After Brad Williams was hired by the fledgling Nickelodeon cable channel, a series of UConn Puppet Arts students, as well as other puppeteers outside the university, joined Pandemonium Puppets, performing its shows until the company ceased touring in 1986. Under the influence of Albrecht Roser Pandemonium increasingly employed his paper-sculpting technique in such works as Elventide (1980), Fabula (1982), and Tales of the Leatherman (1983). Pandemonium's first original show, Pantomime (1976), featured traditional limberjack puppets. For their first show, Potpourri, the company created vignettes with existing puppets built by Williams and Roccoberton. Pandemonium Puppets toured extensively in the Northeast, performing variety shows with live music. ![]() Pandemonium Puppets In 1976, while still studying at UConn, Bart Roccoberton created his own theater company, Pandemonium Puppets, with his fellow student and creative partner Brad Williams, and his wife Marjorie Roccoberton. Live music was an integral part of Pantomime : Roccoberton played the guitar and melodica, Rachel (Prescott) Butterfield played flute, and the whole company alternated singing and playing percussion instruments, duck calls, and kazoos, depending on their involvement with puppets in each scene. In performance, the puppets stand on paddles tapped by the puppeteers to produce dance movements featuring swinging arms and legs. Roccoberton created the planchette or limberjack puppets (based on European techniques dating to the medieval era) from found turned-wood pieces. Wood, fabric Pantomime, Pandemonium’s second show, borrowed its name from the 19th-century British “panto” tradition of holiday family entertainment, and tells the story of the Princess of the Kingdom of Carollon, who is wooed by two jousting Knights but in the end walks away with the Jester. While still a student, Roccoberton also served as Technical Director of the 1976 National Puppetry Festival of the Puppeteers of America in New London, where he met festival director and celebrated puppeteer Margo Rose, who also became a major inspiration for Roccoberton's career.ĭesigned and directed by Bart Roccoberton Roser became Roccoberton's mentor, and his famed paper-sculpture technique has been an important influence ever since. Roccoberton met many significant puppeteers at UConn, including German marionettist Albrecht Roser, whom Roccoberton helped bring to UConn as a visiting artist. After learning about UConn's Puppet Arts Program, Bart and his wife Marjorie decided to move to Connecticut so he could pursue a MFA degree with Frank Ballard. ![]() After graduation, Roccoberton became the Technical Director of Atlantic Community College's theater program, and began to perform puppet shows with his friend Jim Albertson at the Historic Towne of Smithville. Rise Into Puppetry While studying speech and technical theater in the early 1970s at Montclair State College, New Jersey native Bart Roccoberton was introduced to puppetry by one of his professors, and chose to produce Bertolt Brecht's one-act play The Beggar or the Dead Dog with marionettes as his final project. It’s Always Pandemonium features over 90 puppets, masterfully designed and crafted over the past four decades by Bart Roccoberton, his Pandemonium collaborators, and countless UConn Puppet Arts students under his guidance. Roccoberton, Jr., from his touring days with his Pandemonium Puppet Company to his founding of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s Institute of Professional Puppetry Arts and now to his work building puppets and puppeteers as the Director of the UConn Puppet Arts Program. It’s Always Pandemonium celebrates the ongoing puppetry career of Bart. As I dug deeper into the rich and wildly varied history of Bart’s career while researching and curating It’s Always Pandemonium, my appreciation for these lessons and opportunities has only increased. Bart Roccoberton’s teaching pushes his students in many ways, as artists, craftspeople, and storytellers, enveloping them an entirely new and rich community. In retrospect, I realize that notion was only the tip of the iceberg. ![]() Before embarking on this adventure, I had assumed I would be learning basic techniques for building puppets, as well as how to refine my skills as a puppeteer. Curator's Statement As a graduate student in the University of Connecticut’s Puppet Arts program, I have spent the past three years under the tutelage of Bart.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |