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Artistic Director - Pam Arciero |
PAM ARCIERO was one of the founding Guest Artists at the Puppetry Conference and directed the Emerging Artists program within the Conference for five years before being named artistic director of the Conference in 2002. She succeeds Richard Termine, who will continue his association with the Conference.
Pam Arciero is a principal puppeteer with Sesame Street and Between the Lions, performing numerous characters, most notably
Grundgetta Grouch and Leona Lion, respectively. She has worked on
many adult and children's programs including Blue's Clues Blue's
Room, Chappell's Show, Allegra's Window, The
Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss, TV Funhouse, Oobi, Eureeka's Castle and The Great Space Coaster. She has
performed in many commercials and films, including Sundance Myths
2004, Sundance Film Festival, Extreme Measures, Little Monsters and Follow That Bird. As a stage
director, she directed Elmo's World Live, Oscar's Big Game
Show, Gotta Dance, and Bird's Beach Party for Sesame Place, Play with Me Sesame Live Tour, and Disney's
Wahoo Wagon at the El Capitan Theater in Los Angeles. She has
also directed Between the Lions and Oobi for television.
She has taught for the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, California
State University, Fresno, Sesame Street International and the University
of Connecticut. She holds and Undergraduate Degree in Drama from the
University of Hawaii and a Master's Degree in Puppetry from the University
of Connecticut. |
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| General Manager - Bobbie Nidzgorski |
| BOBBIE NIDZGORSKI is the Managing Director for the O'Neill Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Centre, now in it's eighteenth year. She was the first graduate of The Institute of Professional Puppetry Arts MFA degree program at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Centre and Connecticut College in 1987. Her solo thesis production, "Earth Peace," has since been performed at The New England Theatre Conference, The Wadsworth Atheneum's Avery Theatre, The Northeast/Mid-Atlantic Regional Puppetry Festival, the Drama Studio in Springfield, MA and the 1989 National Festival of the Puppeteers of America. She has been the Artist-in-Residence for the Southern Tier Institute, where she performed throughout the Binghampton, NY School System. Her smaller solo works that have been developed at the O'Neill Puppetry Conference have been shown from Portland, Oregon to Tampa, Florida. Bobbi sees the O'Neill Puppetry experience as a unique opportunity to "risk, fail, and risk again!" |
| Conference Coordinator & Participant Projects Director - Jean Marie Keevins |
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JEAN MARIE KEEVINS began her relationship with the O’Neill as a conference participant in 1999 and 2004 and went on to become the Conference Manager in 2005.
Jean Marie is a NY based puppeteer, puppet builder, and producer. As a member of The Cat's Paw Collective, Jean Marie has participated in the Carnegie Hall “Family Concert Series” (performer/builder/puppet coordinator & project manager) in collaboration with Martin P. Robinson several times. Also, with Cat's Paw she has puppeteered and stage managed "Nosferatu" at the Cherry Lane Theater as part of the NY International Fringe Festival in 2003 and the National Puppetry Festival in 2005. She has collaborated with Ceili Clemens to host the later Night Cabaret at the 2008 Puppeteers of America’s National Festival in St. Paul, Minnesotta. Jean Marie has also built and refurbished puppets and masks for the Muppets, Broadway’s Mary Poppin’s, Broadway's Lestat, Avenue Q, Omar's Mother, Baby Einstein, ChucheQhalin (O'Neill) and Disney on Ice's “Finding Nemo.” She is currently working as the coordinator at Puppet Heap and proudly maintains a working relationship with Steven Widerman's “The Puppet Company”.
Jean Marie served as a Producer assisting Annie Evans on “A Passion For Puppetry”, an Off-Broadway tribute to the late Nikki Tilroe. Jean Marie is particularly proud of her work with Ceili Celemens on When She Danced, a piece created for the event.
She holds her Bachelor's Degree in Theater Studies at the University of Connecticut with a concentration in the Puppet Arts.
