In shadow puppetry, shadows are created by the puppets and projected onto a screen that the audience watches, Bush said. A puppeteer and the puppet are behind the screen. A light is also behind the screen, and behind the puppeteer and puppet. The audience is on the other side of the screen, and they only see the shadows of the puppets. In the puppetry lab there was a shadow puppet, made of cardboard, of the baby Minotaur for the Connecticut Repertory Theatre production of “Icarus,” which ran from March 26 to April 9, 2009. The cardboard puppet appeared crude and unfinished, but the puppets can be made from simple materials, Bush said, explaining that even if the actual puppet looks ugly, the shadow looks clean. Also, the shadow hides the manipulator, so the audience sees only the shadow of the puppets. Furthermore, the light can be moved to make the shadow move across the screen. The shadow gets bigger or smaller if you move the light closer to or further away from the screen, Bush said. There was also an adult Minotaur head for “Icarus.” A puppeteer wears the Minotaur head, which looks like the head of a bull, and only the bullhead is visible on the screen to the audience. The puppeteer only needs to turn his head 45 degrees to change the shadow of the Minotaur head from a profile to facing the screen. That way, the puppeteer can always be looking at the screen, Bush said.
Body Puppets
Body puppets are large objects that one or more people manipulate from inside the puppet. Big Bird from “Sesame Street” is a well-known example of a body puppet. “These are often used in parades and demonstrations, and are at least the size of a human and often much larger,” according to a Wikipedia article on puppets. The article also states that body puppets are seen regularly at Disney theme parks and in “The Lion King” musical, with body puppets designed by Julie Taymor.
Rod Puppets
The rod puppet is controlled by rods or sticks that are outside the puppet’s body. The puppeteer puts one arm inside the rod puppet. The hand of the puppeteer’s other arm holds two sticks and manipulates the rod puppet by moving the rods in different ways. Bush demonstrated how to control a rod puppet. With his right arm inside the puppet, he controlled it with his left. “So by rolling the sticks between your fingers, you get the hands to sway back and forth,” he said. “You can also control them individually.” Watch the following video to see Bush control a rod puppet.
Other types of Puppets
Bush created bird puppets for “Icarus,” which he described as a hybrid of different kinds of puppets. He used a spring usually used for a different kind of puppet to make the birds’ wings flap. “I spent two and a half hours trying to figure out how to get just the wings to move and not the body,” Bush said. “It didn’t occur to me until later to let the spring do the work.” The puppeteer holds the back of the bird and as the puppet moves the wings flap up and down because of the spring. Another puppet made by UConn students was a giant fish, about 10 feet long, for “Pericles,” a William Shakespeare play performed on campus from Feb. 26 to March 8, 2009. A small model was made first, Bush said, and then each piece of the model was placed on an overhead projector to make an enlarged piece for the full-size fish. It takes a lot of math, or a computer program that does the math for you, Bush said. The original model fish was only about a foot long. Masks can also be considered puppets, Bush said. In a mask performance, a mask allows a performer to become a different character, which is a costume aspect of a performance. Paper sculptures are also used in puppetry. A puppetry class teaches students how to do paper sculptures. Masks can be made from a single sheet of paper, Bush said. Other paper puppets can also be made from a single sheet of paper. Different kinds of paper are used, with oak tag being one kind of paper used. When designing a new puppet, each one starts from scratch, Bush said. Each puppet has a different design process. One must problem solve every aspect of the process of making a puppet. “The best part of the building process is problem solving,” Bush said. “So it’s not that any of this stuff is decided or told to you. You just have to problem solve every aspect. It’s all trial and error. That’s the biggest part of it.”
