Collaboration Through Puppetry in the 21st Century

Yael Inbar is a theater director, puppeteer and a script writer for animation films. She is a senior lecturer and head of the animation department of Sapir College in Ashkelon, Israel. Yael established the Gertrude Theater, a theater company that combines puppetry and choreography. Gertrude Theater’s productions have performed worldwide in puppet festivals and theater seasons. The Gertrude Theater also won the first prize at the International Puppets Festival in Valencia, Spain, and at the Cannes International Theater Festival in France. Yael explores the field of storytelling and the use of text in relation to image, on stage, in animation and in installations. This year, Yael is a visiting artist at the University of Maryland School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies and the Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies.

Dan Hurlin has been creating original puppet theater since 1980. His work has been presented widely at such spaces as New York’s The Kitchen and Dance Theater Workshop; Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center; the Duke University Institute for the Arts; and the Flynn Theater for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont. He has been awarded funding from the Greenwall Foundation, Art Matters, the Peg Santvoord Foundation, The New England Foundation for the Arts and the NEA. From 1980 to 1993, Hurlin was the artistic director of Andy’s Summer Playhouse in Wilton, New Hampshire, a program that facilitates creative collaborations between children ages 8-18 and internationally acclaimed artists. 

Hurlin currently teaches performance art, dance and puppetry at Sarah Lawrence College, where he also serves as the director of the graduate program in theater. Twice a fellow at MacDowell, he is the recipient of a 2002 fellowship in choreography from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, a 2004 Alpert Award in the Arts for theater, the 2008 United States Artists Prudential Fellowship in theater and the 2013/14 Jesse Howard Junior Rome Prize Fellowship in visual art at the American Academy in Rome. Hurlin’s theater and puppetry work has received the OBIE Award, the New York Dance and Performance Award (also known as a “Bessie”) and the UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionette) Citation of Excellence. He has performed with Ping Chong, Janie Geiser and Jeffrey M. Jones, and has directed premieres of works by Erik Ehn, Lisa Kron, Holly Hughes, Dan Froot and John C. Russell, among others. In 2015, Hurlin served as a Performance LOI panelist.

Doug Fitch is a polymath visual artist working in architecture, opera, puppetry, sustenance and design, whose creative life began within his family’s touring puppet theatre. He has worked with director Robert Wilson, puppeteer Jim Henson, designer Gaetano Pesce and conceptual artist Arakawa. As a director/designer, he created productions for the Los Angeles and Santa Fe Opera houses. For the New York Philharmonic, he staged Le Grand Macabre, The Cunning Little Vixen, A Dancer’s Dream and Gloria–A Pig Tale, performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He directed Orphic Moments by the American composer Matthew Aucoin at the Salzburg Landestheater. Fitch is a co-founder of the entertainment company Giants Are Small, whose multimedia version of Peter and the Wolf, produced in collaboration with Universal Music and Deutsche Grammophon. Recent highlights include the genre-defying Pan with music by Marcos Balter for flutist Claire Chase, revivals of Hansel and Gretel at the Los Angeles Opera and Le Grand Macabre at the Elbphilharmonie. His production of Pùnkitititi premiered at the Salzburg Marionette Theatre as part of the 2020 Mozart Week. He has also written the books: "Organs of Emotion" and "Mit Haut und Haaren." 

Dr. I Nyoman Sedana is one of three active professors of performing arts at Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Bali, Indonesia. He received his MA from Brown University and my PhD from the University of Georgia. Sedana has published dozens of international publications including articles in the Asian Theatre Journal and co-authoring Performance in Bali (2007). Check out his international training program called Balimodule here. 

Website: https://www.balimodule.com/ 

Photo of Sedana: https://www.balimodule.com/about.html (last picture on the left)

Videos: https://www.balimodule.com/resources.html 

Marielis Garcia, Dance Artist in Residence.

Helen Huang, Professor of Costume Design, is an award-winning costume designer who has worked in theatres throughout the DC area, across the country, and abroad.

Helen’s new book, Elizabethan Costume Design and Construction: (The Focal Press Costume Topics Series) is available on Amazon.com.

Helen’s design work was chosen for exhibit at the A. A. Bakhrushin Museum in Moscow, Russia.

Take Ten is an interview with Professor Huang published in theatre Washington. Click here to read.

Professor Huang was featured by the 2016 Oregon Shakespeare Festival for her costume design work on The Winter’s Tale, directed by Desdemona Chiang and presented from an Asian/Asian-American perspective. See videos: Envisioning Sicilia & Bohemia and Humor, Poetry & Magic in the Designs of Helen Huang.

Ashlynne Ludwig is a costume designer and technician who received her BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2015 with a major in Production Design, with a concentration in Costume Design and a minor in Art History.  Ashlynne’s recent credits include working as a resident costume designer and associate costume shop manager at the Cumberland County Playhouse (2015-2018), costume designer for Goodly Creatures (2019), and stitcher at the Opera Theater St. Louis (2019) where she was awarded the Emerson program scholarship for her work. https://www.ashlynneludwig.com/