Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate – Student Voices

Headshot of Susie Boeselt

“If you’ve always wanted to go further into puppetry, this is absolutely the program. It gives you context, history, current practices, community, performance skills. If you’ve always wanted to write a puppet show, and you never thought you could do it, do this course! Now I know that if I had to write a puppet show, I’d feel confident that I could not only write it, but I could look at with a critical lens to build the show to be the strongest that it can be.” And to everybody, regardless of interests, she adds, “If you get the urge to pick up a puppet, don’t resist!” – Susie Boeselt, Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate, Graduate Spring 2023

Bringing Imagination to Life

As a visual artist, Susie Boeselt takes her love of puppetry very seriously. Despite limited access to formal skills, she’s always made puppets. She loves her work as an illustrator and animator, but puppetry is the art form that brings her imagination to life. While taking an online course through “Puppets in Prague,” Susie discovered the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate at University of Connecticut (UConn). This has been a game-changer for Susie. Having recently completed the program, she is excited by the ways she is pushing her ideas forward. She now feels fully equipped to confidently engage with others as a practitioner in the puppetry arts community.

Growing up in Australia, Susie’s love of puppets was first inspired as a child. “Puppetry has always been something I loved my entire life because I was introduced to it very young. There used to be an Australian group called the Tintookies. And a lot of us that were kids in the 70s were exposed to Tintookies. I was one of those kids that was lucky enough to be exposed.” Tintookies, an Aboriginal word meaning 'little people who come from the sandhills,’ were large-scale marionettes, created by Peter Scriven. In addition, to Tintookies, Susie fondly remembers Jim Henson’s Sesame Street and the Muppets, as well as earlier children’s programming, such as H.R. Pufnstuf, and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. Contrasting her childhood with present day, Susie explains, “I’ve found puppetry to be a more prevalent and accessible artform in Europe and America than at home. So it’s whatever I’ve been able to do by myself pretty much.”

Seawitch Lady Bay puppet on the beachWith a background in visual arts, including illustrating, animating, printmaking and sculpture, Susie explains, “I’ve always made puppets. There’s something about puppetry that’s incredibly accessible across social economic demographics. If you can make up a paper glue paste, you can make a puppet. Papier-mâché is the cheapest art form ever: You just need paper and flour and water.” Susie adds, “Because I’ve been trained as a visual artist, I’ve always found that puppetry is a very direct line to my imagination. I think it might be for others as well. I don’t think it’s unique to me. But I’ve been lucky enough to experience that.”

Discovering UConn from Australia via Prague

Susie first learned about UConn’s Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate while she was taking an online workshop with “Puppets in Prague.” Puppets in Prague had put together a music video featuring marionettes created by participants in their breakaway skeleton workshop. One of those participants was also a student in UConn’s Puppet Arts graduate program, and he shared a link to UConn’s Spring 2021 Puppet Slam, which included this video as a featured performance. While traditionally an in-person event, the Puppet Slam had been shifted to online during the Covid-19 pandemic, which made it accessible to Susie from her South Australian location. She was captivated: “Prague was offering various skills: I was doing a traditional puppet, but the UConn student was doing a trick skeleton. (The trick skeleton is a unique Czech technique.) A heap of American students had done a trick skeleton, and Puppets in Prague put together a video called ‘Death Can Dance.’ I went to see that, but I stayed to watch everyone. I was just fully drawn in.”

When Susie noticed that there were international UConn students performing, she realized the program could be accessible to her despite her distant location. Intrigued, she went to UConn’s website and made an inquiry, figuring, “What’s the worst thing that can happen.” She was delighted when Paul Spirito and Donna Campbell got back to her, explaining, “I felt really supported navigating the administrative process.”

Still, Susie was nervous that the distance would be too much of a barrier: “At first, I thought, ‘this is going to be completely out of my time zone. And it’s going to be too much to do as someone who works full-time.’ Paul just chatted me through: You just do one course per semester, at your own pace, and it’s asynchronous so you don’t have to go out of your time zone.” She thought, “This sounds like fun. I’ll give it a crack.” Susie began the 12 credit, 4-course program in fall 2021, and has just completed her last course in May 2023.

Building skills by design

For Susie, the strengths of the program include three core features: interconnected program design, high caliber feedback and guidance from the professors, and amazing fellow students. As she explains, “The intelligence of the way it’s built was key. It has four core component subjects. You could start with any of those components and build upon it. It’s designed so that each course builds upon the other, but it doesn’t matter at which point you start. And within a course, week by week, it builds on the skills, and it develops you as you go along – and you find yourself pulling in learning from any other courses that you’ve done. You’ve got this inherent structural strength that lifts up your professionalism and your ability. And then you’ve got these incredible teachers that are so professional. They are able to look and see and give you clear instructions on what you need to know to be able to get to where you want to be with your craft, or with your idea, or with your story.” Susie continues, adding a third component of strength: “The way it’s designed is incredible. And the people that deliver it. And also, the people you do it with – your fellow students! You find yourself learning so much. It’s this wild group of people who are just so lovely to learn with.”

Susie also appreciated the generosity with which professors shared their knowledge and expertise: “A lot of the teachers have their own creative life and their own professional life, but you don’t ever feel like you can’t approach them. You don’t ever feel like any question is too stupid. I was blown away by the generosity that was shared. Because some people can be very protective of their professional knowledge. There was none of that. It was really open and really generous.”

Separate but never alone

Interacting with her classmates via the HuskyCT/Blackboard online platform was a highlight for Susie. “It was something to look forward to. I’m going to really miss accessing my online course at the end of the day to check who’s been around and who’s said something. It was like being part of an unfolding conversation that didn’t have the pressure of time attached. I liked it. You never feel alone with it, even though you are quite separate.”

Pinky DhilbaGuuranda puppet on the beachSusie especially enjoyed the level of interaction enabled by the VoiceThread platform: “It was one of the most beneficial ways that we interacted with each other. You’d make a video and put it up. Then everyone in the class was invited to comment and give constructive feedback, such as what they like about it, or how they think you can push the idea to be closer to what you’re aiming for. I would find that there were ways that I hadn’t even imagined about approaching a problem or something that I was doing. A suggestion would be made, and suddenly you’d be open to not just another way to approach it, but perhaps a whole line of people who had seen this problem before and had dealt with it in certain ways. So you’re introduced to not just different problem solving, but different lines of practice that people were sharing. And it also challenged you to look at people’s work, not just like ‘oh, I really love it’ but to actually really look. And to go, ‘okay, I can see what you’re doing’ – and feel confident to ask questions and to have those questions asked of you too, because you understand that it’s about trying to get the best result.”

Not only did she learn from sharing her own work, but Susie appreciated being inspired by her classmates’ work: “You’re constantly making things, but other people are constantly making things. You see so many beautiful ideas. I’m going to miss seeing that.”

Discovering new materials

Susie thoroughly enjoyed all her courses, exclaiming, “They’re all my favorite,” but she found DRAM 5607 - Advanced Material Techniques to be particularly impactful. “Because I have a visual arts background, a making background, the advanced material techniques really stood out for me because I now have suppliers for materials that I didn’t know existed. There’s a material that I learned about, called Chicago Latex, and I’ve never experienced it before. It’s so much more environmentally friendly than using plastics and silicone. And being introduced to that was really exciting. Material techniques has really helped me feel like anyone could ask me for a design, and I’d feel confident that I’d know how to make it because I’ve been through the industry-standard materials.”