There is no answer to the question, “how do you make a puppet?” Mostly because there are so many versions of a puppet that can be made. Shadow puppets, hand puppets, foam puppets, rod puppets, the list goes on. And each kind of puppet is made from a different list of materials constructed in a different manner to create a unique form particular to the artist's vision. “There aren't really rules,” explained Michael Bush, a graduate student at the University of Connecticut puppetry program. Bush is currently earning his thesis by producing the play, Icarus. Bush is basically in charge of the entire play, which requires making (or assigning others to make) A LOT of puppets. According to Bush, there are more than 10 different kinds of puppets in the play, and 55 puppets in total. Bush particularly takes pride in the birds that were made for the play. The structure behind the birds is fairly basic for a puppet, but it was getting the birds to fly that was challenging. “No matter how much you know about puppets, you've got to start from scratch every time because each puppet is different,” said Bush who has never encountered a problem like this before. First, Bush made an oil based sculpture of what he wanted the birds to look like. He then used the sculpture to make a mold. There are two molds; one for the first half of the bird, the other for the second half of the bird. Both molds are made out of plaster, but one side is cured and the other is not, so that they don't stick together. It takes about four hours to make the mold, and then another three hours to make the puppet from the mold. The longer the bird sits in the mold, the thicker it gets. When the puppet is ready to be removed, Bush pours out the excess liquid and pops out the puppet. It then hangs overnight to dry. The next morning, the rough edges of the puppet are shaved off with an Exacto knife and sanded until smooth. Once the bird is dry, Bush sticks a dowel into the body of the bird. The dowel is held in place with a screw, and a washer is added to keep the screw from popping through the body. “When building puppets, there's a log of strain. You have to do everything to reinforce it,” said Bush. The screw and washer are just there to reinforce the structure. To hide the washer from visibility, it is covered with muslin and blended into the bird's body. A layer of dry brush paint is then placed over it. A spring is made by placing medal in a vice and shaping it into a coil. The wire is then inserted into a hole in the dowel and held in place with glue and epoxy. A new wire is added to the old one using a solder to melt the medal into a pool of liquid, which then hardens, joining the two wires together. The second set of wire is then bent into the shape of a wing and covered with raffia to give the illusion of feathers. The next part was the hardest for Bush: making the birds fly. Bush wanted to make a sort of clapping mechanism, but wasn't sure how to do it. After a two and a half hour period of trial and error, Bush finally realized that by removing his thumb from the top portion of the wire, the birds wings were free to flap about. “Every single puppet teaches you something for the next,” said Bush, “It's just about being creative and going with the flow.”
Bart Roccoberton shares his office with dozens of people, animals, and creatures – his puppets. Entering Roccoberton’s office, there is no mistaking that he is the director of the UConn School of Puppetry. Chinese geishas, a devil, and various body-less faces surround him, staring as he sits at his desk. He also has a window that looks into the puppet studio, so he can see his students’ puppet creations in the making. “I insisted on having a window in my office to entertain me,” he said. Roccoberton has been the director of the School of Puppetry for 19 years, but he has been involved in puppetry for over 30. He can remember the moment he decided he wanted to go into puppetry. He was a theater student at Mont Clair State College in New Jersey and he needed three more credits to graduate, so he took a puppetry class. While taking the class, Roccoberton realized that puppetry was a way to combine all his interests, which ranged from music to literature to chemistry. After graduating, Roccoberton enrolled in the UConn School of Puppetry, and he hated it. It took him 10 years to get a degree from UConn because he didn’t want to be associated with the program. “When I was a student here in the 70s, the people were egotistical, infighting idiots,” he said. Despite this, Roccoberton got his degree and became a professional puppeteer. “I was on the road everyday being a puppeteer from the mid 70s to the mid 80s,” he said. “I can honestly say I chose the right career,” Roccoberton said. “I get to create my own world and find a way to get people into that world. I allow them to dream.” Roccoberton never had any intentions of teaching puppetry let alone becoming the director. He said the events that led him to becoming director started when the founder of the UConn puppetry program, Frank Ballard, became ill with Parkinson’s disease and had to retire. After Ballard retired, the UConn School of Puppetry closed down. People, including Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, were outraged and they wrote letters to the dean and even the governor of Connecticut urging them re-open the school. Eventually, the school reopened, but there was no director. A friend of Roccoberton sent in his application and resume without Roccoberton’s knowing, and when UConn called him back, Roccoberton was not happy about it since he disliked the UConn program. However, his friend eventually convinced him to go for the interview.When Roccoberton got to UConn, he realized the program was completely different.