 Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Russell I'm here today in the beautiful downtown stores area in Connecticut And I'm here today to check out a very fascinating thing I never expected to find in a random town in Connecticut That just happens to be where my father-in-law grew up and that is the Ballarat Institute of puppetry There's a puppet museum in downtown stores It sticks out right here in the main area and that's because the University of Connecticut or UConn actually has the US's Only graduate program in puppetry. Yes, there is such a thing in the US And it's a world's center of excellence in puppetry education Not only that, but they have a puppet museum as well in which they exhibit all kinds of fascinating puppets from different parts of the world And the guy who knows more about puppets than possibly anyone else in the US Possibly the world I'm gonna say is the director of the puppet museum. His name is John Bell I've been corresponding with John for the past year. He's very kindly invited me today to come and check out The fine puppetry museum here. We're gonna go inside in a second We're gonna see a lot a lot of different puppets find it check their permanent Exhibition as well as a temporary exhibition I'm gonna tell John about my weird interest of the 33-year-old man in stuffed animals Which I believe is a form of puppetry and let's go inside and learn everything about puppets So thanks very much to John for making this possible Hi My name is John Bell. I'm the director of the Ballarat Institute to Empty Museum of puppetry Here at the University of Connecticut beautiful stores Connecticut downtown stores and We're at the puppetry museum. I'm standing in front of our permanent exhibition, which is called the world of puppetry because puppetry is really a global art form and In this relatively small exhibit we have puppets from Asia from Africa from Europe from Latin America South America and from the United States which is a large part of our collection and We are very excited about puppetry because it's a global art form that every culture pretty much has Deep connections to and puppets these material objects that we use in order to communicate with other people for entertainment or ritual or for political ideas are Kind of ubiquitous even though sometimes they seem invisible in today's media world but we're the only University in the United States that has a puppet museum and a Puppet arts program which we're very proud of it's over 60 years old the puppet arts program And we're happy that we play such a large role in puppetry in the United States and around the world Do you want me to talk more about this if you want to go into? Yeah, it's a little bit of a design. I'll edit some some sections just kind of keep So in the world of puppetry exhibition We like to let people know that wherever they come from there's probably some really interesting and Highly developed art form of puppetry from their Culture so we have like rod puppets from Indonesia right here. This is a shadow puppet from Andhra Pradesh in India These are hand puppets from Taiwan Chinese shadow figure Javanese shadow figure Vietnamese water puppets which are really unique because there as you can see in the photo they're performed in the water then this is a Marionette of the Hindu god Ganesh who has an elephant kind of head from Nepal in the Himalayas and our small African section includes this rod puppet from Mali and this boat full of Passengers and people rowing Also from Mali used in ritual performances, which are really very exciting Shadow puppets from Egypt Big shadow puppet traditions in the Middle East and in China and in India Then a rapid tour of the world. These are European puppets, which might be a little bit more familiar to those Connected with European culture a marionette or rod marionette from Sicily hand puppets from France and England and Germany and Poland Part of those traditions. He's from Socialist communist Poland these from Germany from the early 20th century And this guy over here is a character named Guignol. Who's a very popular French character from Latin America. We have a Multi-horned mask which is termed a vejigante from Puerto Rico part of the carnival traditions here Which connects African tradition with European traditions and Taino indigenous traditions from Puerto Rico This hand puppet of a black hand puppet is from Brazil from a tradition called Mamalango, which also links Afro-Caribbean traditions with indigenous Brazilian traditions and Portuguese European traditions. So already just with that you're looking at some super exciting aspects of cultural history And then these wooden more two-dimensional figures are From the Chingu River Region of Brazil by the Calapalo people so indigenous puppet work. This metal mask is from Mexico part of the very Robust and exciting mask and puppet culture of Mexico, which is next to the United States But has its own amazing traditions and aesthetics and practices of mask and puppet theater the rest of The rest of the puppets here From the US from these from the 1930s when there was a whole puppet renaissance people saying wow You know what puppetry could be a new area of modern art and performance. Yes, so people like Tony Sard and Lou Boonin and they Turnabout theater all created puppets as an art form. They were very conscious of making art with puppets You also had people like Marjorie Batchelder who made this rod puppet combination rod puppet shadow puppet and you also have Basil Melofsot off with making this abstract puppet for a film of the seven forages of Sinbad