An exciting outcome for Susie is the ways in which she is already applying this new knowledge in developing curriculum for kids: “It’s already helped me in my work. I work with the arts curriculum teacher, and they wanted a puppet. I designed a puppet, and I could do it confidently in a way that I could select materials so that kids who have zero money and zero access to supplies could make a successful puppet. I feel confident that I can actually do this. And I don’t have to feel like I have to try to hide behind doing any extra detail. I can pass something along.”

Learning to perform

Highlighting DRAM 5610 - Advanced Hand Puppet Theatre, taught by Fergus Walsh, Susie shares, “This last course I just completed, Hand Puppetry with Fergus, was incredible. It was the lens he brought to performance and how to improve it without feeling destroyed but feeling built up every step of the way.” The project for this course was one of Susie’s favorites: It was to create and perform her own puppet show. “I loved taking someone else’s story and making my version of what their characters look like. And going, ‘okay, I want them to look like this’ and then being committed to trying to make something as close as possible to how I visualized it. Then taking that and making that into a story, and then getting all the feedback from everyone in the class to get that story to something that could be told without worrying that it was possibly the worst thing that anyone had seen.”

For this project, Susie chose the children’s story Giant John, written by Arnold Lobel. As she explains, “It’s about a giant that every time he hears fairy music, he has to dance. The fairies make him dance so much that he knocks down a castle. It’s an accident, it’s terrible. He didn’t want it to happen.” Explaining her technique, she continues, “He was giant relative to the other puppets. The giant was a hand puppet, and the other puppets were finger puppets, so it made it look like he was big in his world.” (See image above of Susie performing with Giant John and Little Owl.)

Live form of imagining

For Susie, nature and puppetry have always been intricately intertwined, but now she’s pushing that connection further in ways that will enable her to share her work with others: “I love to go out in nature. When I build a new puppet, I’ll often go to a favorite national park. There’s a salt lake I like to go to, and I like to take my puppets there and photograph them in nature. This time around, rather than just photographing them, I was performing with them. This is huge for me. I’ve always wanted to hide and make puppets. But I wanted to share and hadn’t learned how. So that’s a huge leap forward for me. I’m not sure where it’s going to go, but I don’t want it to stop.”

Puppets, for Susie, are a direct pathway to bringing her imagination to life. As she explains, “I’m not sure what it’s like for everyone, because I’m not a writer. But sometimes you’ve got something inside of you that you want to get out, and puppetry expresses something inherently human. I feel like it lets me express or bring life to my imagination in ways that drawings and even animation don’t. And it’s something that I can return to, in a way that I can’t return to drawings. Like I can pick up a puppet I built ten years ago and bring something new to it now. It’s a very live form of imagining.” She adds, “I found this learning has been another way to bring life to the things that have been sitting there dormant that I didn’t want to go dormant.”

Susie elaborates with a specific example: “I have a set of papier-mâché puppets that I made 25 years ago. There was one that I made, and it was specifically related to a place that I love. It’s a place that gets me into seaweed. And she’s a little sea witch person. It took me until after doing this program to feel like I could pick her up. I could go out into the environment where she was supposed to be and always live. I could take her to the winter seaweed, and I could film her running around in winter seaweed. She’s 25, older than my child. And I felt like that for the first time ever I could actually realize something that had been sitting there waiting to be done for ages. I feel like now I don’t just have to make them in privacy and hide them away. Now I can actually push the ideas further. I can do things that I’ve wanted to do with my puppets for a long time. Here’s a link to Susie’s Sea Witch Playing in Seaweed.

Developing confidence through new ways of seeing

After completing the program, Susie now feels confident to push herself in making new connections in the puppet world. “There’s not a lot of formal education around puppetry where I am. Puppets are a huge part of my life. I take them seriously. And I want to be taken seriously when I say that I do puppetry. So having an academic certificate helps me feel like I’ll be taken more seriously than ‘oh yeah, puppets, that’s lovely.’ It makes me feel less dismissed.”

She’s excited to start making new connections at the upcoming puppet festival in Melbourne. “I feel like I can meet with anyone on any level in Australian puppetry after this UConn learning experience.  It’s this incredible confidence that I’m not coming in blind to things that other people might know. I’m not coming in blind to techniques. I’ve had some performance experience. I actually feel like it’s okay to show my face, like I’m not some kind of fraud.”

Montage drawing of the Puppetry Bean Laboratory, UConn Online Graduate Certificate in Puppet ArtsEmphasizing the role of the critique process, Susie explains, “It’s also going through two years of collective critique. Not just receiving critique, but being part of other people’s work in process – to actually know how to engage with other practitioners. So it’s not just about having confidence, but how to see properly. I can actually really see skills that I didn’t even know I was looking at.” She adds, “I feel really quite excited now that I’ve completed the program. I’ve got these skills and I’m in this place where I’ve got so many things I could do with them. I’m not quite sure yet, but there’s a lovely potential for different directions.”

For those considering this program, Susie urges, “If you’ve always wanted to go further into puppetry, this is absolutely the program. It gives you context, history, current practices, community, and performance skills. If you’ve always wanted to write a puppet show, and you never thought you could do it, do this course! Now I know that if I had to write a puppet show, I’d feel confident that I could not only write it, but I could look at with a critical lens to build the show to be the strongest that it can be.” And to everybody, regardless of interests, she adds, “If you get the urge to pick up a puppet, don’t resist!”

Amy West, student and graduate of UConn's Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate discussing her experience in UConn's online puppetry courses.

“Going into the program, I didn’t realize the faculty are among the heavy hitters of the Puppetry Arts world. They are internationally known experts in the field. But they were very down to earth, helpful, and responsive. They never just plopped a bunch of videos on HuskyCT/Blackboard; they were so involved in everything we did.” Amy West, Graduate, Fall 2018, Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Program

Amy West, who earned the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate in 2018, shows off her “puppet friends,” most of whom she created during DRAM 5610 - Advanced Hand Puppet Theater. The course was taught by Fergus Walsh, adjunct faculty member in UConn’s School of Fine Arts, Dramatic Arts Department.

 

Bringing Together a Myriad of Artistic Talent

Sometimes it takes years of experience to decide what we really want to do in life—at least it did for Amy West. Writer, photographer, musician, communications expert…Amy was finally able to bring together all of her artistic passions and expertise as a puppeteer extraordinaire! She credits the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate program from the University of Connecticut (UConn) with helping her hone her skills—and take her puppetry career to an entirely new level. While she continues in her day job, she fuels her love of Puppetry Arts in all kinds of ways. Lately, during the COVID-19 Pandemic, she has been producing puppet video performances for Facebook Live to help entertain children—and adults—and raise money for Puppet Showplace Theater in Brookline, Massachusetts. And thanks to her experiences with the online program, she had no trouble at all transitioning to a whole new situation in March 2020, when her employer, the Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute, required its employees to work at home due to the Pandemic.

All of her life, Amy West has dabbled in various aspects of the arts—as a writer, a photographer, musician, stage manager, wedding DJ…some for money, some for fun, she says. And of course, she has had many day jobs over the years. “While all of my jobs have been satisfying in some way or other, they have never lit me up the way my artistic pursuits have,” says Amy.