“I remembered I liked working with students,” he said. Roccoberton accepted the position, but wanted to change the program a bit. He said that under Ballard, the students worked to build Ballard’s shows. Roccoberton told the school he didn’t want to do that.“I wanted the students to do their own thing,” he said. Roccoberton wants to train his students because in the puppetry business, you have to be your own boss, he said. Now as the director, Roccoberton joked that his job is to attend “endless meetings.” He also has many other responsibilities such as being on the board of advisors for the Frank Ballard Museum of Puppetry, and recruiting new students, which is something he doesn’t enjoy. Since the program only accepts three undergraduate students and three graduate students a year, Roccoberton has to turn away many students. “It’s a sadness,” he said. The other down side to being the director is that he cannot take on as many puppetry projects as he would like to. Roccoberton said he took on the task of building the fish for the play “Pericles” simply so he could build a puppet this semester. Roccoberton builds, performs, and writes the scripts for all his puppet performances because that is the tradition. Some of the work he has done includes a State Farm Insurance pep rally, for which Roccoberton and some of his students built a gigantic queen of hearts head, which now hangs over the office door watching over the puppet studio. He has also done many public service announcements for Connecticut and Massachusetts. One of them was a commercial advocating seat belts. Roccoberton built a puppet of a “tough biker guy” who says in the commercial: “If you love your kids, belt them.” The puppet community is small – a few thousand people worldwide Roccoberton said – so, after being in the business for over 30 years, people know to call Roccoberton when they need puppets. Roccoberton’s favorite project is a 2006 production of “The Firebird,” which he directed in Taiwan. He pulled out photos of the play revealing colorful and intricate puppets including a sparkling bright orange and red creature – the firebird - which he built. “I got bored just directing,” Roccoberton said. So he had to build a puppet. Roccoberton said doing “The Firebird” in Taiwan was “a little piece of heaven” because he was able to concentrate on one idea for a whole semester.
However, Roccoberton intends on being the director for a long time. “I’m many years away from retiring. This is just premature graying,” he said pointing to his gray ponytail. Wearing a Geppetto-esque leather vest, glasses, a pink completion, and wiry gray hair, Roccoberton exudes the image of a puppeteer. With his appearance and animated enthusiasm, it’s hard to imagine anyone else could be perfect enough to run the puppet program. He has started thinking about who could take over his job once he retires, and right now he says there isn’t anyone. He does have some people in mind who could be ready after getting more experience, he said. “People are out there getting themselves ready.” Until then, though, Roccoberton has fun working at UConn. “I can’t imagine how boring it is to be a professor in any other department,” he said.
By JASON BAGLEY Beneath the kaleidoscope-like clutter of red and white paint splotches, white paper scraps, shards of glass, pieces of cardboard, iron rods, 18 quarts of Valspar paint and an endless knot of extension cords is the plywood floor of the University of Connecticut Puppet Lab.A half-circle of one-inch tall red buddhas, a glass jar of tongue depressors, and an all-purpose drill set are scattered on one of the twenty-something wooden workspaces.
One adroit student has his IPod playing soft classical music, which gently diffuses the room, as he carves the last fine details of a small animal sculpture.Then suddenly he is summoned to help with a computer program by another graduate student.He lifts his head with a jerk.The sound of his loafers scuffing the wood fade into the hallway.Minutes pass and he returns to the lab with a determined trajectory to his workplace.He swings around the metal seat, causing a sharp screech of metal on metal, plops down on the worn out red cushion and becomes absorbed in his work again.
Sitting with his legs crossed in the center of the wooden floor is graduate student Michael Bush.He is preparing Kate Smith for a production of “Hair” in three weeks.“Ah the smell of ethanol, how I miss thee,” Bush quips as he warps and bonds pieces of Styrofoam together with a hair blower for Miss Smith’s shoulders.Kate Smith is the largest puppet in the room, looming over the students at a solid 6’4”.A bundle of thick, loose white strings, extracted from a mop, render the hair, which spills over a pink pincushion face with black beady eyes and a scrunched-in pig nose.Two large paper ball lampshades etched with an Oriental design are the lady’s breasts.Attached to the center of each sphere is a red wooden ball with a blue tassel sagging from each ball.Kate has large, bulging Hamburger Helper hands that match her pink face.
The lampshades, Styrofoam, wooden balls and tassels are “all part of ‘Hair’ being based on found objects,” Bush says as he points to an antique, wooden radio on the table above him.With only three weeks before “Hair” opens, Bush foresees production heading into overdrive with “the first person in the morning or the last person at three in the morning” toiling extra hours.