As a milliner, Jean Marie's fine headwear can be found in shops throughout NYC's downtown shopping districts. You can preview some of her designs or contact her about commissioning a piece at: www.jeanmarieny.com. |
| Production Manager - Bart P. Roccoberton Jr. |
| BART ROCCOBERTON has worked as professional Puppet Artist since 1972. For more than 15 years he has toured popular puppet performances to schools, libraries, colleges, theatres and museums from Washington, DC, to Montreal, both with his own troupe, THE PANDEMONIUM PUPPET COMPANY, and with students from the University of Connecticut and THE INSTITUTE OF PROFESSIONAL PUPPETRY ARTS. Since 1990, he had been Director of the Puppet Arts Program and Associate Professor of Dramatic Arts in Puppetry at the University of Connecticut, and is a founding member of the O'Neill Puppetry Conference.He is recognized worldwide as a leading advocate for the Puppet Arts in the United States and abroad. He serves as a counselor for the Professional Training Commission of the Union Internationale de la Marionenette which has its center in Charleville-Mezieres, France. Recently, he was elected to the Board of Trustees of UNIMA-USA. Roccoberton has a BA from Monclair State College in Speech/Technical Theatre and MFA from University of Connecticut in Puppet Arts. |
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| Emerging Artists Director - Richard Termine |
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RICHARD TERMINE attended the University of Connecticut as an undergraduate and completed his M.F.A. in Puppetry in 1978 with a staging of de Ghelderode's "The Death of Dr. Faust." In 1980 he began his association with The Jim Henson Company as a puppet designer and builder for a variety of Muppet productions. For "Sesame Street" he designed and built the characters of Placido Flamingo and Wolfgang the Seal; his design work on the show was honored with an Emmy Award in 1987. As director and teacher, he taught with Jim Henson at the International Institute of Puppetry in Charleville-Mezieres, France in the summer of 1987, and has been featured as an artist-in-residence at various colleges including the University of Maryland, California State University Summer Arts and The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Termine also served as the Associate Director of the Jim Henson Legacy Foundation for three years, producing an educational video series entitled "Muppet Stuff, The Annotated Work of Jim Henson." Since 1987 he has served as a trustee
of The Jim Henson Foundation.
From 1992 to 2001, Richard Termine was the Artistic Director of the O.Neill Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. Richard's own puppet productions have been presented in New York at HERE, at Arts at St. Ann's and at The International Festival of Puppet Theater. His production of Nikolai Gogol's "Diary of a Madman," developed at the O'Neill, was presented at the 2000 New York International Fringe Festival and was invited to perform the 2001 Puppeteers of America Festival in Tampa, Florida. This production received a UNIMA Citation for Excellence in 2002. |
| While working on the set of "Sesame Street" in the mid-1980s, Termine began photographing behind the scenes. This work led to a new career as a performing arts photographer of many of the worlds leading performers and puppet artists. He has been photographer for the culture desks of The New York Times and The Village Voice, and has been resident photographer for the Lincoln Center.s Mostly Mozart Festival and Chamber Music Society, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Cleveland Play House and the Jim Henson Company. His photography has seen in numerous publications including "Time," "Newsweek," "The Washington Post," "American Theatre," and in his first book, "The Sesame Street Family Album." He has been the in-house photographer for "Sesame Street" since 1988. An exhibition of his work, "From Marionettes to Muppets: Puppet Photography by Richard Termine" toured the U.S. in 2000 with stops in New York, Atlanta, Santa Cruz and the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry. |
| Musical Composition Director - Larry Siegel |
LARRY SIEGEL is a composer, a director of theater and community arts residencies, and a nationally known player of traditional music, as well as Resident Composer at the O'Neill Puppetry Conference. He has created work with Dan Hurlin, Valeria Vasilevski, In the Heart of the Beast, Underground Railway Theater, Perry Alley Theater, and Lisa Sturz, among others. As a composer he has received many awards, including a McKnight Fellowship, Fellowships to Tanglewood and the MacDowell Colony, and support from many other foundations and arts agencies. As founder and director of Tricinium he leads residencies with communities, schools and organizations in which the participants create and perform original works of music theater about their own lives and experience. |
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| Video Anarchy Directors - Tim Lagasse & Martin Robinson |
TIM LAGASSE is a professional filmmaker, puppet master, and designer/ fabricator.