Amy is one of millions of people who grew up in the 1970s, along side Mister Rogers, Sesame Street, and the Muppets. In fact, she can recall crouching behind the couch with her sister and putting on puppet shows with their stuffed animals.

More than two decades passed, during which time she didn’t give much thought to her early interest in puppets—until her niece was born in 2008. “I remember when she was very little, I picked up her Lamb Chop puppet and started talking to her. She was transfixed. Her focus was solely on the puppet; I disappeared in her mind. That made me think about the power of puppetry and an idea started to form.”

Then, as Amy recalls, she visited some friends in San Francisco in 2015. While there, she discovered Puppet Up!, a live show by Brian Henson and Henson Alternative. “It was so interesting because it was a TV-style puppet show, with the performance projected on a big screen. But you could see the puppeteers right on stage interacting with each other. It was really cool. That changed everything for me.”

Puppet video production begins

Amy began making short online videos featuring puppets. Although she wasn’t sure what she was doing, she found that she was able to express ideas in a different way than she might express them herself. “My puppet character was very cranky and forthright in a way I would never be. I tend to be more reserved.”

Fast-forward to 2016, when Amy realized she wanted to up her game by developing more formal skills in Puppetry Arts. That’s when she began looking at various programs and came across the University of Connecticut’s Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate. “The online program was perfect. I could participate while working full-time,” says Amy, who began the program in January 2017 and completed the last course December 2018.

Online? Yes, it’s the perfect venue!

Before she jumped in, she did have one big concern. “I thought, ‘How in the world will they be able to teach the courses online, when puppetry is such a hands-on experience?’” So instead of committing to the entire program right off the bat, Amy signed up for one course, DRAM 5610 - Advanced Hand Puppet Theater, as a Non-Degree student. To her surprise, she discovered the online platform was the perfect venue. “I have always been a bit of a loner, and I’m a night owl. So when my wife goes to sleep, I have time to do my thing. I discovered that online is the ideal medium for me, and especially now, in the midst of the Pandemic, the online learning experience through UConn prepared me for working at home full time.”

Amy also wondered how interactive the courses would be. Another big surprise! The VoiceThread platform enabled her and her classmates to watch lectures, upload performances, and even critique each other’s work. “We could slow the video down and actually circle something that needed attention, for example, if the performer’s wrist was not straight and it was affecting the puppet’s posture. VoiceThread, along with HuskyCT/Blackboard, which facilitates back and forth discussions, really connected everyone in the program. And because of the online platform, we could literally be connected all the time if we wanted to be.” Amy also says that one of her favorite aspects of the program was meeting people from all over the world with different goals and at different stages of their puppetry arts careers. She even had classmates from Alaska and South Africa!

From her first puppet slam to Trustee

While in the program, Amy learned about puppet slams, attending her first Puppet Showplace Theater in Brookline, MA. As she notes, this is a cabaret-style adult-oriented show, with short puppetry performances showcasing a variety of techniques, like shadow, marionette, or hand puppetry. She contacted the artistic director and submitted a video she created in the UConn program. She ended up performing that piece at her first puppet slam in 2018. “That evening was so great,” she recalls. “It was actually UConn night. Many people were from its Puppet Arts, MA/MFA programs.” Now, not only is she a regular at the Puppet Showplace Theater’s puppet slams—here’s a piece she performed for the February 2020 UConn Puppet Slam—she also sits on its Board of Trustees. In addition, she has joined several organizations, including Puppeteers of America, through which she attended her first national puppetry arts festival in 2019.

Says Amy: “One of the key takeaways from the certificate program is the notion of puppetry as creative problem-solving. How can I make this puppet look like it’s blowing out a birthday candle? How can I add depth to my playboard, to give my characters set pieces to walk behind and in front of? How can I make this snail shadow puppet extend its body in a comical way? How do I make this cut-out of the moon rise up over this mountain? Figuring these things out—with help from instructors, classmates, and my handy wife—was very satisfying.”

Two years of online learning at UConn also prepared Amy for our current pandemic reality. Since March 2020, Amy has been putting together 30-minute Facebook Live shows to entertain kids and adults, while raising money for Puppet Showcase Theater. “Whether working remotely at my day job or performing in an online puppet slam, the technical skills and adaptability I learned are critical to my daily life and work.”

______________________

"Thanks to the knowledge and experience I have been gaining, I'm able to put my new skills into actual use. I'm learning techniques to make puppets take certain actions that you wouldn't think you could, such as having a shadow puppet jump across a pond and showing the surface water actually rippling at the same time. I'm getting puppet arts training from a university with a world-class reputation in the field, while being able to continue working at a job I love."  Brandon Kirkham, Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Student

Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate: Brandon Kirkham poses with Edgar, Allen, and Poe puppets from the cast of SPOOKLEY THE SQUARE PUMPKIN. Photos by Paul Ruffolo.

Brandon Kirkham, Brandon has been building puppets
professionally for more than 10 years. But with just two
courses from the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate
Program under his belt, he’s taking his work as Design
Supervisor at First Stage in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to the
next level.

For the Love of Puppets

Brandon Kirkham has been immersed in theater for many years – first as an undergraduate student in Costume Design at the University of Evansville, then as a student in the Master's in Costume and Scenery Design program at Ohio University. Today, he works as Design Supervisor for a children's theater company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, called First Stage. As much as he loves theater, there's something about the world of puppetry that's taken hold of Brandon. While the Master's program at Ohio University allowed him to tailor his education to reflect his interest in puppetry, it wasn't part of the formal curriculum and didn't provide the in-depth training he was looking for to take his interest to the next level.

"At the time I was looking into getting a Master's degree, I knew about the University of Connecticut's (UConn) Puppetry Arts Master of Fine Arts program, but decided to stick with theater design," Brandon recalls. "But I had always wondered what it would have been like going to UConn. So when I saw a post on a friend's Facebook page about the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Program, I immediately knew it would be the perfect way for me to fill in my knowledge gaps and allow me to get a more formal education in puppetry."

Part of the "inaugural" class, Brandon has completed two of the four required courses: DRAM 5607 – Advanced Materials Techniques and DRAM 5613 – Advanced Shadow Theater. Both courses incorporated extensive opportunities to critique other students' work and to be critiqued. Says Brandon: "In any artistic pursuit, critique is essential. We are creating art to be viewed and knowing how your peers see your work helps you understand whether you are communicating your story and characters clearly, or not. I find VoiceThread to be a great platform for critiquing."

An interactive, collaborative sharing tool.

Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate: Brandon Kirkham shows off the puppet cast of SPOOKLEY THE SQUARE PUMPKIN. Photos by Paul Ruffolo.

So what is VoiceThread and how is it used in the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Program? An interactive collaboration and sharing tool, VoiceThread allows students to add images, documents, and videos – then other students can add their voice, text, audio file, or video comments. "VoiceThread allows you to be as close as possible to other students without actually being in the same space," says Brandon, who used the tool extensively to provide critiques and in return, received the same level of feedback. "Since the courses are asynchronous, I'm able to provide my critique at a time convenient to me, usually later in the evenings when my wife has gone to bed."

Putting his new skills to good use.