However, he adds as he heats the Styrofoam, the ethanol odor continuing to spill through the room, “it’s never over even when it’s over.”
Silence followed by a soft click transformed the barren room into a garden illuminated solely by the moon. A traditional Chinese puppet floats across the garden, her large red tassel gently swaying across her chest. Her long white sleeves cascade down her body like water trickling along a riverbed. The dangling sequins on her dress reflect the moonlight as brightly as a school of silver fish gliding through the sea. It is hardly noticeable that a woman stands below controlling the puppet with deliberate grace. The puppeteer is Hua Hua Zhang, a guest artist at the University of Connecticut, and received her masters from UConn’s Puppetry Program. “It’s very exciting for me when I come here and the puppetry program always wants me to teach students,” said Zhang, “I share the technique, this is my art, my country’s style art and the more we share it with Americans, the more it blends together and we bridge art.”
Currently the artistic director of Visual Expressions located in Boothwyn, Pennsylvania, Zhang explains her freedom as, “I can do what I really want to do, express myself. I have my own voice.” In China government approval is still needed to perform shows according to Zhang. Studying the art of Chinese Rod Puppetry since she was 14, Zhang spent many years learning basic movement, technique and performance. Raised by courageous Chinese parents, Zhang’s wishes to perform were respected despite traditional Chinese expectations that women be conservative and shy away from public things. Zhang said her parents encouraged her to go on an adventure. In 1996 Zhang moved to the United States to study design with Bart Roccoberton Jr., the director of UConn’s program. In China Zhang was a performer and not allowed to direct or design puppets. In China it was expected that performers preformed and designers designed, there was no overlap. Since graduating, Zhang has created several shows that blend Eastern and Western styles. Her current productions include, Butterfly Dreams and East Meets West among others. Zhang’s shows combine Eastern and Western traditions and focus on the need for balance. “We’ve lost balance and family, we have so many wonderful things but we don’t have personal connections to family and love. I wanted my productions to show love coming back, balance, harmony, no fighting,” said Zhang. These productions are being presented in various venues in the New York, Boston and the Philadelphia area. Butterfly Dreams was also preformed at the 13th Worldwide Festival of Puppet Theatre in Charleville-Mezieres, France.
For more information on Zhang's production company Visual Expressions:
Lynne Cohen cues up the iMac and waits patiently for the film to start. "It takes a minute to get going," she says. After a moment's pause, the screen bursts into ghoulish life. A haggard figure writhes in agony, strapped down on an examining table in the Victorian gloom, as equally emaciated orderlies pour some sickening liquid down his resistant throat. And over these disturbing images flickering across the computer screen in shades of dingy gray and sickly green, a voice like Vincent Price intones in a half-crazed groan, "True! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?"
"So that's just a little bit of it," Cohen says, pausing the video.
The opening scene of "The Tell-Tale Heart," her adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's classic story of a maniac and his murderous exploits, encapsulates Cohen's approach to the art of making horror movies. "The horror genre opens us up to that dark part of ourselves--it's cathartic," she says. "I wasn't a horror fan until recently... horror wasn't necessarily my genre. But through people I know who are into horror, I started getting into it."
The directors she lists as inspirational--Robert Rodriguez, Tim Burton, Robert Wiene, who created the German Expressionist masterpiece "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari--have clearly influenced the dramatic lighting and charged, off-putting sets and scenery in "The Tell-Tale Heart." But there's something about Cohen's film that sets it apart from most other horror movies: the actors are all puppets.
Cohen, who trained as an actress at the Boston Conservatory before coming to UConn for graduate school, has a long-standing fascination for the phantasmagorical worlds theater and film can create. In choosing to enter the puppetry program here in Connecticut, Cohen says she was seeking to expand her repertoire, and get her name out there in the drama world as something more than just a run-of-the-mill actress. "There's something very primal about puppets," she says, and "The Tell-Tale Heart," which she plans to premier at Hartford's esoteric performance and art space, Real Art Ways, on April 16, reaches into the furthest crevices of human strangeness.
