An image from Basil Twist’s Symphonie Fantasique, performed with fabric in a tank of water. And yet these characters are vibrant and lively and people have a real attachment to them. The director of the Ballard Institute & Museum of Puppetry has been finding ways to explore the surprising connections between puppetry and engineering. “But I feel if you asked somebody, people would think of it as being something from some non-western culture or some primitive context. “The culture of masked performance is all around us, at sports events, amusements parks and in advertising,” he said. John Bell, the museum’s director and a puppet historian, said he hopes the exhibit, “Mascots! Mask Performance in the 21st Century,” also serves to bring a bit more attention to puppetry and its place in popular culture. A lot of people come to these things just to see our comedic antics.”

“As irreverent as it may seem, maybe this exhibit will focus a little more attention to the importance and detail of what a character brings to sports and other events. The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry (BIMP) is part of the School of Fine. The Ballard Institute of Puppetry was initially a project to preserve the puppets designed by Frank Ballard, founder of the University of Connecticut Puppet. “I basically took the inanimate object of a costume and became a big fuzzy Harpo Marx,” Giannoulas said in a telephone interview. He acknowledges that lifting your leg toward an umpire while dressed in a chicken suit doesn’t bring about many comparisons to a ballet dancer or a Broadway actor.īut Giannoulas said he’s honored that his irreverent San Diego Chicken character is being recognized as art in a new exhibit at the University of Connecticut’s Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry. The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut has reopened to the public on a reduced operating schedule on Saturdays only from 10 a.m. (AP) – Ted Giannoulas considers himself to be a performance artist.

Ballard puppetry museum