Brandon's experience to date has already made a big impact on his work at First Stage, which operates the nation's largest theater academy for children. As part of his job as Design Supervisor, Brandon is involved with 11 productions a year. Says Brandon:

"We seem to be incorporating puppetry into more shows, which conveniently coincides with my involvement in the online graduate certificate program. For example, Lovabye Dragon, a show we adapted from the book by Barbara Joosse, features three styles of puppets – hand, shadow, and a 14-foot walk-around dragon puppet that takes three performers to operate. I would never have known how to create intricate shadow puppets before I took the Advanced Shadow Theater course with Penny Benson.

"Thanks to the knowledge and experience I have been gaining, I'm able to put my new skills into actual use. I'm learning techniques to make puppets take certain actions that you wouldn't think you could, such as having a shadow puppet jump across a pond and showing the surface water actually rippling at the same time. We also had a session on learning how to use old-school projectors to achieve very intricate special effects, like having puppets appear to weave in and out of trees in a forest."

Learning some of the business side, too.

The program isn't all fun and games. As Brandon notes, "Using Blackboard to have online discussions, we are exposed to a lot of very interesting ethical topics, such as rights, royalties, and copyright rules." Brandon is also required to write research papers. But the effort he has put in thus far has been well worth it. As he says, "I'm getting puppet arts training from a university with a world-class reputation in the field, while being able to continue working at a job I love."

Brandon's final project: Lovabye Dragon shadow music video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lvk31eeCDEc
Another class project: to emulate the style of Australian puppeteer Richard Bradshaw
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HRIK_1pHw3A

____________________

"If you can't get to Storrs, the online graduate certificate program is ideal. You can complete the courses from your home or studio, wherever. It's also a great way to test the waters to see if you're interested in getting an MFA in Puppet Arts from UConn. I know my degree will open all kinds of doors for me in the future." — Kimberly Van Aelst, Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Student

Kimberly Van Aelst, student and graduate of UConn's Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate discussing her experience in UConn's online puppetry courses in her puppetry workshop..

Kimberly Van Aelst lives with her husband and
four-year-old son in Hamden, Connecticut – and
an ideal place to create puppets, especially with
her studio (shown here) located right on their
property, just steps from their home.


All About Timing

Timing is everything, at least for Kimberly Van Aelst it is. Since 2008, she had been interested in applying for a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Puppet Arts at the University of Connecticut (UConn), School of Fine Arts, Dramatic Arts. But life has a funny way of sneaking up on you and taking over. Finally, eight years later, the timing was just right, and Kimberly applied to the program. At the same time, she discovered the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate program and decided to get some credentials under her belt while she was waiting to hear about being accepted.

Who would have thought someone with a Master's of Public Health, specializing in International Health, could end up in UConn's Puppet Arts MFA program? Kimberly Van Aelst did. While working overseas in Afghanistan as a Social Media Project Manager with Handicap International, she met a puppeteer who produced educational puppet films for children to help prevent land mine injuries. As she recalls, "It inspired me and helped me to envision a way to blend puppetry with my public health and occupational therapy background. I started thinking of applying to the MFA in Puppet Arts program in 2008. I remember telling my colleagues, 'One day I will be in the graduate puppetry program at UConn.'" 

Life can take over.

But like so many of us, life has a way of taking over. Kimberly and her husband, a professional freelance photographer, bought a house, got married, and had a baby. "We put other dreams on hold as we lived in bliss as new parents," says Kimberly, whose Mystic Aquarium wedding in 2011 became a YouTube hit, with nearly 5,000,000 views, when the couple's mariachi band was filmed serenading a Beluga whale!

While Kimberly continued to work in her field, she found time to cultivate her passion for puppetry, performing in puppet slams – in New York City, New Haven, Boston, and even on the West Coast – and with performance companies, such as Drama of Works in Brooklyn, New York. In fact, Kimberly developed a new puppet show piece called "WAAC the Puppet Show,"* which was recently showcased at Dixon Place in New York City during a World War II-themed slam hosted by Drama of Works. 

But finally the time was right.

In January 2016, the time was finally right, and Kimberly applied for the Master's program. Knowing she would have to wait to hear about acceptance – then wait several months before coursework would begin – she decided to jump into the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate program and took DRAM 5607 – Advanced Materials Techniques. Says Kimberly, who also took DRAM 5613 – Advanced Shadow Theater to hone her skills in shadow puppetry: "I wanted to start accruing credits, get a feel for the Master's program, and meet some of the faculty. The online courses were fantastic."

So what specifically did she find so worthwhile?

During Advanced Materials Techniques, Kimberly learned all about puppet construction using a wide variety of materials and tools. For example, she says, "We learned how to design a puppet head and construct it out of neoprene latex. Our teacher, Paul Spirito, showed us exactly what adhesives and paints would work on latex, and how to add eyes, a nose, and even a mouth that can move." Kimberly also found VoiceThread, to which she uploaded her various project for critique, to be extremely easy to use.

Even though Kimberly has had a lot of experience in shadow puppetry, taking the Advanced Shadow Theater course from Penny Benson taught her how to use multiple projectors at once. She also learned how to incorporate her body into the performance while greatly improving her masking and rod techniques. "It was so helpful. Penny taught us how to attach puppet joints so they aren't stiff and how arms and legs can move and appear three-dimensional, rather than being flat and lifeless."

A great way to test the waters.

When Kimberly completes her MFA in 2019, she envisions developing puppets for local theater companies, such as the Downtown Cabaret Theater in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She encourages anyone with a love of puppetry to give it a try, even for people like her with a background in a field unrelated to performance arts. Plus she says, "If you can't get to Storrs, the online graduate certificate program is ideal. You can complete the courses from your home or studio, wherever. It's also a great way to test the waters to see if you're interested in getting an MFA in Puppet Arts from UConn. I know my degree will open all kinds of doors for me in the future, hopefully helping pave the way for me to develop and perform larger scale pieces in festivals around the world."

* WAAC stands for Women’s Army Auxiliary Corp.

Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate: Brandon Kirkham poses with Edgar, Allen, and Poe puppets from the cast of SPOOKLEY THE SQUARE PUMPKIN. Photos by Paul Ruffolo.

"Thanks to the knowledge and experience I have been gaining, I'm able to put my new skills into actual use. I'm learning techniques to make puppets take certain actions that you wouldn't think you could, such as having a shadow puppet jump across a pond and showing the surface water actually rippling at the same time. I'm getting puppet arts training from a university with a world-class reputation in the field, while being able to continue working at a job I love."Brandon Kirkham, Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Student

Brandon Kirkham, Brandon has been building puppets professionally for more than 10 years. But with just two courses from the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Program under his belt, he’s taking his work as Design
Supervisor at First Stage in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to the next level.

For the Love of Puppets

Brandon Kirkham has been immersed in theater for many years – first as an undergraduate student in Costume Design at the University of Evansville, then as a student in the Master's in Costume and Scenery Design program at Ohio University. Today, he works as Design Supervisor for a children's theater company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, called First Stage. As much as he loves theater, there's something about the world of puppetry that's taken hold of Brandon. While the Master's program at Ohio University allowed him to tailor his education to reflect his interest in puppetry, it wasn't part of the formal curriculum and didn't provide the in-depth training he was looking for to take his interest to the next level.

"At the time I was looking into getting a Master's degree, I knew about the University of Connecticut's (UConn) Puppetry Arts Master of Fine Arts program, but decided to stick with theater design," Brandon recalls. "But I had always wondered what it would have been like going to UConn. So when I saw a post on a friend's Facebook page about the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Program, I immediately knew it would be the perfect way for me to fill in my knowledge gaps and allow me to get a more formal education in puppetry."