Paulic Farland who was kind of a grandfather of American puppetry our own Frank Ballard Who founded the puppet arts program at the University and also is the namesake of the Ballad Institute Made this marionette of the Queen of the Night for Mozart's opera of the Magic Flute and Then we have some puppets by Ale Lou Curtin a sort of a hippie in leather This puppet right here is Let's see this cover right here is by Jim Henson we have a couple of Jim Henson puppets This was for a television Show that never came to light because he started doing Sesame Street instead Puppet by Yukon grad named Paul of Brad Williams Charles Ludlam who was a proponent of what we call queer theater So sort of gay Approach to theater, but he also did puppets and was also a ventriloquist and then a what we call a direct manipulation Puppet two versions of that by Janie Geiser who currently teaches at California Institute of the Arts, so That's a pretty small exhibit, but it shows the wide array of of work that Characterizes puppet theater here in the US and around the world. We just opened a new exhibition called swing into action Maurice Sendak and the world of puppetry and that exhibit which Is in these two galleries? We created with the help of the Maurice Sendak foundation Maurice Sendak was not a puppeteer, but he was a graphic artist visual artist very interested in Essentials stories as it were he was the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland lived in Brooklyn grew up in the 1930s during the depression and as you can see in these drawings that he made in the 1950s and the end in the 1970s He was very interested in Gesture and movement and body so he started to make like this is a drawing of puppets or a drawing of Commedia del arte masks. He loved the work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart his favorite composer and Just wanted to tell stories about Mozart like a lot of two-dimensional artists sort of Similar to Sendak are Intrigued by the idea of making their art move. So sometimes that turns into Animation like the work of Walt Disney and sometimes that really easily shifts into puppetry so Sendak was interested in 19th century animation of Like he made these little automata over here with his brother Jack when they were in living in Brooklyn in 1948 and they Tried to sell them to FAO Schwartz, which was a famous toy store in New York So that that company would build these automata that didn't happen that FAO Schwartz didn't buy them But send that got a job Doing window displays for FAO Schwartz, which is another way of sort of getting in sideways into puppetry He also liked toy theater a 19th century flat cut-out tabletop puppet form and the work of a German Graphic designer named Lothar Megendorfer who also was interested in how two-dimensional images can move So you have a mechanical figure there showing a man picking flowers. There's another transformation image of a man riding a horse and then you pull a tab and it shows the man having fallen off the horse You'll also have a toy that Is operated by sand falling through one chamber into another and when that happens a little mouse Connected to an organ grinder does acrobatic flips in the 19th century people were really interested in how objects move how images move and how Technology can make that happen So one whole aspect of that was the development of film you get a bunch of photographic images And you show them one after the other and you get Film so that was one invention that came out of this time and some of these other inventions came out of that time too Some less successful than film, but send back was really interested in that. He was also interested in Mickey Mouse he And the golden age of animation in the 1930s so He collected a lot of objects Related to his various interests in 19th century art and in this case Mickey Mouse So here's a Mickey Mouse mask Then he collected a Mickey Mouse doll a Mickey Mouse sort of climbing character a Self-portrait of himself as Mickey Mouse that he made for TV guide magazine in 1978 and on the other wall here a An animation cell from Walt Disney's Pinocchio, you know another form of Making the graphic arts Combined with movement right super interesting for him Here he is a photograph of him with one of the oversized masks for the opera version of where the wild things are His kind of famous children's book that put him on the map Here we have some more Aspects of two-dimensional Graphic design that come out from the page and move so you have Lothar Megendorfer's International Circus which has like these acrobats and clowns It's like a pop-up book As you can see in the shape of a circus ring that he was intrigued with a pop-up book that send back himself Designed called mommy in which a little boy Goes into a house looking for his mother and all he finds are these classic monsters like the wolf men and Dracula But he's not fazed by any of that beautiful pop-up book designed by Matthew Reinhardt who's a pop-up book Technician and then he collected Something called scrappies animated puppet theater again from the 1930s based on a very popular cartoon animation series about a character named scrappy and it was a little puppet theater that you cut out of paper And you could do it yourself at home in the 1980s, especially Sendak became interested in theater design set design costume design and One of the things he did was Hansel and Gretel, which is an opera by a composer named Engelberg Humperding and the house the the witch's house he made for Hansel and Gretel has Animated eyes that move. This is the model the set model for