He works on television's many children's programs, including Sesame Street, Between the Lions, Oobi, and Chappell's Show (okay, the last one's not a kid show)
While earning his BFA in Puppet Arts from UConn, he wrote and directed A Show of Hands -which received the coveted Union International de la Marionette Citation for Excellence in the Art of Puppetry - and designed and built the “Bababooie Puppet” for the Howard Stern Show. (Talk about playing both sides of the fence). Upon graduating, he was the first student to receive the Jim Henson Memorial Prize in Puppetry. |
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Tim also creates puppets, consults, and directs puppet films for strange people like PBS, MTV, HBO and Nickelodeon in his cool secret underground “puppet cave” somewhere in Manhattan. Five short films called “A Show of Hands” (obviously based on earlier work) received a Broadcast Design Silver Award, and a series of short puppet films he created for Between the Lions earned him two Daytime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Achievement in Single Camera Editing and one for Costume Design/Styling (it's an honor to be nominated). Recently he created and performed puppets for the 2004 Sundance Film Festival's official trailers and their continuing online campaign “Keep It Free”, designed and fabricated eight puppets for a brand new segment on the very popular Blue's Clue's, which premiered in February of 2004, and he's also a featured performer and director on the new PBS series It's a Big Big World!
In his spare time he performs with puppets for more mature late night puppet comedy shows and Puppet Slams all over New York and New England, and tours the world performing in television and live puppet shows.
He also lectures for the Lincoln Center Foundation, teaches modern television puppet techniques at the Puppet Arts Program at UConn and the O'Neill Theatre Center Puppetry Conference, finds time to practice sleight of hand, and eats occasionally. But enough about him, tell us about you… |
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MARTIN P. ROBINSON has been a professional puppeteer since discovering that it was the perfect link between acting and sculpture. A 1974 graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, he has worked for Nicolo Marionettes, Addis Williams, Bob Brown, Paul Ashley, Bil Baird, Jim Henson, and for five seasons of "Spitting Image" in England. As a puppeteer on Sesame Street since 1981 he has won Emmys for his characters Snuffleupagus, Telly Monster, Slimey the Worm, and those "Yip-yip" Martians. During his spare time he performed the Cat in the Hat on the Nickelodeon series; "the Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss". His company, Hairy Edge Productions has designed/performed "Allegra's Window" and "Blue's Room" on Nickleodeon and "Oobi" on Noggin. Teaching has become an important aspect of his professional life as the senior puppet coordinator for Sesame International, hiring and training puppeteers for productions in Canada, Mexico, Israel/Palestine, Egypt, Germany, Russia, Bangladesh, France, India, Indonesia and Ireland. Film credits include "Follow That Bird", "Muppets Take Manhattan", "Elmo in Grouchland", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "The Producers". In 1982, Martin designed, built and performed the plant in the original Off-Broadway production of "Little Shop of Horrors" for which he received a Drama Desk and an LA Drama Critics Award. He provided the same services for the incarnation of the show that was recently on Broadway. Martin also designed for the production of "Frogs" at Lincoln Center, and two productions with orchestra for Carnegie Hall. Presently, there is a live production of Nickelodeon's "Go Diego Go" touring the country with twenty large scale jungle animal puppets and a huge talking tree from Robinson's shop. At the O'neill Puppetry Conference Martin was twice a guest artist; developing "Jackstraws in a WindTunnel" and "PigeonHoled". |
| Resident Dramaturg - Roger Danforth |
| ROGER DANFORTH has extensive credits as a producer, director, educator and arts administrator. Since 1995 he has been the artistic director of the Drama League Directors Project, the country’s foremost career development program for theatre directors. He was previously at The Cleveland Play House where he spent six years as the associate producer and literary manager, and then served as the acting artistic director for the 1994-95 season. He created The Play House’s play development series that generated three awards from AT&T OnStage and the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays. His Play House directing credits include Kaufman and Hart’s The Man Who Came To Dinner (featured in American Theatre Magazine), Boy Meets Girl with Jane Krakowski, The Heidi Chronicles, The Misanthrope, Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory, and the world premiere of Seth Greenland’s Jungle Rot which received the American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award and was published in The Best Plays of 1995-1996. In New York he has directed at the York Theatre Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre, the New York Shakespeare Festival, Circle Rep, Blue Heron Theatre, the New Group, and the premiere of David Van Vleck’s Four Beers with Robert LuPone, Lee Wilkof and Peter Maloney. Regional work includes the Kennedy Center, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Florida Studio Theatre, Two River Theater, the National New Play Network, and Philadelphia’s InterAct Theatre. He was the associate producer of the WPA Theatre’s 2000 season and was the artistic associate at Manhattan Ensemble Theater during 2002-2003. Danforth has taught and done guest artist residencies at the University of West Florida, Kent State, Case Western Reserve, Ohio University, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and Marymount Manhattan College. He has also served as a theatre adjudicator for the Michigan and Pennsylvania Arts Councils. Danforth holds an MFA in Directing from Florida State University and is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. |
| Resident Playwright - Annie Evans |