Part of the "inaugural" class, Brandon has completed two of the four required courses: DRAM 5607 – Advanced Materials Techniques and DRAM 5613 – Advanced Shadow Theater. Both courses incorporated extensive opportunities to critique other students' work and to be critiqued. Says Brandon: "In any artistic pursuit, critique is essential. We are creating art to be viewed and knowing how your peers see your work helps you understand whether you are communicating your story and characters clearly, or not. I find VoiceThread to be a great platform for critiquing."

An interactive, collaborative sharing tool.

Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate: Brandon Kirkham shows off the puppet cast of SPOOKLEY THE SQUARE PUMPKIN. Photos by Paul Ruffolo.

So what is VoiceThread and how is it used in the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Program? An interactive collaboration and sharing tool, VoiceThread allows students to add images, documents, and videos – then other students can add their voice, text, audio file, or video comments. "VoiceThread allows you to be as close as possible to other students without actually being in the same space," says Brandon, who used the tool extensively to provide critiques and in return, received the same level of feedback. "Since the courses are asynchronous, I'm able to provide my critique at a time convenient to me, usually later in the evenings when my wife has gone to bed."

Putting his new skills to good use.

Brandon's experience to date has already made a big impact on his work at First Stage, which operates the nation's largest theater academy for children. As part of his job as Design Supervisor, Brandon is involved with 11 productions a year. Says Brandon:

"We seem to be incorporating puppetry into more shows, which conveniently coincides with my involvement in the online graduate certificate program. For example, Lovabye Dragon, a show we adapted from the book by Barbara Joosse, features three styles of puppets – hand, shadow, and a 14-foot walk-around dragon puppet that takes three performers to operate. I would never have known how to create intricate shadow puppets before I took the Advanced Shadow Theater course with Penny Benson.

"Thanks to the knowledge and experience I have been gaining, I'm able to put my new skills into actual use. I'm learning techniques to make puppets take certain actions that you wouldn't think you could, such as having a shadow puppet jump across a pond and showing the surface water actually rippling at the same time. We also had a session on learning how to use old-school projectors to achieve very intricate special effects, like having puppets appear to weave in and out of trees in a forest."

Learning some of the business side, too.

The program isn't all fun and games. As Brandon notes, "Using Blackboard to have online discussions, we are exposed to a lot of very interesting ethical topics, such as rights, royalties, and copyright rules." Brandon is also required to write research papers. But the effort he has put in thus far has been well worth it. As he says, "I'm getting puppet arts training from a university with a world-class reputation in the field, while being able to continue working at a job I love."

Brandon's final project: Lovabye Dragon shadow music video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lvk31eeCDEc
Another class project: to emulate the style of Australian puppeteer Richard Bradshaw
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HRIK_1pHw3A

____________________

"If you can't get to Storrs, the online graduate certificate program is ideal. You can complete the courses from your home or studio, wherever. It's also a great way to test the waters to see if you're interested in getting an MFA in Puppet Arts from UConn. I know my degree will open all kinds of doors for me in the future." — Kimberly Van Aelst, Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Student

Kimberly Van Aelst, student and graduate of UConn's Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate discussing her experience in UConn's online puppetry courses in her puppetry workshop..

Kimberly Van Aelst lives with her husband and
four-year-old son in Hamden, Connecticut – and
an ideal place to create puppets, especially with
her studio (shown here) located right on their
property, just steps from their home.


All About Timing

Timing is everything, at least for Kimberly Van Aelst it is. Since 2008, she had been interested in applying for a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Puppet Arts at the University of Connecticut (UConn), School of Fine Arts, Dramatic Arts. But life has a funny way of sneaking up on you and taking over. Finally, eight years later, the timing was just right, and Kimberly applied to the program. At the same time, she discovered the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate program and decided to get some credentials under her belt while she was waiting to hear about being accepted.

Who would have thought someone with a Master's of Public Health, specializing in International Health, could end up in UConn's Puppet Arts MFA program? Kimberly Van Aelst did. While working overseas in Afghanistan as a Social Media Project Manager with Handicap International, she met a puppeteer who produced educational puppet films for children to help prevent land mine injuries. As she recalls, "It inspired me and helped me to envision a way to blend puppetry with my public health and occupational therapy background. I started thinking of applying to the MFA in Puppet Arts program in 2008. I remember telling my colleagues, 'One day I will be in the graduate puppetry program at UConn.'" 

Life can take over.

But like so many of us, life has a way of taking over. Kimberly and her husband, a professional freelance photographer, bought a house, got married, and had a baby. "We put other dreams on hold as we lived in bliss as new parents," says Kimberly, whose Mystic Aquarium wedding in 2011 became a YouTube hit, with nearly 5,000,000 views, when the couple's mariachi band was filmed serenading a Beluga whale!

While Kimberly continued to work in her field, she found time to cultivate her passion for puppetry, performing in puppet slams – in New York City, New Haven, Boston, and even on the West Coast – and with performance companies, such as Drama of Works in Brooklyn, New York. In fact, Kimberly developed a new puppet show piece called "WAAC the Puppet Show,"* which was recently showcased at Dixon Place in New York City during a World War II-themed slam hosted by Drama of Works. 

But finally the time was right.

In January 2016, the time was finally right, and Kimberly applied for the Master's program. Knowing she would have to wait to hear about acceptance – then wait several months before coursework would begin – she decided to jump into the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate program and took DRAM 5607 – Advanced Materials Techniques. Says Kimberly, who also took DRAM 5613 – Advanced Shadow Theater to hone her skills in shadow puppetry: "I wanted to start accruing credits, get a feel for the Master's program, and meet some of the faculty. The online courses were fantastic."

So what specifically did she find so worthwhile?

During Advanced Materials Techniques, Kimberly learned all about puppet construction using a wide variety of materials and tools. For example, she says, "We learned how to design a puppet head and construct it out of neoprene latex. Our teacher, Paul Spirito, showed us exactly what adhesives and paints would work on latex, and how to add eyes, a nose, and even a mouth that can move." Kimberly also found VoiceThread, to which she uploaded her various project for critique, to be extremely easy to use.

Even though Kimberly has had a lot of experience in shadow puppetry, taking the Advanced Shadow Theater course from Penny Benson taught her how to use multiple projectors at once. She also learned how to incorporate her body into the performance while greatly improving her masking and rod techniques. "It was so helpful. Penny taught us how to attach puppet joints so they aren't stiff and how arms and legs can move and appear three-dimensional, rather than being flat and lifeless."

A great way to test the waters.

When Kimberly completes her MFA in 2019, she envisions developing puppets for local theater companies, such as the Downtown Cabaret Theater in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She encourages anyone with a love of puppetry to give it a try, even for people like her with a background in a field unrelated to performance arts. Plus she says, "If you can't get to Storrs, the online graduate certificate program is ideal. You can complete the courses from your home or studio, wherever. It's also a great way to test the waters to see if you're interested in getting an MFA in Puppet Arts from UConn. I know my degree will open all kinds of doors for me in the future, hopefully helping pave the way for me to develop and perform larger scale pieces in festivals around the world."

* WAAC stands for Women’s Army Auxiliary Corp.

