Puppet Arts Classes Open to the university, at large.
Movement-Based Performance for the Puppet Theatre I class is still accepting students. If you want to develop performance skills in a safe, fun, and exciting environment, join this class!
When: Mon/Wed, 2-4:45pm
Where: Puppet Arts Complex, 30 Ahern Lane, Depot Campus
Description: Movement-Based Performance for the Puppet Theatre I is designed to awaken and develop imaginative and skilled theatrical performers through the exploration of movement concepts, movement-based theatre techniques and devising work. In order to focus on the development of the performer’s body and live performance abilities, we focus on the body as the starting point of performance. We do not work with puppets; however we do work with objects and materials! This course will lay the ground work for students to engage equally well in any form of performance (as puppeteers or live performers).
This course we will develop performance skills, imagination, creativity, and ability to devise original and inspired theatre work. Students will acquire a range of abilities and knowledge to become engaging and compelling performers and to support artistic, professional, and personal growth. The skills gained in this course will help develop more energized and alert, and at the same time, less self-conscious performers. Students will become more aware of stage surroundings and will learn to use props in more meaningful ways. They will search for and discover theatrical expression and go beyond realism, finding meanings in metaphors and symbols that are essential to art and theatre.
Each class will include a component of a rigorous physicality using elements of creative movement, physical theatre, and yoga to allow freedom of mind and body in order to engage fully in theatre explorations and creation.
In this course students will explore and work with objects, materials, and movement concepts and will devise etudes within each form.
They will develop these creations throughout the semester and engage in analyses, observations and critique. The culmination will be a performance at the end of the semester.”
Contact Margarita Blush for more information: margarita.blush@uconn.edu
Puppetry and Modernism (DRAM 5612)
When: Tues/Thurs, 9:30-11:00 am
Where: Workshop Room, Ballard Institute Museum of Puppetry, 1 Royce Circle, Storrs Center
Description: Puppets, Objects, Robots, Digital Media, and the Material World in Performance have a huge effect on our lives. When did all this start, how did it develop, and how does the recent history of modern puppetry affect our perceptions, experiences, and relations with the material world today?
Puppetry and Modernism (DRAM 5612) (available to undergraduate upper class students), taught by Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry director John Bell, addresses these fascinating issues by examining the ways performance in the past 150 years has used objects and things to tell stories about ourselves. Examining Symbolism, Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, and a variety of old and new puppet and machine performance traditions from Zuni ritual to Burning Man, the class offers an expansive and thorough grounding in the modern roots of our experience of the physical world.
Contact Dr. John Bell for more information: john.bell@uconn.edu
For more information, contact: Elizabeth Acosta at elizabeth.acosta@uconn.edu