it The the middle part of the house turns around and becomes an oven The the windows open and close a little skulls behind them. So this is a type of Set design where the set itself becomes a kind of puppet character after the success of where the wild things are especially and send that became quite famous and He started a kind of second career as a set and costume designer for opera and ballet and especially with the operas he was able to Develop work that involved his favorite composer Mozart He loved Mozart. He loved to listen to Mozart while he drew sketches They were called fantasy sketches because he'd listened to a piece of music and whatever he felt like drawing Whatever the music inspired he would write down on the paper so he had the chance to do a whole number of of productions operas and ballets including This comic ballet comedy on the bridge, which is written by a Czech composer And it's actually a pretty serious story about two couples who meet on a bridge during the war and the countries on either side of the bridges are at war with each other and they have all these conflicts and Send that design these fish to to swim under the bridge So you get this typical send that combination of kind of delight and color and Humor as it were but also these very serious Contexts about war and personal relationships this mask that he designed was part of his work for the love for for three oranges, which is a opera designed or written by Prokofiev and based on a comedy del arte scenario and Because it was based on Comedia you have these Comedia masks, which he liked but he also designed like the cook a Combination cook and kitchen a puppet that has the head of a cook But the arms of these spoons and all the different parts of the kitchen come together in one giant puppet This show the love for three oranges also allowed him to make a giant inflatable puppet for the female the villainess of the piece over here we have the armature for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade version of Moisheau which was a character from where the wild things are it's actually kind of a self-portrait of Sanadak his self-portrait as a demon so He was intrigued by the possibility of making an inflatable puppet. He said yes, of course and so the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade shop in New Jersey Was you know going to build the puppet according to the needs of inflatable puppet design But send back was deeply involved. He loved collaborating with people on all of these projects And we have video footage of him going to New Jersey and there's a there's clay on this armature He says all the eyes should be this way and he gets his fingers in the clay and starts designing So he loved that possibility of doing a giant puppet based on his work Another giant puppet he made was for another for a Mozart opera a comic opera the Goose of Cairo that was first done in 1985 in collect in a double bill with an opera version of Where the wild things are and it's kind of a goofy story about A man who fall a guy who falls in love with a girl and the girl's father has her locked up in a castle So he decides in order to get to the his beloved To have a giant goose kind of like the Trojan horse that he would give to the father but he's inside the goose and You know as you can imagine it turns out happily ever after but this is the goose for this Mozart opera The this is his first sketch for it, and you can see at the top. There's a little Headdress that says Wolfgang Mozart there and the name of the opera Loka Del Cairo the goose of Cairo He just loved the idea of Mozart's work being animated Here's a model for the goose of Cairo that bends the wings Flap up and down the head moves and then here's the giant goose itself, which Also is very Interestingly complicated. It has animatronic eyes the mouth opens and closes the neck moves It you it's on a cart and when you pull the wheels at the cart the legs the feet move up and down So I love the way that there's so much joy in such a goofy thing as this giant goose and you can sort of see how Sendak is appreciating what opera makes possible on on the stage Let's see the first puppet version of where the wild things are was done in 1976 by an American puppeteer based in Italy. Her name was Amy Luckenbach and She's no longer living But she got a copy of where the wild things are in a London bookshop and read it to her children and she's like Wow, I got to do a puppet show about this. So she did and So you can see here all the characters she made with colleagues in Italy They're very nicely done people in the US don't really know about Amy Luckenbach's puppetry but You can see here a photograph of a performance of the show and a little piazza in Florence Italy with her son narrating and The backdrops and the puppets from the show She later met Maury Sendak who came to a book fair in Italy and he was totally Excited about her work and they began a friendship and collaboration that lasted through Her death in the early 2000s. She did a What we call a direct manipulation version of where the wild things are different from a hand puppet version With Sendak's approval in 2005 and this is Max from where the wild things are as a direct manipulation puppet and you can see in these photographs of the production done with Syracuse University and Theater and Florence how to puppeteers directly manipulate the puppet here with the moon As you can see in the background or here After the wild things fall asleep and Max is the king of the wild things It's another form of puppetry that that's quite versatile direct manipulation