“Going into the program, I didn’t realize the faculty are among the heavy hitters of the Puppetry Arts world. They are internationally known experts in the field. But they were very down to earth, helpful, and responsive. They never just plopped a bunch of videos on HuskyCT/Blackboard; they were so involved in everything we did.” Amy West, Graduate, Fall 2018, Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Program

Amy West, student and graduate of UConn's Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate discussing her experience in UConn's online puppetry courses.

Amy West, who earned the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate in 2018, shows off her “puppet friends,” most of whom she created during DRAM 5610 - Advanced Hand Puppet Theater. The course was taught by Fergus Walsh, adjunct faculty member in UConn’s School of Fine Arts, Dramatic Arts Department.

Bringing Together a Myriad of Artistic Talent

Sometimes it takes years of experience to decide what we really want to do in life—at least it did for Amy West. Writer, photographer, musician, communications expert…Amy was finally able to bring together all of her artistic passions and expertise as a puppeteer extraordinaire! She credits the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate program from the University of Connecticut (UConn) with helping her hone her skills—and take her puppetry career to an entirely new level. While she continues in her day job, she fuels her love of Puppetry Arts in all kinds of ways. Lately, during the COVID-19 Pandemic, she has been producing puppet video performances for Facebook Live to help entertain children—and adults—and raise money for Puppet Showplace Theater in Brookline, Massachusetts. And thanks to her experiences with the online program, she had no trouble at all transitioning to a whole new situation in March 2020, when her employer, the Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute, required its employees to work at home due to the Pandemic.

All of her life, Amy West has dabbled in various aspects of the arts—as a writer, a photographer, musician, stage manager, wedding DJ…some for money, some for fun, she says. And of course, she has had many day jobs over the years. “While all of my jobs have been satisfying in some way or other, they have never lit me up the way my artistic pursuits have,” says Amy.

Amy is one of millions of people who grew up in the 1970s, along side Mister Rogers, Sesame Street, and the Muppets. In fact, she can recall crouching behind the couch with her sister and putting on puppet shows with their stuffed animals.

More than two decades passed, during which time she didn’t give much thought to her early interest in puppets—until her niece was born in 2008. “I remember when she was very little, I picked up her Lamb Chop puppet and started talking to her. She was transfixed. Her focus was solely on the puppet; I disappeared in her mind. That made me think about the power of puppetry and an idea started to form.”

Then, as Amy recalls, she visited some friends in San Francisco in 2015. While there, she discovered Puppet Up!, a live show by Brian Henson and Henson Alternative. “It was so interesting because it was a TV-style puppet show, with the performance projected on a big screen. But you could see the puppeteers right on stage interacting with each other. It was really cool. That changed everything for me.”

Puppet video production begins

Amy began making short online videos featuring puppets. Although she wasn’t sure what she was doing, she found that she was able to express ideas in a different way than she might express them herself. “My puppet character was very cranky and forthright in a way I would never be. I tend to be more reserved.”

Fast-forward to 2016, when Amy realized she wanted to up her game by developing more formal skills in Puppetry Arts. That’s when she began looking at various programs and came across the University of Connecticut’s Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate. “The online program was perfect. I could participate while working full-time,” says Amy, who began the program in January 2017 and completed the last course December 2018.

Online? Yes, it’s the perfect venue!

Before she jumped in, she did have one big concern. “I thought, ‘How in the world will they be able to teach the courses online, when puppetry is such a hands-on experience?’” So instead of committing to the entire program right off the bat, Amy signed up for one course, DRAM 5610 - Advanced Hand Puppet Theater, as a Non-Degree student. To her surprise, she discovered the online platform was the perfect venue. “I have always been a bit of a loner, and I’m a night owl. So when my wife goes to sleep, I have time to do my thing. I discovered that online is the ideal medium for me, and especially now, in the midst of the Pandemic, the online learning experience through UConn prepared me for working at home full time.”

Amy also wondered how interactive the courses would be. Another big surprise! The VoiceThread platform enabled her and her classmates to watch lectures, upload performances, and even critique each other’s work. “We could slow the video down and actually circle something that needed attention, for example, if the performer’s wrist was not straight and it was affecting the puppet’s posture. VoiceThread, along with HuskyCT/Blackboard, which facilitates back and forth discussions, really connected everyone in the program. And because of the online platform, we could literally be connected all the time if we wanted to be.” Amy also says that one of her favorite aspects of the program was meeting people from all over the world with different goals and at different stages of their puppetry arts careers. She even had classmates from Alaska and South Africa!

From her first puppet slam to Trustee

While in the program, Amy learned about puppet slams, attending her first Puppet Showplace Theater in Brookline, MA. As she notes, this is a cabaret-style adult-oriented show, with short puppetry performances showcasing a variety of techniques, like shadow, marionette, or hand puppetry. She contacted the artistic director and submitted a video she created in the UConn program. She ended up performing that piece at her first puppet slam in 2018. “That evening was so great,” she recalls. “It was actually UConn night. Many people were from its Puppet Arts, MA/MFA programs.” Now, not only is she a regular at the Puppet Showplace Theater’s puppet slams—here’s a piece she performed for the February 2020 UConn Puppet Slam—she also sits on its Board of Trustees. In addition, she has joined several organizations, including Puppeteers of America, through which she attended her first national puppetry arts festival in 2019.

Says Amy: “One of the key takeaways from the certificate program is the notion of puppetry as creative problem-solving. How can I make this puppet look like it’s blowing out a birthday candle? How can I add depth to my playboard, to give my characters set pieces to walk behind and in front of? How can I make this snail shadow puppet extend its body in a comical way? How do I make this cut-out of the moon rise up over this mountain? Figuring these things out—with help from instructors, classmates, and my handy wife—was very satisfying.”

Two years of online learning at UConn also prepared Amy for our current pandemic reality. Since March 2020, Amy has been putting together 30-minute Facebook Live shows to entertain kids and adults, while raising money for Puppet Showcase Theater. “Whether working remotely at my day job or performing in an online puppet slam, the technical skills and adaptability I learned are critical to my daily life and work.”

______________________

"Thanks to the knowledge and experience I have been gaining, I'm able to put my new skills into actual use. I'm learning techniques to make puppets take certain actions that you wouldn't think you could, such as having a shadow puppet jump across a pond and showing the surface water actually rippling at the same time. I'm getting puppet arts training from a university with a world-class reputation in the field, while being able to continue working at a job I love."  Brandon Kirkham, Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Student

Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate: Brandon Kirkham poses with Edgar, Allen, and Poe puppets from the cast of SPOOKLEY THE SQUARE PUMPKIN. Photos by Paul Ruffolo.

Brandon Kirkham, Brandon has been building puppets
professionally for more than 10 years. But with just two
courses from the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate
Program under his belt, he’s taking his work as Design
Supervisor at First Stage in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to the
next level.

For the Love of Puppets

Brandon Kirkham has been immersed in theater for many years – first as an undergraduate student in Costume Design at the University of Evansville, then as a student in the Master's in Costume and Scenery Design program at Ohio University. Today, he works as Design Supervisor for a children's theater company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, called First Stage. As much as he loves theater, there's something about the world of puppetry that's taken hold of Brandon. While the Master's program at Ohio University allowed him to tailor his education to reflect his interest in puppetry, it wasn't part of the formal curriculum and didn't provide the in-depth training he was looking for to take his interest to the next level.

