Dedicated to the exploration and creation of new puppet forms using video, Video Anarchy will endeavor to break through traditional
boundaries and consider exciting new possibilities for the form and function of the puppet.

Students will learn basic filmed puppetry techniques, hands on, while being and integral part of the filming and editing of a puppet film
written and directed by Martin P. Robinson. Yes, really.

Enrollment limited to 5 to 6 participants with puppet experience.

About the film:

"The BOTTLE STOPPER PROJECT"

Carved wooden animated bottle stoppers from Northern Italy, circa 1930... Martin has hundreds of them. They are beautifully realized
characters, distinct little personalities all... and they do things: they talk, tip their hats, kiss, thumb their noses, stick out tongues, whap each other with brooms, drink, barf, etc.

The idea is to give them a context in which to exist. Having been designed for use in taverns as corks, they are, most of them, denizens
of bar life.

So; a small scale smokey traditional old bar, peopled with all the colorful characters you would expect to see there...until the small
bottle stopper reality begins to cross over into the real world. Did my drinking buddy just get grabbed out of existence? Did he die? Was
that a glimpse of God? Just how much wool actually IS over my eyes?

Tim Lagasse

Tim 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.

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…