puppetry these puppets probably people might know them from the film where the wild things are directed by Spike Jones and Released by Warner Brothers so a number of different film companies wanted to do a Film version of where the wild things are because you know, it's such a popular book and it kind of lends itself to animation and You know colorful treatment so Finally the director spike Jones was brought into the production and Sendak said I think this guy spike Jones. He really would do a good job with where the wild things are The puppets were designed by Sonny Jerasimovic together with Jim Henson's Creature Shop, and you can see here There's very fine detail in these two puppets On the left Alexander with the horns here and then Max in the middle and on the right Douglas who's kind of a bird as you can see So you're the this is definitely the world of puppetry. No, these are oversized masks and costumes But it's that world of communicating through objects, you know masks costumes Props, you know rather than just unadorned actors themselves the The show over here is another collaboration that sent acted With Amy Luckenbach, and here's a photograph of Sendak and his friend the playwright Tony Kushner who wrote angels in America and Amy in her studio in Florence, Italy Sendak sent her some of these fantasy sketches these sketches that he drew while listening to Mozart and which he peopled with Characters from his own imagination and also from the history of Mozart the show is called fantasy fantasy sketches and life of Mozart and This section here is the fantasy sketches and the one of the sketches in our exhibition shows the story of this little boy who Gets eaten by this this bird or it's actually a fish excuse me He flies away First there's a bird involved and a fish he gets eaten by the fish Comes back home. The fish spits him out. The mother is really happy to see him And so he he engorges he He eats the mother, you know, this is a very Sendak kind of absurdist action, right Which is kind of serious and disturbing but also goofy with Sendak There's this mixture of kind of serious content and sort of psychological stuff going on But also delight, you know, which I think makes a book like where the wild things are so popular you know, it's a little boy who does who Doesn't do the right thing, you know, and wants to get away from a home, you know And ends up back at home after his adventures with the wildings this these puppets here from another one of the sketches about a A woman with a long neck and a mirror and this This monster over here this The roaring beast ends up eating the long-necked girl another situation where One character gets eaten by another the music was Mozart played on a piano forte and then to sort of glass Harmonica so get Mozart to get the fantasy sketches you get puppetry this collaboration with Amy Luckenbach and Tony Kushner and the musicians you can tell he loved those collaborations this young Mozart series from the same show Also based on his fantasy sketches shows sort of the life of Mozart Mozart is a little baby with his sister Nan Earl Mozart is a young boy here with Joseph Haydn the great composer who was Mozart's friend and they're dancing together So Sendak loves this idea that the two composers Mozart as a boy and Haydn as an adult are dancing together Then here a piano where Mozart would write his music and Mozart as a young man with his dog been pearl Sendak himself loved dogs and always had a dog and Dogs very often appear in his work in his sketches and in his books And up here on the wall you have you know this glorious the music of Mozart and some angels flying around you know Celebrating the work of Mozart so although Mozart excuse me although although Sendak was not a puppeteer He really like many visual artists and performers and musicians. He really appreciated what puppets can do and Really appreciated those opportunities opportunities. He had to be involved in the world of puppetry whether it was building little automata with his brother Jack or collecting of Material performance images from the 19th century In working with and engaging with Amy Luckenbach who was a puppeteer making shows out of his work or Later on designing of the sets and costumes for operas and ballets Which already always have one foot into the world of puppets and masks and performing objects So we're super excited about this exhibition. It's the first exhibition ever of Sendak as Someone related to the world of puppetry and we're really happy that it's the first time that the work of Amy Luckenbach can be Presented in the US John so firstly, thank you for that amazing tour sure of the puppet museum I just have a few questions. I mean I think few people who've come through stores know that this is one of you Said this is the only graduate program in America for puppetry you offer Certificates in the college and the university as well as a minor Bachelors and masters so can you tell me a little bit about you to Come through these programs. What kind of jobs you be aiming for? well, we get a whole range of different students and After they graduate from the program they do a variety of different things people you know some are more famous students work in as puppeteers on Sesame Street or in Film the film industry in the New York theater world There's a very vibrant puppet puppetry community in New York City, but also in every city around the country Chicago Boston everywhere you'll see Graduates from the puppet arts program doing work some people do more building and design for shows like Saturday Night Live or other