"At the time I was looking into getting a Master's degree, I knew about the University of Connecticut's (UConn) Puppetry Arts Master of Fine Arts program, but decided to stick with theater design," Brandon recalls. "But I had always wondered what it would have been like going to UConn. So when I saw a post on a friend's Facebook page about the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Program, I immediately knew it would be the perfect way for me to fill in my knowledge gaps and allow me to get a more formal education in puppetry."

Part of the "inaugural" class, Brandon has completed two of the four required courses: DRAM 5607 – Advanced Materials Techniques and DRAM 5613 – Advanced Shadow Theater. Both courses incorporated extensive opportunities to critique other students' work and to be critiqued. Says Brandon: "In any artistic pursuit, critique is essential. We are creating art to be viewed and knowing how your peers see your work helps you understand whether you are communicating your story and characters clearly, or not. I find VoiceThread to be a great platform for critiquing."

An interactive, collaborative sharing tool.

Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate: Brandon Kirkham shows off the puppet cast of SPOOKLEY THE SQUARE PUMPKIN. Photos by Paul Ruffolo.

So what is VoiceThread and how is it used in the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Program? An interactive collaboration and sharing tool, VoiceThread allows students to add images, documents, and videos – then other students can add their voice, text, audio file, or video comments. "VoiceThread allows you to be as close as possible to other students without actually being in the same space," says Brandon, who used the tool extensively to provide critiques and in return, received the same level of feedback. "Since the courses are asynchronous, I'm able to provide my critique at a time convenient to me, usually later in the evenings when my wife has gone to bed."

Putting his new skills to good use.

Brandon's experience to date has already made a big impact on his work at First Stage, which operates the nation's largest theater academy for children. As part of his job as Design Supervisor, Brandon is involved with 11 productions a year. Says Brandon:

"We seem to be incorporating puppetry into more shows, which conveniently coincides with my involvement in the online graduate certificate program. For example, Lovabye Dragon, a show we adapted from the book by Barbara Joosse, features three styles of puppets – hand, shadow, and a 14-foot walk-around dragon puppet that takes three performers to operate. I would never have known how to create intricate shadow puppets before I took the Advanced Shadow Theater course with Penny Benson.

"Thanks to the knowledge and experience I have been gaining, I'm able to put my new skills into actual use. I'm learning techniques to make puppets take certain actions that you wouldn't think you could, such as having a shadow puppet jump across a pond and showing the surface water actually rippling at the same time. We also had a session on learning how to use old-school projectors to achieve very intricate special effects, like having puppets appear to weave in and out of trees in a forest."

Learning some of the business side, too.

The program isn't all fun and games. As Brandon notes, "Using Blackboard to have online discussions, we are exposed to a lot of very interesting ethical topics, such as rights, royalties, and copyright rules." Brandon is also required to write research papers. But the effort he has put in thus far has been well worth it. As he says, "I'm getting puppet arts training from a university with a world-class reputation in the field, while being able to continue working at a job I love."

Brandon's final project: Lovabye Dragon shadow music video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lvk31eeCDEc
Another class project: to emulate the style of Australian puppeteer Richard Bradshaw
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HRIK_1pHw3A

____________________

"If you can't get to Storrs, the online graduate certificate program is ideal. You can complete the courses from your home or studio, wherever. It's also a great way to test the waters to see if you're interested in getting an MFA in Puppet Arts from UConn. I know my degree will open all kinds of doors for me in the future." — Kimberly Van Aelst, Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Student

Kimberly Van Aelst, student and graduate of UConn's Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate discussing her experience in UConn's online puppetry courses in her puppetry workshop..

Kimberly Van Aelst lives with her husband and
four-year-old son in Hamden, Connecticut – and
an ideal place to create puppets, especially with
her studio (shown here) located right on their
property, just steps from their home.


All About Timing

Timing is everything, at least for Kimberly Van Aelst it is. Since 2008, she had been interested in applying for a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Puppet Arts at the University of Connecticut (UConn), School of Fine Arts, Dramatic Arts. But life has a funny way of sneaking up on you and taking over. Finally, eight years later, the timing was just right, and Kimberly applied to the program. At the same time, she discovered the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate program and decided to get some credentials under her belt while she was waiting to hear about being accepted.

Who would have thought someone with a Master's of Public Health, specializing in International Health, could end up in UConn's Puppet Arts MFA program? Kimberly Van Aelst did. While working overseas in Afghanistan as a Social Media Project Manager with Handicap International, she met a puppeteer who produced educational puppet films for children to help prevent land mine injuries. As she recalls, "It inspired me and helped me to envision a way to blend puppetry with my public health and occupational therapy background. I started thinking of applying to the MFA in Puppet Arts program in 2008. I remember telling my colleagues, 'One day I will be in the graduate puppetry program at UConn.'" 

Life can take over.

But like so many of us, life has a way of taking over. Kimberly and her husband, a professional freelance photographer, bought a house, got married, and had a baby. "We put other dreams on hold as we lived in bliss as new parents," says Kimberly, whose Mystic Aquarium wedding in 2011 became a YouTube hit, with nearly 5,000,000 views, when the couple's mariachi band was filmed serenading a Beluga whale!

While Kimberly continued to work in her field, she found time to cultivate her passion for puppetry, performing in puppet slams – in New York City, New Haven, Boston, and even on the West Coast – and with performance companies, such as Drama of Works in Brooklyn, New York. In fact, Kimberly developed a new puppet show piece called "WAAC the Puppet Show,"* which was recently showcased at Dixon Place in New York City during a World War II-themed slam hosted by Drama of Works. 

But finally the time was right.

In January 2016, the time was finally right, and Kimberly applied for the Master's program. Knowing she would have to wait to hear about acceptance – then wait several months before coursework would begin – she decided to jump into the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate program and took DRAM 5607 – Advanced Materials Techniques. Says Kimberly, who also took DRAM 5613 – Advanced Shadow Theater to hone her skills in shadow puppetry: "I wanted to start accruing credits, get a feel for the Master's program, and meet some of the faculty. The online courses were fantastic."

So what specifically did she find so worthwhile?

During Advanced Materials Techniques, Kimberly learned all about puppet construction using a wide variety of materials and tools. For example, she says, "We learned how to design a puppet head and construct it out of neoprene latex. Our teacher, Paul Spirito, showed us exactly what adhesives and paints would work on latex, and how to add eyes, a nose, and even a mouth that can move." Kimberly also found VoiceThread, to which she uploaded her various project for critique, to be extremely easy to use.

Even though Kimberly has had a lot of experience in shadow puppetry, taking the Advanced Shadow Theater course from Penny Benson taught her how to use multiple projectors at once. She also learned how to incorporate her body into the performance while greatly improving her masking and rod techniques. "It was so helpful. Penny taught us how to attach puppet joints so they aren't stiff and how arms and legs can move and appear three-dimensional, rather than being flat and lifeless."

A great way to test the waters.

When Kimberly completes her MFA in 2019, she envisions developing puppets for local theater companies, such as the Downtown Cabaret Theater in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She encourages anyone with a love of puppetry to give it a try, even for people like her with a background in a field unrelated to performance arts. Plus she says, "If you can't get to Storrs, the online graduate certificate program is ideal. You can complete the courses from your home or studio, wherever. It's also a great way to test the waters to see if you're interested in getting an MFA in Puppet Arts from UConn. I know my degree will open all kinds of doors for me in the future, hopefully helping pave the way for me to develop and perform larger scale pieces in festivals around the world."