Cohen's film takes viewers into what she calls the "Insanity Zone," where reality and deranged fantasy intermingle and nothing is as it seems. The presence of puppets enhances that sense of unsettling madness, and Cohen's look particularly estranged from good mental health, even when seen outside the context of the film and its intricate sets. As they dangle from their control strings among the many puppet prototypes and half-built designs in the UConn Puppet Lab, Cohen's main characters--the unnamed narrator and his nemesis, the eerie and ultimately doomed old man--lend an air of miniature menace to the otherwise cheerful workshop. The two characters bear an eerie resemblance to each other, with their disheveled hair, gapingly wide eyes, and emaciated physiques, casting even more doubt on the narrator's crumbling mental state within the movie. Are they really two separate characters, or two aspects of one one cracking psyche?
"I wanted the whole world of the film to be sort of old and falling apart and rotting," Cohen says, back in the screening room, "but also with a kind of elegant beauty." This diminutive actress/puppeteer doesn't look, at first glance, like the kind of Goth horror fiend who would count shock-rock pioneer Alice Cooper among her favorite artists. But on closer inspection, it's clear his top-hatted and corpse-painted funereal glamour rubbed off on Cohen's creations.
The puppets themselves are only one aspect of the entire project. When she describes the technical details of shooting and creating a movie--from designing the scenery and lighting to filming and editing the raw footage--Cohen's eyes light up and a wide smile spreads across her narrow face. "I'm finding that I really love directing... as a director you have control over that world."
"Making movies is an extremely techy thing, and a puppet movie even more so. For every character you have to make every little thing--some need eight people, all crammed into the little set area," Cohen says. Fortunately for her, she had a team of dedicated technicians, from set builders and lighting designers to puppet tech directors, ready to help out. The actual shooting of the film took about four and a half weeks to finish, all scheduled around classes--"Very challenging," Cohen acknowledges. The movie concept, drawing viewers into the Insanity Zone, making them uncomfortable, making them question their own reality, was the first step. Making the concept into a real film required some practical expertise.
"Engineering is not necessarily my forte," Cohen says. "I'm more the creative part--it really has to be a collaborative effort."
On viewing the film-in-progress, the influence of German Expressionism in the twisted scenery and strange camera angles becomes obvious. Cohen called in set and lighting designers to help her achieve this unsettling look.
"I want the windows skewed, I want angles," she says. "I want the room and sets to look like my design, only good."
Taking Cohen's designs and refining them was a group project, completed by a class at UConn taught by Michael Ananea. In the film, the nightmarish surroundings become as much a character as the puppet murderer and his victim. "They're such a part of the story," Cohen says.
Shooting over, the film is in the post-production stages of editing and adding sound and effects. "It's where you start to see the story come together," Cohen says of the editing process.
Before coming to UConn, "I'd never done art or made things with my hands--it was empowering" to start, Cohen says. "It was a big leap to come and do this." The process of making the film may be in its final stages, but getting it out to a wide audience will be the beginning of a whole new phase. Cohen hopes that, by entering the movie into some film festivals, she can start to carve out a niche for herself, as an artist, director, puppeteer, creator. Although Poe's masterful story ends on a note of paranoia and madness, this "Tell-Tale Heart" could prove the opening bell of a new and vibrant career.
Michael Bush is surrounded by fish, birds, beggars and one very large pair of hands. He constructed all of the creatures for his puppet version of “Icarus,” the mythological story about a boy who flew too close to the sun on wings of wax. In fact, Bush is responsible for all 52 of the performance puppets currently occupying the puppetry lab at the University of Connecticut. His creations will appear in “Icarus,” presented from March 27 to April 15 for eight performances at the Studio Theatre in the Dramatic Arts building on campus. In pursuit of their Master of Fine Arts degrees, Bush alongside friend and partner Stefano Brancato, planned the entire performance from start to finish. Brancato had already decided on putting on a production of “Icarus.” “It made sense that we would team up,” said Bush. In the production, Brancato is the director while Bush designs and creates all of the puppets. Bush and Brancato began writing the first of seven scripts this past July, a process that took nearly a month to complete. The cast, which is comprised of 13 actors and puppeteers, was hand-picked. According to Bush, it is an ensemble cast, where all members will assume various roles in the performance “There isn’t just one star of the show, said Bush. “It keeps the audience off kilter. They don’t know what’s going to happen next.” Actors and puppeteers will be assuming the roles of beggars, fish, birds, water and much more. Most of the intricate creations are rod puppets, although shadow puppets will be incorporated into the show as well. The