films other people do more Performing and writing some people Create their own puppet theater groups like this summer We're featuring a number of puppeteers a lot of them puppet arts graduates who have their own companies And we'll be performing here on the town square So it's a whole variety of different things that puppeteers can do I think in part because as puppeteers we have a lot of different skills, you know, we we design we build We perform we write shows we you know, we do movement. We often play in music We're schlepping stuff all the time. So it's a There's a whole variety of different types of work that we can do I Think one, you know not coming from I told you that my I became acquainted with stores through my father-in-law to grow up here It's a house and it's a very interesting place But kind of not where one might expect a puppetry, you know Not not just I guess a national but a continental center of accents to be based Yeah, the only thing I really know about Yukon is I'm starting out if I'm not mistaken very much involved in agriculture Yeah, so how does puppetry come into their perspectives, right? Yeah, it's a land grant university here in Connecticut Frank Ballard Was hired in the 1950s to teach set design at the in the dramatic arts department here in Yukon But he grew up in Illinois all to Illinois in the 30s At a time when there was a renaissance and puppetry across the country and especially in Illinois in Chicago And people were saying hey, you know what? We could invent puppets to be this art form for the 20th century and not just for kids But to do you know operas and serious drama and Shakespeare So it's it's the beginnings of kind of where we are now with puppetry where people Puppeteers anyway are seeing it as an art form for everyone in a variety of different ways that it can be performed so Frank Ballard grew up doing you know dozens and dozens of puppet shows by the time he was son in Middle school and although he became a set designer He always had puppetry in mind and after he got hired here Yukon. He started a puppet class and it was very popular and In part because of his personality his ability to draw people in and say let's do this giant production of a Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta and people would say wow. Yeah, let's do it. So After the first class he offered the the popularity of that Let him to develop a what's now the puppet arts program That's now headed by my colleague Bart Rocco Burton and it's been going for over 50 years and the puppet arts program has a Center on the depot campus, which is a couple of miles from here with beautiful Facilities the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry started in the 1990s as a way to preserve a lot of the many puppets that Frank Ballard and his students created for his various productions as well as puppets that Ballard and others collected and accumulated so Oh the Ballard Institute started with a group of volunteers who began to create exhibitions highlighting Ballard's puppets and other puppets from the US and around the world and we're continuing that work here in store center with a variety of different exhibitions like the Swing into action more recent back in the world of puppetry exhibit and the world of puppetry our permanent exhibition we have other exhibitions of usually on a Four-month rotation that bring in puppetry from around the world. So it's it's exciting for me as a puppeteer to Share the richness of the form with our audiences here and then sometimes farther afield Online or through the internet sure it's a global form. That's played Important roles in all the countries in which it's arisen over many centuries and to think about What it's done in the past What puppetry is doing right now in a variety of different forms and what it could do in the future? It's it's just super interesting. Let me ask you question You mentioned that one of the main uses for public nowadays would be in you know special effects in Hollywood So do you see that as that technology as post-production SFX becomes progressively more? Is there a good still gonna be continued role for physical physical puppetry? How's that gonna play out in the industry? Yeah, it's really interesting. Well for us that went in puppetry studies when we think about These forms of performance that use the material world rather than just person-to-person communication All of these different forms are related and they learn from each other I think of the Star Wars movies for a while. They started to use more Digital effects, but then at a certain point I think in the last few films. They said you know what we were much better off much more effective when we did analog special effects masks and puppets and Oversize Almost a reverse evolution of sorts. I think so yeah And I think that's super interesting because there's something about the actual presence of this material Sculpted or created thing that you're moving around to perform that's in in connection with Working together with actors is really dynamic is really convincing and right so I think there'll always be a place for Actual puppets and masks and performing objects despite the advances in digital technology They create that atmosphere for the actors that you just can't get when you're working in front of a green screen or whatever I think so. Yeah. Yeah, I mean the digital stuff is going to be with us a long time and kids now grow up gaming Or you know, they they play games and they become they have an avatar or they become in a way a puppet Character in the world of the game and you operate