The O'Neill Puppetry Conference is a multi-faceted conference whose primary mission is the development of solid dramaturgical works for the puppet theater. It culminates with two public performances of the newly developed works. Participants can take advantage of the several strands offered by the conference:

Staff Ensemble Production:

O'Neill National Puppetry Conference: 20 Years Remixed

In honor of the 20th Anniversary of the National Puppetry Conference at the O’Neill, a new celebratory ensemble project will be created.  It will be directed by Richard Termine, Tyler Bunch and Marianne Kubick, with Lenny Pinna & Roger Danforth as Dramaturgs and Miguel Romero as Design Consultant.  The project will feature puppets from Guest Artist productions from the pervious 19 conferences.  These puppets will be the source, inspiration and medium with which a new “REMIXED” ensemble project will be created.

This is an opportunity for participating puppeteers to perform in a wide variety of puppet styles with puppets created by amazing artists that have been featured at the conference in previous years.  A directorial approach that encourages improvisation and collaboration will be used to create a dynamic puppet performance piece!

Total Maximum enrollment - 10 participants

The Ensemble Productions enable participants as a group, guided by the guest artist, to immerse themselves in the creative process through which the work is refined. The work may be one of the artist's choosing or individual works by the participants.

The opportunity for such a close collaboration is rare and the O'Neill Puppetry Conference provides the ideal atmosphere in which a puppeteer can explore a number of possibilities without risk.

Puppet Film
led by Tim Lagasse & Martin Robinson

Tim Lagasse will be directing an epic puppet music video and you will be his crew! You will be the puppeteers, lighting crew, camera operators, set builders, segment designers, puppet wranglers, editors, EVERYTHING!  Martin Robinson will be the all-powerful Puppet Captain, teaching you the choreography and pushing you to be the best television puppeteer you can be.

Tim, a graduate of the UCONN Puppetry Arts program and participant in the very first O'Neill puppetry conference, credits most of his knowledge and talent in recorded puppetry and filmmaking to BEING ON ACTUAL TELEVISION SETS and DOING THE ACTUAL WORK with TALENTED PROFESSIONALS. This is exactly what you will do. Learn puppet filmmaking and television puppetry through practical application. Come make a great puppet film with Marty and Tim. This is not for the faint of heart or the unmotivated. There will be hard work and long days. Your brain will be full!

Total Maximum enrollment - 10 participants

Marionettes

All participants in the marionette class will receive instruction in both construction & manipulation. However because of time restraints, each participant must choose to concentrate on only one field of study. Those concentrating on manipulation will spend most of their time with Phillip Huber, modifying their marionette (that the participant brought from home) then staging & rehearsing a short performance piece. Those participants choosing to concentrate on marionette construction will spend most of their time with Jim Rose, designing, building & stringing one new marionette.

Advanced Marionette Manipulation - Phillip Huber

GOAL: To de-mystify the process of marionette manipulation & performance.

These stringed figures are rightfully regarded as one of the most complex & difficult of puppetry forms. However, when they are approached with patience & an eye for the most simple & direct path of expression, they become graceful, poetic actors & entertainers… highly amplified extensions of their human manipulators.

DESCRIPTION: Phillip Huber will instruct and guide participants through an intensive & advanced study of marionette manipulation, revealing the influencing factors of stringing, control, & marionette design. Special emphasis will be placed on “Cabaret Style” performance (short-strung marionettes). Participants will be taken through the process of developing & refining a brief marionette performance piece.

PARTICIPANT PREPARATION: Each participant MUST bring a marionette that they do not mind modifying (joints, stringing, controller) for the purpose of developing specific movements & character attitude. Also, please bring 2 or 3 pieces of music (each 2 minutes or less) that you feel would make a good background for the marionette performance. This music can be on CD, cassette or keyboard sheet music.

Marionette Design & Construction - Jim Rose

Jim Rose offers a thorough examination of marionette design, layout, and construction methods for the creation of a new marionette. Participants will have the opportunity to build a complete marionette from a precut kit.

Total Maximum enrollment- 12 students

Roots & Leaves: Song of Walt Whitman
Gina Leigh
Marionette Student - 2009

Marionette Design & Construction
Karen Bruce
Marionette Student - 2009

Writing & Performing Music for the Puppet Theater
led by Larry Seigel

The O'Neill Puppetry Conference invites composers and musicians interested in writing and/or performing music for puppet-theater to submit an application. This is a unique opportunity to spend a week at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, working and experimenting with advanced student and professional puppeteers and theater artists in intensive production workshops.

