In June 2011, I was the recipient of the Connecticut Guild of Puppetry Scholarship to participate in the the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, CT. While at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center I worked on Web of Mystery, in which a spider dances with it’s puppeteers before overtaking one of them, and as an assistant puppeteer on Leslie Cararra-Rudolph’s Wake Up Your Weird, in which a candy obsessed five year old must process her feelings after getting bullied out of a play date.
On June 18th and 19th, 2011, I performed in Leslie Carrara-Rudolph’s Wake Up Your Weird at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, CT as part of the National Puppetry Conference. In Wake Up Your Weird, a candy obsessed five year old must process her feelings after getting bullied out of a play date.
After the Conference, I also worked on Wake Up Your Weird again as an assistant puppeteer in Los Angeles for performances at the Cavern Club and a workshop at the Geffen, and in Walnutt Creek the Lescher Center for the Arts. Wake Up Your Weird was directed by Michelle Spears of Impro Theater in Los Angeles who I later collaborated with in Object of Her Affection.
The internationally-acclaimed Eugene O’Neill Theater Center is dedicated to encouraging and furthering the creative impulse which is at the heart of all theatrical expression – and the puppet arts are no exception. The mission of the National Puppetry Conference is to be a catalyst for the professional puppet artist’s growth and development through both the exploration of performance styles and skills, and the production of new works-in-progress for puppet theatre. The conference focuses on empowering puppet artists to create through the visual imagery and kinetic form of the puppet and enhancing their work through a collaborative dramaturgical process. The goal of the Conference is to encourage and create the highest quality of puppet art.