| ANNIE EVANS' plays have been produced at such theatres as Actors Theatre of Louisville, Manhattan Class Company, New York Stage and Film Company, Circle Repertory Company Lab, Circle East, New Georges, The Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Asolo Theatre Center, The West End Theatre, The Westbank Cafe Downstairs Theatre Bar and The Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, among others. Her play GHOST STORIES is published by Samuel French and has been produced around the world. Three of her monologues are published in one-act anthologies by Heinemann Press and her monologue “SLEEPWALKING” was performed on WPLR in New York. She wrote the screenplay version of her one-act play "FORGETTING FRANKIE" for New Line Cinema and has written on television shows for PBS, Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, Animal Planet, Noggin, Granada Television and Cartoon Network. She's received a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts and two fellowships to the MacDowell Colony. For many years, Annie was the Literary Manager and produced a year-round reading series for New York Stage and Film Company. As a teacher, she's taught at Gotham Writers Workshop, The National Puppetry Conference and internationally for “Sesame Street” in Mexico, Bangladesh, India and South Africa. She has also been a consultant for UNICEF teaching children's television writing to producers and writers in India. She currently writes for "Sesame Street" (6 Emmy Awards and an Aurora Award). Annie is a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre Playwrighting Unit and is a graduate of Brown University. |
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| Character Development - Leslie Carrara-Rudolph |
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LESLIE CARRARA-RUDOLPH is a multi-faceted performer and puppeteer with a wide variety of characters and talents.
Carrara-Rudolph's current television work spans a variety of acclaimed children's television programs, including "Sesame Street," on which she currently plays the newly introduced Abby Cadabby, and performing the spunky sprite Ginger on the Disney Channel’s new musical show “Johnny & The Sprites”. Leslie is also currently recording the character Nate, for PBS’s new animated series “Nate the Great” (based on the series of children's books). Leslie has also worked on a number of Henson Company productions and in the DVD series “Sesame Beginnings” for Sesame Workshop. Additionally, Carrara-Rudolph was a member of the PBS puppet tour that visited shelters in Louisiana and Mississippi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
She has also recently released a new family-friendly CD (available on CD Baby and linked through her website) called “Lolly & Friend’s Spunkinsass” featuring her favorite puppet, Lolly. It is the follow up to the cult favorite, “Jolly Lolly Holidays” released in 2004.
Carrara-Rudolph's stage credits include the HBO Aspen Comedy Festival with the Jim Henson Puppet Improv “Puppet Up”, as well as traveling to Australia with the group this year for two more comedy festivals. She has also performed in her home town of Walnut Creek, CA to two sold out stage performances for their recent Family Theater Festival.
Leslie has also has had success with her own one-woman cabaret-variety show, "Young at Heart” which she wrote and produced.
In her spare time, Carrara-Rudolph creates artwork and her own brand of magic and joy and is currently developing a star vehicle for her friend Lolly.
For more, visit Leslie at www.lesliecarrara-rudolph.com |
| Marionette Master - Jim Rose |
| JIM ROSE, son of Rufus and Margo Rose, first performed with marionettes in 1943 in the Rose production of "Rip Van Winkle." He has performed with his own hand puppets since 1947, when he saw Burr Tillstrom's Puppeteers of America Festival performance of Kukla and Ollie in "St. George and the Dragon." Jim worked with his parents and with Martin and Olga Stevens on several film and TV productions, including the WGN-TV Peabody Award-winning "The Blue Fairy" and the Stevens-Rose film, "The Toymaker."He was graduated from Antioch College in 1956. While a student there he appeared in over 40 plays, of which 14 were by William Shakespeare. At the Yale School of Drama, where he received his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1963, he created puppets for a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and for adaptations of two of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales." Mr. Rose taught Drama, Art and English in high schools in Chicago and in Connecticut from 1956 until 1960. He taught, for two years, in the Theater Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and for 19 years, at Antioch College. He has also led numerous workshops at Puppeteers of America Festivals and has taught in the Rose Marionette Workshop at the National Puppetry Conference, held at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Foundation, in Waterford, Connecticut. Since 1982, Mr. Rose has presented his traditional puppets in annual 18th century fairs in The Fair at New Boston, near Springfield, Ohio, at The Faire at the Forks, in Chatham, Ontario, at the Trail of History in McHenry County, Illinois, and at George Washington.s Mount Vernon in Virginia. |
| Craftsman in Residence - Fred Thompson |
FRED THOMPSON has been involved in puppetry since about 1947 after seeing Rufus and Margo Rose perform their marionette show at his elementary school. Thompson studied classical ballet and modern dance as a young man and studied sculpture at the University of Hartford under the guidance of Shiela Solomon and Lloyd Glasson, N.A. While never straying very far from puppetry, he managed to pursue a career in ballet, theater, and arts management. Thompson has worked as Stage Manager and Production Manager for the Hartford Ballet Company and for a number of years was properties craftsman at two respected regional theaters: Hartford Stage Company and Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Connecticut. He was Technical Director for the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts at Fairfield University, where he managed the Kelley and Wein theaters and the Walsh Gallery of Art.