first step for Bush, who began designing the puppets in September, was to create a design book. The in-depth book is a tool for Bush to communicate his ideas about the show through visuals, measurements, sketches and descriptions. “You pull things from everywhere,” said Bush who mentions getting ideas for puppets from Google, magazines and other productions. Bush used various materials to create each puppet just right. By using products such as ethafoam, he was able to weld pieces of foam together to create the desired figure, such as the large intricate design head of a man. He also constructed a large hand from reed, a lightweight material so that performing with it would be easy. By using his design book as a guide, Bush created human puppets covered in blue barnacles and wire birds with straw-like feathers. Although some are unfinished, each puppet has a vibrant design waiting to be created. Many of the puppets are unique in the way that Bush isn’t shy about showcasing their mechanics; many of his creations allow the audience to see how they function. According to Bush, much of creating the puppets is trial and error, which often makes staying on schedule difficult. “You have to learn how to problem solve really fast,” said Bush. “It’s all a learning process.” The production, which can “cost quite a bit,” according to Bush, is partially funded by the Connecticut Repertory Theatre. However, although Bush was given $1,000 by the CRT, he said he paid for a lot of it out of pocket, which would ensure his ownership of the puppets. Bush will not be featured in the performance, because that would have been much too time consuming on top of puppet designing. Instead, he looks forward to taking the role of an audience member, and hopes viewers can appreciate the less formal style of storytelling through puppetry. “With this show, one of the things is that it’s an event on stage; something that is existing right now,” said Bush. “I just want them to see a different way of story telling."
The most intriguing thing about puppetry, according to Tyler Menard, is that the art he conveys through the puppet is something that he could never portray himself on stage. That’s because he and the puppets reach a deeper realm of the human consciousness, he said.
Menard, a puppetry major, also said that his most formidable role as a puppeteer was when he played a father in the show, “Little Things.” The father dies but while alive devotes himself to teaching his little girl about life.
The motivation for the role was the director’s father. She had described him to Menard extensively prior to production. But Menard still struggled to grasp control of the character.
“I had never been a father. I struggled to get into the mind and being of the puppet and I was overwhelmed that I had to teach this girl the nature of life,” he said, “It was frustrating trying to achieve the same person she (the director) had conceived her father to be.”
After repeated disappointing rehearsals, one night Menard said he finally put all the pieces he had picked up together. He and the puppet essentially became one. He knew at that moment that he had attained an authenticate sense of the character. He had reached the goal of the role that he had set out to fulfill.
His interest in drama has always been connected to his love for the art of puppetry.
When Menard was a child he created stories in which his toys became characters. His parents recall him talking about how he animated each of them.
“From a very young age, I had an interest in both visual and performance art,” Menard said. Menard got into acting as a teenager. At his high school, Norwich Free Academy, he worked behind the scenes and learned stage construction and operation of everything. He also took acting an art classes as well as music lessons.
When he entered the University of Connecticut, he was a music education major but quickly learned that he didn’t want to dedicate his life to music. “It wasn’t a creative enough outlet for me. Puppetry, I realized, was the venue that combined all my artistic interests,” Menard said, “It involves set designing, stage building, creation and construction of the character and performing, as well.”
More than the theatrical and performance dimensions of puppetry, Menard was fascinated by how everything is possible with puppets and there’s also a storytelling dimension. “The puppet has the ability to surpass what human actors can do. What humans can’t do, puppets can,” he said. “You can tell a story more visually than you can with just human actors. The puppet touches people in a unique way.” But puppetry allows Menard to be an artist, actor, writer and musician. In other words, he must utilize all his talents as a puppeteer.
The puppeteer has to construct the physical figure and at the same time create the personality of the puppet from the material of his imagination. Also he has to write the script, outline dialogue and puppet movements, develop music, engineer the stage display, and then dynamically perform the skit. The whole process can take years to complete.
When all of its facets are synthesized into production, the result is Puppetry Theater. “It’s challenging to get at the nature of each character because, unlike with acting, these are characters you’ve constructed yourself,” said Menard. “And it’s not about you, it’s about the puppet and bringing it to life.” He said the hardest part of puppetry is coming up with a concept and then, overall, a script that is entirely original—that is, discovering how to tell a story in one’s own way.