this character who's not you who's this You know two-dimensional or maybe there's an illusion of three dimensions this digital character this digital puppet You know, so people are engaging with the form in all levels of society. I think yeah You mentioned something very interesting We were chatting before this the tour which is that you know we conceive or if you ask someone on the street What's a puppet? They'd say, you know, it's a it's a little toy But you said that kind of anything that creates in the in the sense of storytelling some distance between you and Your audience that's a form of puppetry. So I had to quickly introduce to my YouTube channel. This is my own puppet This is a this is a teddy bear and I'm a 33 year old man and I love these things So tell me what is it about people like me that are drawn to Acting out their emotions feelings using inanimate objects even as they mature into adulthood What what's the kind of appeal for someone who gets into puppetry becomes a puppeteer? That's a really good question and I think it's something that's been part of culture and civilization for many many centuries, you know with Ritual objects fetish objects religious objects, you know from Christianity to Hinduism and All sorts of other forms of other belief systems. I think part of it is what The psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud called in modern terms the uncanny this feeling that an off like an object That's dead might be alive, right? And the possibility of that, you know, like you have your your teddy bear What's the same his name is Cornelius, but he's not right, right Cornelius like well, who is this person? Who is this thing? I get the kind of personalities behind it growing up my sister and I had a Quality bear, so I think it's part of for me as a creator But really sort of it's some I mean maybe it's partially escapism, but it also just kind of channels You really channel your expression through these through these objects you enter into an illusion You know if we're together with Cornelius, you know, we're both sort of saying, okay, let's Assume Cornelius is actually a being you know They would the cat a name and a personality and character attributes and a physical presence You know, what could that be? It's really intriguing and there's all sorts of ways with in puppet performance where It's like wait a minute. It's you know, is that alive or is it dead and if it's alive There's that moment of I think a lot like suspended disbelief right where you're kind of you just get so yeah Drawed in I think like what you guys are doing with the public performances That's actually one more question on it. I don't want to take up too much of your time I'm very curious about you know you con how people like cited the arts programs in the college the local residents even You know you guys are surely doing it. You're raising awareness of puppetry What kind of a volume do you get from people who have never thought much about it? Encountering your displays and education I think once they come in you know people walk by without coming in a good bit because I think a lot of people think I don't have anything to do with puppetry. But once you come in you you realize. Oh, okay This is really interesting or maybe you know, you're from Korea and you see a puppet from Korea Or you're from China or from Latin America. You realize. Oh, there are these traditions from That country that I'm connected with that are very strong or you see Something you know like where the wild things are maybe you saw the film of that you read the book Or like we have a lot of students working with us and One one young man is an engineering student. Well in this exhibition of syntax work There are a lot of his stuff. He was interested in his combinations of engineering and graphic design You know so engineering is a part of puppetry. We have another student who's studying Sociology and early education. Well puppetry is long been a part of education and sociologically It's you know, a very important part of the way societies operate So there's many different ways to enter into the world of puppetry I think our job is to sort of let people know. Well, you're interested in that There's actually a connection to puppetry, right? Yeah, it's free. I guess when you think about it So puppets are objects of entertainment. You said they have a role in Religious ceremony and even you mentioned education right as didactic tools So, yeah, right when you so you've got me thinking more about puppets in the last hour than I have them probably in the Forgoing 33 years in my life, but that's amazing. John. I just want to say thank you so much Thank you. I've been bugging you by email for two years. I'm super glad we finally got to meet up Thank you so much for sharing your Your your your huge knowledge of puppetry with with me and my YouTube channel. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure So that was it guys lots and lots of information about puppets there Very very big thanks to John Bell for facilitating this if you are interested in learning more about puppetry This is definitely one of the places to check it out. They do performances in store center They're doing one this coming Saturday the previous Saturday the one before Check out the museum check out their website. It's all online absolutely fascinating stuff And it's got me thinking about what puppetry means Hope this video was enjoyable interesting informative And if you'd like to get more videos for me about puppets technology and all other forms of interest then please subscribe to the channel