Thompson has taught Technical Production Methods for the Yale School of Drama Graduate Degree Program, and Stage Craft at Fairfield University. |
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Mr. Thompson.s puppet related experience includes building and performing his own hand puppet productions. He was resident Director for the Smithsonian Institution Resident Puppet Theater. He has built a number of puppet figures and masks for productions at Hartford Stage Company and The Hartford Ballet. Recently he built bunraku-style puppet figures for Arthur Grueneberger's Rain Forest Production; Bird puppets for "The Birds" at Yale Repertory Theater and ARIEL for FLOCK Theater's production of "The Tempest." His puppets have appeared recently at The Juilliard School.
He has studied, toured or worked with Rufus and Margo Rose, Albrecht Roser, David Syrotiak, Meredith Bixby, Bob and Judy Brown, and Allan Stevens.
Thompson has authored several articles on technical aspects of puppet construction and puppet history. His work has appeared in Theater Crafts Magazine, The Puppetry Journal, Connoisseur Magazine and on the web. He is the Editor of "PLAYBOARD," the newsletter of the Puppeteers of America.
Fred Thompson has been on the staff of the O'Neill Puppetry Conference since 1996 where he has taught marionette construction with Margo and Jim Rose. He presently is Resident Craftsman at the O'Neill Puppetry Conference. He has conducted workshops in marionette construction at several regional festivals, and is presently constructing a number of puppets for himself in hopes of presenting a one-man show. |
| Associate Dramaturg - Lenny Pinna |
| LENNY PINNA is an eclectic theatre artist/educator, and aspiring screenwriter/filmmaker. He holds a BA in theatre from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA in dramaturgy from SUNY/Stony Brook. As the conference dramaturg for the past 15 years, he has offered his dramaturgical skills and theatrical sensiblity to participants and guest artists via the developmental process of creating new puppetry work. Coincidentally, he has increasingly absorbed and utilized puppet sensibilty and characters in his own directorial work, including classics such as "Oedipus Rex," "Lysistrata," and "As You Like It." At the 1999 conference, he conceived and directed "DREAMING SHAKESPEARE," a performance piece utilizing a cast of classical Shakespearean marionettes, designed and built by Jim Rose. In Cleveland, Ohio, he produced and directed Bonnie Remsberg's The Whaling Wife, a play for puppets, masks and actors which had emerged from an O'Neill puppetry conference workshop, and his co-adaptation (with Richard Termne) of Nikolai Gogol's "DIARY OF A MADMAN" for puppets and actors was presented in the 2000 New York Fringe Festival, and in the 2001 Puppeteers of America Festival, subsequently receiving an UNIMA citation. Lenny also served as the assistant director/dramaturg for Heather Henson's "ECHO TRACE," presented in the 2000 Jim Henson International Theatre Festival. |
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| Aristic Associate & Flock Theater Director - Derron Wood |
DERRON WOOD is a graduate of Connecticut College, he has also trained with the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theater Center and attended the Leningrad State Institute of Music, Theatre and Cinematography in Leningrad as part of the National Theater Institute's Russian program. From 1986 to 1989 he studied Shakespeare under Morris Carnovsky at Connecticut College and the National Theater Institute.
During the past twenty years he has directed numerous productions in and around New England, including shows at the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival and Off-Broadway. An early production, Home Street Home, at the Boston Center for the Arts' Cyclorama Theatre focused Derron's attention on the unique ability of puppet theatre to document experience and communicate to the audience. As he said at the time, “We use puppets and merge personalities into another world to create different conflicts and characters.”