To do this, Menard said, tests all of his creative faculties. Neither acting nor music asks as much from the artist because puppetry requires the skills of each. As a puppeteer at UConn, he said, he’s always performing and often in musical shows such as “The Phantom of the Opera.” Though it’s difficult, with puppetry, Menard said, nothing hinders his creativity—everything is wide open for him to experiment with—from serious to comedic roles and everywhere in between.
“Puppetry’s about exploration. I try to take it on from all angles with my own individual creativity,” Menard said. There is a market for puppetry majors that can be lucrative depending on how talented the puppeteer is, according to UConn graduate and puppeteer Eric Brooks. “There are countless numbers of puppeteers who get really high-paying jobs in Hollywood, Disney, touring shows, Broadway, international positions,” Brooks said. “The list goes on and on.”
Menard is a senior now and is still acting as well as performing puppetry shows. He’s looking forward to graduating so he can begin a career in puppetry. He’s prepared a portfolio to send out to Cirque du Soleil, Walt Disney, and the puppet designer Michael Curry. “Puppetry seems so strange to people but it’s everywhere you look” Menard said. “What puppeteers ultimately want to do, what I want to do, is become a part of and contribute to its art and history.”
Lyn Cohen is completing her master's degree in puppetry at UConn. For her MFA project, she is creating a film adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart” using puppets. In this interview, Cohen talks about how she got into puppetry and about her film.
Q: Where are you from? A: I'm from Erie, Pennsylvania. I decided to go to Boston for school somehow and I live in New York really. But I keep gravitating back to New England and I don't know how it happens.
Q: What is your bachelor's degree in and why did you decide to come to UConn? A: Well, I'm actually an actress in real life. I went to school and got my BFA in Musical Theater Performance from the Boston Conservatory and I moved to New York to become an actor and spent several years there. And over the course of my time there, I decided I wanted to learn more about the production aspect. So I figured if I came here and studied puppetry, then I could learn about puppets, I could learn about producing, I could learn about directing and I’m learning a little bit about film. So I'm learning a little bit about everything and I hope that that will serve me so now when I go back home I'll be able to be in a position to start saying “Okay, I want to do this production. I need to do A, B, C and D” and then I can be in it or direct it or whatever. I'm finding also that I really love directing. Because as an actor, you spend a lot of time looking for work and really the best way to get work is just to make work for yourself. But because I had my degree in performance I really didn't know anything about the production aspect of theater or film or anything.
Q: Why puppetry? A: I think it's fascinating how puppets expand the world that you can create in drama. They can really bring something just very otherworldly to drama. If you put them on stage with people, you've suddenly expanded that world into something completely different. If you're working with puppets alone, there is a very interesting alienation effect so that even though “The Tell-Tale Heart” is very horrific and frightening, you can watch it because you know they are just puppets. It makes it a little easier to take. I think one of the things that is attractive about this story, really about drama at all in my opinion, is that we recognize aspects of our own humanity and it makes you think about that. In this case it’s about someone who loses his mind and murders somebody but it's told from the first person and it really creates empathy for that murderer and so you have to think about that and empathize with them and you think about “Well, how would it be if that was me?” and then you recognize those things in yourself. It makes it a little easier to do that I think when you’re not watching real people. There's a lot of interesting things you can do with puppets that you can't do with people. Of course, there's a lot of things you can do with people that you can't do with puppets too so it can be a frustrating venture at times and it takes about a million times longer than working with people because you have to make every single one your actors.
Q: How did you first get involved in filmmaking? A: The year before I came here I went to the O'Neill Puppetry Conference and I did this thing called video anarchy, which shows you very basically how to use Final Cut. We made two-minute movies. I made this little movie over the course of the week about a moth and I just fell in love with the process. There's so much that you can do with the camera and the editing software and it just makes things just absolutely magical. I really loved it. So when I came here I wanted to more of that and the second semester we had a TV class and we made short movies again with the same guy to teach it again. So it solidified what I did over the summer. Also that semester, I did a trailer for “The Tell-Tale Heart”. I originally just wanted to make the movie second semester but then I realized this project is way too big for just a semester's worth of work and a couple people doing it. So I decided just to do a minute-and-a-half trailer and I used that as part of my pitch to do the MFA project so that other people could see what I had in mind. The puppets were a little bit cruder than the actual film and the sets were not as nice and the lighting was not as good but it gave a pretty clear indication of what it was going to be.
