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 usually two 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 - page 1 (Microsoft Word)

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

For more information, call 603/399-4363 or e-mail: larry@tricinium.com