As he continued to work with actors and puppets in various theatrical vehicles he became more and more committed to the use of all types of puppets as a means of communicating with the audience. Exploring the boundaries between actors and puppets -- finding that magic moment of communication between actor and audience -- communicating classic complexities of the human condition in ways a contemporary audience can understand -- and ultimately to enhance understanding -- is the goal of Derrons' work with Flock Theatre.
Derron's early work in masks and puppetry earned Flock an invitation to become part of the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in 1992. He brings a Flock Company of experienced puppeteers to the Conference each summer and oversees their integration with the guest artists selected to participate. In an intense week of work original productions and new puppets are developed by the international group of puppeteers. This unique series of workshops results in a weekend of performances.
As the principal director of Flock Theatre's Shakespeare in the Arboretum festival he has directed Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing and The Tempest. His use of puppets in The Tempest enhanced the audiences' enjoyment through highlighting the fun and humor often lost in modern Shakespearean productions. It also allowed the audience to participate in the magic of Ariel in a wholly new way.
Derron has developed numerous educational-based residencies for schools and museums throughout Connecticut. Since 1995 he has been on the faculty of the Drama Studio in Springfield, Mass, a conservatory-based theatre for young actors age ten to twenty-one. He teaches a wide variety of classes at the studio where he is an Associate Artist. He is also a recipient of Connecticut's Master Teaching Status, awarded by the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. |
| Movement Coach - Marianne Kubik |
| MARIANNE KUBIK is a theatre movement artist and educator interested in storytelling through the human body and its relationship to the inanimate world. While she often works on published scripts as director, fight director, or movement and dance choreographer – from the outrageously physical Scapin, Big Love, and Wintertime to the classics As you Like It and Private Lives – Marianne’s main interest lies in the creation of original movement-theater works. She has developed over thirty such projects, performing in such venues as the Fox Theatre (KS), Construction Company (NYC), Dragon’s Egg (CT), Boston Center for the Arts (MA) and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Thematically, Marianne is interested in women’s issues. Practically, she is interested in the dramatic application of Meyerhold’s biomechanics, which she studied at GITIS in Moscow. Her chapter on the subject can be found in the book Movement for Actors, and she most recently shared her work in biomechanics through the International University in Slovenia and the Accademia Dell’Arte in Italy.
It was while she was a guest instructor for the University of Connecticut’s MFA programs in Puppetry and Acting that Marianne was re-introduced to the world of puppet arts and its connection to both biomechanics and mask work. From there she found her way to the O’Neill Puppetry Conference, developing an Emerging Artist project with Kathleen Baum entitled The Forgetting River, which explored the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice from a feminine perspective. Marianne is currently seeking a venue to produce a full-length version of this project. |
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An Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia, Marianne heads the movement component of the MFA in Acting program in the Department of Drama. There she teaches a three-year sequence of skills-based courses in biomechanics, mask work, Laban, stage combat, period movement, dance styles and actor-driven works. Previously she was on the faculty of the University of Kansas, Boston University, and Emerson College. Marianne holds a BA and MA in Drama from Tufts University, and an MFA in Theatre Education and Movement from Boston University College of Fine Arts. She is an Advanced Actor Combatant in eight weapons recognized by the Society of American Fight Directors, and she is a silver-level ballroom dancer in her spare time. |
| Improvisation & Acting Coach - Tyler Bunch |
| TYLER BUNCH has been in and around the professional theater since the age of three. His puppeteering career began in high school (marionettes) and he moved on to video puppetry in college. Since relocating to the New York City area, he has appeared on such programs as Bear in the Big Blue House (Pop, Treelo, Doc Hogg), Between the Lions (Dr. Nitwhite), The Book of Pooh (Tigger), It's a Big, Big World (Winslow), and various projects for Sesame Workshop. Tyler started his improv experience as a member of the court at The New York Renaissance Festival near Tuxedo, but once that bug had bitten the disease festered. Mr. Bunch went on to be one of the original cast at The Jekyll and Hyde Club, a team player at Theater Sports Long Island, one of the founding members of the sketch and improv troupe One Eyed Maude (which garnered an audition for Mad TV), and part of the cast of Puppet Up!, a puppet version of Who's Line produced by Brian Henson. |
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