Q: What made you want to adapt the “The Tell-Tale Heart”? A: I did it for my dad actually. It's inspired by my dad because when I was a little kid he used to read me the story and I always loved when he would read me the story because it's a great story and he'd get so into it. He always wanted to be a radio actor so he would really get into telling the story and I always wanted to preserve it in some way for posterity so that I could always listen to it and I thought, “Wow, this would make an interesting puppet movie.”
Q: What will you do with the film when it's all done? A: If it’s good enough—and it’s looking good—I would like to submit it to some festivals, puppet festivals but also film festivals because I think it’s unusual, especially for people who aren’t used to seeing puppets. I would really like to see how it plays in a place like that. I would like to do that and I’m going to go back to New York and try to get acting work too so I’m going to be an actor still but also I’m working on developing a musical with people and puppets so I’m going to continue to work on that. I haven’t really had time to spend time on it because I’ve been so involved in this and school but when school’s over and this is done then I can start focusing on that.
Over time, puppetry has always been associated with childhood; from the Victorian booths set out to entertain with the immature humor of Punch and Judy, to the wisdom of Kermit the Frog, puppets have been a part of the culture of youth. Professionally, the act of puppeteering involves as much practice and dedication as any other dramatic art, but still remains relegated to the corner of the performing arts world. Puppeteers are a unique blend of artist and creator, bringing life to the inanimate and combining form with function. The University of Connecticut is one of three schools in the nation to offer a BFA degree in Puppetry; graduates go on to use their skills in Broadway plays, television shows, or the classroom. It seems that for now, at least, most puppeteers with a degree in their craft will be able to secure themselves jobs doing what they love. Why, though, does the art of puppetry still exist? Puppetry in its simplest form has existed for thousands of years, used as a way of telling stories or in rituals and celebrations. The craft has evolved from the mere recreation of events to a culture all its own. Following the late Jim Henson's creation of the "Muppet" (a word he claims is a portmanteau of "marionette" and "puppet"), Henson started his first puppet-based show, Sam and Friends, in 1955. This show was succeeded by the unflinchingly popular Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock and other beloved television programs and feature films. With puppeteers bringing life to Henson's characters since the 1950s, generations of children have watched and loved these puppets. If nothing else, children connect with puppets (and Muppets) because in their eyes they are magical beings. They walk and talk like us, but there is an element of make-believe that exists in their shapes and sizes that can't be recreated by putting on a costume; it has to exist on its own, which is where puppetry comes in. Were it not for children's television shows, the puppetry major may not exist today. Trends show that the need for professional puppeteers skyrockets in the Winter, when performances of holiday specials involving puppets begin their seasonal runs. But if not for the creation of Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, would puppetry exist only on the stage? Unlike dancing and acting, puppetry has just begun to truly permeate modern culture as a means of entertainment on its own. The hit Broadway show Avenue Q is one of the most well known examples of new culturally popular puppet show. Avenue Q features a cast of modern puppets, almost like adult versions of the Sesame Street characters many in the audience grew up watching. The show is certainly not for children, and has become one of the most popular Broadway productions. So what is the value of puppetry? For the puppeteers, it could be a way for them to reconnect with and recreate a part of the magic of their childhoods. For the audience, it's the lure of that intrinsically childlike nature of the puppet. Henson's "Muppets," easily recognizable with their bulging eyes and wide mouths, and are a symbol of youth and imagination. Puppets can act in ways human beings cannot. They can fly, bend, twist and move in an entirely inhuman way, and can take whatever shape the artist can create; given the fact that our childhood puppet shows and movies remain popular today, the puppet industry appears to be going strong. Audiences react and relate to puppets in individual ways. It's easy to get swept up in a puppeteer's performance and forget that the character on stage is not actually a human being. Puppetry affords audiences an escape, and it allows its practitioners to bring the inanimate to life.
And you thought UConn was just about hoops. Wrong. The University of Connecticut has a world famous puppet arts program. Learn all about it. HERE and NOW.
The Strings behind the Strings
This blog was created, written and photographed by the University of Connecticut Journalism Department Magazine Writing class in the Spring 2009 semester. We would like to express our appreciation to the UConn Puppet Arts Program for all of its cooperation.
By JENNIFER WARMATH