The work consists of creating scores and soundscapes for short works being developed by puppeteer/participants during the course of the week. Everything is created anew, using the resources available and performed in a workshop fashion (i.e. as works-in-progress) at the end of the week. Resources include a synthesizer and percussion instruments and whatever the composers can play and bring. If you use computer and other electronic means, you must bring these with you. You create the orchestration with the available resources - human and technical.

In some cases, the collaboration ends at the end of the week: the piece is performed and then each collaborator is free to do whatever he or she likes with the material created. In other cases the participants agree to continue to develop the work. It is beyond the scope of the Conference to direct or oversee this development, although it will sometimes happen that a particular idea catches fire one year and comes back later.

As a participant, a composer can bring a project (or concept) and "shop it" to the other participants. Thus a composer could take the lead in developing a project, and move it along in the course of the Conference.

Writing & Performing Music for the Puppet Theater Application

The above application includes all of the instructions for applying to this part of the Puppetry Conference.

Scholarships are available, please contact Larry for more information.

For more information, call 603.399.4363 or e-mail: larry@tricinium.com

3-Day Intensive Workshops

The O'Neill Intensives were a development of our Master Classes. A number of conference participants expressed an interest in attending a session that would enable them to investigate one aspect of puppetry over an extended period of time. Thus the Intensives were born.

They are held during the three days before the main conference sessions. Participants arrive on Wednesday morning and depart on Saturday. The sessions begin on Wednesday afternoon. One may choose to attend just the Intensives, the Conference or both. The fee is $400.00 which includes the intensives, all meals and lodging.

Table-Top Puppetry Training, an Overview
led by Ron Binion

When a rod puppet figure is seen from head to toe, and it must come to life, the shear number of limbs often necessitates the use of more than one puppeteer. This basic technique is what is used in Czech Black Puppetry, Bunraku, Black Light Puppetry, Green-Screen Puppetry, but for our purposes here we call this simple technique Table-top Puppetry since the figure is using the plane of the table as it's playboard.

The use of Table-top puppets has increased over the years in television and theater. It has now become a basic requirement for any professional puppeteer.

The term Bunraku is used improperly to mean any puppet that is operated by more than one puppeteer. There is debate about the proper use of this term. Whatever the term, the skills of performing a figure in tandem with other puppeteers needs to be appreciated.

In Table-top puppetry Training-an Overview we will break down basic principles that apply to a wide variety of team puppetry. There are specific roles and responsibilities that emerge when three puppeteers pick up and begin to work with a full-body puppet character. An understanding of these roles can greatly increase the efficiency of the team-performance.

Benefits:

• Knowing the roles and their areas of responsibility and how they relate to each other.
• Being able to use appropriate terminology that will aid communication while building a team performance.
• Having the ability to craft a team performance in an efficient amount of time.
• Being able to apply these skills in professional settings.

This workshop will cover:

• Learning basic concepts of Table-top puppetry
• Learning the basic tools that are required for quality Table-top puppetry
• Hands on exercises with highly functioning Table-top puppets
• An opportunity for all participants to experience each of the different performing roles of Table-top Puppetry.

Facilitators experience with Table-top Puppetry:

• 3 years performing as a resident puppeteer at the Center for Puppetry Arts with extensive use of Czech Black Puppetry and Black Light Puppetry.
• 2 Seasons of the Disney Channel Show The Book of Pooh performing full-body green screen puppets.
• 4 Seasons of Crank Yankers and the Eminem Video "Ass Like That" where segments of the show were shot with full-bodied puppets against green screen.
• Use of Table-top puppets in the facilitators own original creations over 10 years.

Creating Mechanisms for Puppets
led by Jim Kroupa

The three day intensive will examine Jim Kroupa's approach to "Mechanical Heaven." Starting with hands-on examples, each student will design and build a puppet mechanism using Jim's "Keep it Simple" approach. Minimal effort for maximum effect. Supplies and cookies will be served!

Participants will share their puppets on Friday evening at an informal show for the O'Neill Conference. 

Pre-Conference Puppets
Mechanisms Workshop - 2009

Writing for the Puppet Theater
led by Robert Smythe

Puppetry often focuses on its most obvious aspect: the puppet. Another way to think of the puppet, though, is as the instrument used by a performer skilled enough to play it sensitively, passionately, fully. But to what end? What is the score that inspires so much energy?

