RojoFest
presented by Ballard Institute & Museum of Puppetry and Connecticut Repertory Theatre
This inaugural festival of new works is a celebration of UConn dramatic arts students’ boundless creativity. Named in honor of the late Jerry Rojo, who served on the UConn faculty from 1961 to 1990 and designed the unique Mobius Theatre, the festival was born out of a desire to create a celebratory home for the creative writing, devising and theatre crafting of our amazing students!
The (First Annual) Jerry Rojo Festival of Original Student Work will run January 25-28 in multiple UConn drama spaces. The festival features two MFA Puppet Arts projects (by Abigail Baird and Carrie Fowler) and six additional student-generated performances.
All performances are free. Visit bimp.ticketleap.com to reserve your seats.
This is a Double Bil
SATURDAY, JANUARY 27
Not My Grandmother’s Daughter by Harley Walker
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
At the Ballard Institute & Museum of Puppetry, 1 Royce Circle, Storrs, CT 06268
Harley Walker is a first year Puppetry Arts MFA student. She is a puppeteer and storyteller who loves creating waste averse puppets with found objects, paper mache and that cardboard box you have stashed in your garage! She uses puppetry as a form of hands-on therapy and hopes she can offer a little bit of that catharsis to others through her work.
Not My Grandmother’s Daughter is a new work that explores the relationship a young woman has with her mother through the relationship she has with her grandmother. She interconnects the history of their hands through generations with the help of shadow, sound, and paper mache.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 27
Paloma and the New Death by Tom Tuke
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
At the Ballard Institute & Museum of Puppetry, 1 Royce Circle, Storrs, CT 06268
Tom Tuke is a puppeteer from New Zealand. He draws on his passions of woodcarving, cartooning, making radio plays and working in education, as he concocts new puppet plays. Paloma and the New Death is his first foray into hand puppetry, having adapted a marionette show he created in New Zealand.
The Paloma Puppet Theatre presents a new hand puppet tragi-comedy. When Paloma, a castaway from a shipwreck, washes up on a remote island, she meets an unlikely friend. Kimi, the Grim Reaper’s Assistant, is tired and lonely. Watch the chaos ensue, as the two decide to help each other out of their respective quandaries.