Robert Smythe's playwrighting intensive will focus you on knowing what exactly you are trying to say to an audience, instead of how you are saying it. We’ll take the general themes and concepts that first led you to conceive of your play, and make them specific. We’ll work on getting the story out of your head and into a form that can be understood and interpreted by the other artists you will eventually direct, perform beside or inspire. By the time you finish the first five-minute exercise, you’ll be surprised at what you have inside you. You’ll learn how to use tension and rhythm, and how to reveal states of mind through personal moments. You’ll write scenes and monologues. And love it.

You’ll discover that, in addition or even instead of the skilled performer and puppet builder you thought you were, you are a writer of plays. And when it’s time to direct/produce/perform in your piece, you’ll know the difference between putting on a puppet show and producing a play that uses puppets to tell its story.

Focus on Design: Character, Set and Sound
led by Paul Andrejco, Miguel Romero & Paul Rudolph

Paul Andrejco - lead character designer for Puppet Heap
Miguel Romero - Scenic Design Professor from UMass Amherst
Paul Rudolph - composer, musician and soundscape designer for both stage and television

Work with masters in the field to explore and investigate your puppet character design, set design, and soundscape as you work towards integrating them into a more professional production.

You will learn how to use the elements of design Line, Shape, Color, Texture, Form to tell a story. You will increase your awareness of how each element of design can contribute to the creation of the unique world of your show.  We will explore how integrating visual and aural aspects can enhance your performance and make a cohesive statement. - Miguel Romero

Bring a short puppet scenario - new or a work-in-progress - and you can explore ways that different pieces of music and sound design change the scenario.  Or:  Bring a piece of music that you want to use for your project and we will explore methods to edit it, enhance with sound design, or compose an original piece in an identical style. - Paul Rudolph

Statements from Paul Andrejco coming soon.

Artist in Residence

The Artist in Residence is an invited artist who comes to the O’Neill Puppetry Conference to develop a new work. The artists often bring their own ensembles to help create the work, or they can solicit participants to work in the project. They are supported and encouraged by the staff and the entire conference. They also have the option to perform part of the work in the Final Performances or to have it seen by conference members only.

Some of the artists have been Ron Binion, Marc Weiner, Bonnie Remsberg, Richard Termine, and Heather Henson.

The 2010 O'Neill National Puppetry Conference Artist in Residence is:.

Scott Hitz
The Little Prince

The Little Prince is a stage version of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's beloved children's classic of the same name.  It uses puppets, live actors, and various visual elements to help tell the story of an Aviator who crash lands in the Sahara desert where he meets a mysterious little boy who claims to be from another planet.  Through the tales of his travels to earth and his description of the inhabitants he meets there, the Aviator comes to understand the importance of life and realizes that "What is truly important can only be seen with the heart". This version is conceived and directed by Scott Hitz with puppets designed by Emmy award winning designer Michael Schupbach.  The first staging of the show will be at Cape May stage in NJ in Fall of 2010.  After that it goes to Bristol Riverside Theater (a 300 seat house in Bristol, PA) where it gets to be fully realized in preparation for its subsequent tour around America.

Scott Hitz is a director, and actor for both stage and screen.  His work in Puppetry has been seen on Comedy Central and the Disney Channel.  On stage he was most recently seen as Audrey II in The Little Shop of Horrors at Ford's Theater in Washington DC.  He has also written and directed puppet works for the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.  His work has taken him to Korea as part of the Chunchon Festival for puppetry and to NYC where he helped form the Cats Paw Collective.  He has designed, built and performed puppets for various institutions including The Arden Theater in Philadelphia, Passages Theater in Trenton, NJ and he helped to build puppets for The London Production of Ave. Q.  Scott has received various awards for his work with Arts in Education programs including the prestigious Pennsylvania Arts in Education award for the teaching program he developed for Mum Puppettheatre in Philadelphia Pennsylvania.  He has also been the recipient of a Henson seed grant for his production Ursa Major:  The Voice of the Bear and is currently Co-Founder of Monkey Boys Productions, a  production company for television and stage.  More information on them can be found at  www.scotthitz.com and www.monkeyboysproductions.com.

The Little Prince - Concept Art, Michael Schupbach

Scott Hitz

Emerging Artists

The Emerging Artist Projects provide a unique opportunity for outstanding previous participants of O’Neill Puppetry Conference to return and create extended puppet productions. These “Emerging Artists” work with the talented performers from the Flock Theater Company of New London, CT and are mentored by the renowned artistic staff of the conference. Each project culminates with 2 public performances at the conclusion of the conference.

If you have any questions please email Bobbi Nidzgorski at oneillpupconf[AT]aol.com