* WAAC stands for Women’s Army Auxiliary Corp.

“Going into the program, I didn’t realize the faculty are among the heavy hitters of the Puppetry Arts world. They are internationally known experts in the field. But they were very down to earth, helpful, and responsive. They never just plopped a bunch of videos on HuskyCT/Blackboard; they were so involved in everything we did.” — Amy West, Graduate, Fall 2018, Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Program

Amy West, student and graduate of UConn's Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate discussing her experience in UConn's online puppetry courses.

Amy West, who earned the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate in 2018, shows off her “puppet friends,” most of whom she created during DRAM 5610 - Advanced Hand Puppet Theater. The course was taught by Fergus Walsh, adjunct faculty member in UConn’s School of Fine Arts, Dramatic Arts Department.

Bringing Together a Myriad of Artistic Talent

Sometimes it takes years of experience to decide what we really want to do in life—at least it did for Amy West. Writer, photographer, musician, communications expert…Amy was finally able to bring together all of her artistic passions and expertise as a puppeteer extraordinaire! She credits the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate program from the University of Connecticut (UConn) with helping her hone her skills—and take her puppetry career to an entirely new level. While she continues in her day job, she fuels her love of Puppetry Arts in all kinds of ways. Lately, during the COVID-19 Pandemic, she has been producing puppet video performances for Facebook Live to help entertain children—and adults—and raise money for Puppet Showplace Theater in Brookline, Massachusetts. And thanks to her experiences with the online program, she had no trouble at all transitioning to a whole new situation in March 2020, when her employer, the Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute, required its employees to work at home due to the Pandemic.

All of her life, Amy West has dabbled in various aspects of the arts—as a writer, a photographer, musician, stage manager, wedding DJ…some for money, some for fun, she says. And of course, she has had many day jobs over the years. “While all of my jobs have been satisfying in some way or other, they have never lit me up the way my artistic pursuits have,” says Amy.

Amy is one of millions of people who grew up in the 1970s, along side Mister Rogers, Sesame Street, and the Muppets. In fact, she can recall crouching behind the couch with her sister and putting on puppet shows with their stuffed animals.

More than two decades passed, during which time she didn’t give much thought to her early interest in puppets—until her niece was born in 2008. “I remember when she was very little, I picked up her Lamb Chop puppet and started talking to her. She was transfixed. Her focus was solely on the puppet; I disappeared in her mind. That made me think about the power of puppetry and an idea started to form.”

Then, as Amy recalls, she visited some friends in San Francisco in 2015. While there, she discovered Puppet Up!, a live show by Brian Henson and Henson Alternative. “It was so interesting because it was a TV-style puppet show, with the performance projected on a big screen. But you could see the puppeteers right on stage interacting with each other. It was really cool. That changed everything for me.”

Puppet video production begins

Amy began making short online videos featuring puppets. Although she wasn’t sure what she was doing, she found that she was able to express ideas in a different way than she might express them herself. “My puppet character was very cranky and forthright in a way I would never be. I tend to be more reserved.”

Fast-forward to 2016, when Amy realized she wanted to up her game by developing more formal skills in Puppetry Arts. That’s when she began looking at various programs and came across the University of Connecticut’s Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate. “The online program was perfect. I could participate while working full-time,” says Amy, who began the program in January 2017 and completed the last course December 2018.

Online? Yes, it’s the perfect venue!

Before she jumped in, she did have one big concern. “I thought, ‘How in the world will they be able to teach the courses online, when puppetry is such a hands-on experience?’” So instead of committing to the entire program right off the bat, Amy signed up for one course, DRAM 5610 - Advanced Hand Puppet Theater, as a Non-Degree student. To her surprise, she discovered the online platform was the perfect venue. “I have always been a bit of a loner, and I’m a night owl. So when my wife goes to sleep, I have time to do my thing. I discovered that online is the ideal medium for me, and especially now, in the midst of the Pandemic, the online learning experience through UConn prepared me for working at home full time.”

Amy also wondered how interactive the courses would be. Another big surprise! The VoiceThread platform enabled her and her classmates to watch lectures, upload performances, and even critique each other’s work. “We could slow the video down and actually circle something that needed attention, for example, if the performer’s wrist was not straight and it was affecting the puppet’s posture. VoiceThread, along with HuskyCT/Blackboard, which facilitates back and forth discussions, really connected everyone in the program. And because of the online platform, we could literally be connected all the time if we wanted to be.” Amy also says that one of her favorite aspects of the program was meeting people from all over the world with different goals and at different stages of their puppetry arts careers. She even had classmates from Alaska and South Africa!

From her first puppet slam to Trustee

While in the program, Amy learned about puppet slams, attending her first Puppet Showplace Theater in Brookline, MA. As she notes, this is a cabaret-style adult-oriented show, with short puppetry performances showcasing a variety of techniques, like shadow, marionette, or hand puppetry. She contacted the artistic director and submitted a video she created in the UConn program. She ended up performing that piece at her first puppet slam in 2018. “That evening was so great,” she recalls. “It was actually UConn night. Many people were from its Puppet Arts, MA/MFA programs.” Now, not only is she a regular at the Puppet Showplace Theater’s puppet slams—here’s a piece she performed for the February 2020 UConn Puppet Slam—she also sits on its Board of Trustees. In addition, she has joined several organizations, including Puppeteers of America, through which she attended her first national puppetry arts festival in 2019.

Says Amy: “One of the key takeaways from the certificate program is the notion of puppetry as creative problem-solving. How can I make this puppet look like it’s blowing out a birthday candle? How can I add depth to my playboard, to give my characters set pieces to walk behind and in front of? How can I make this snail shadow puppet extend its body in a comical way? How do I make this cut-out of the moon rise up over this mountain? Figuring these things out—with help from instructors, classmates, and my handy wife—was very satisfying.”

Two years of online learning at UConn also prepared Amy for our current pandemic reality. Since March 2020, Amy has been putting together 30-minute Facebook Live shows to entertain kids and adults, while raising money for Puppet Showcase Theater. “Whether working remotely at my day job or performing in an online puppet slam, the technical skills and adaptability I learned are critical to my daily life and work.”

______________________

"Thanks to the knowledge and experience I have been gaining, I'm able to put my new skills into actual use. I'm learning techniques to make puppets take certain actions that you wouldn't think you could, such as having a shadow puppet jump across a pond and showing the surface water actually rippling at the same time. I'm getting puppet arts training from a university with a world-class reputation in the field, while being able to continue working at a job I love." — Brandon Kirkham, Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Student

Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate: Brandon Kirkham poses with Edgar, Allen, and Poe puppets from the cast of SPOOKLEY THE SQUARE PUMPKIN. Photos by Paul Ruffolo.

Brandon Kirkham, Brandon has been building puppets
professionally for more than 10 years. But with just two
courses from the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate
Program under his belt, he’s taking his work as Design
Supervisor at First Stage in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to the
next level.

For the Love of Puppets

Brandon Kirkham has been immersed in theater for many years – first as an undergraduate student in Costume Design at the University of Evansville, then as a student in the Master's in Costume and Scenery Design program at Ohio University. Today, he works as Design Supervisor for a children's theater company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, called First Stage. As much as he loves theater, there's something about the world of puppetry that's taken hold of Brandon. While the Master's program at Ohio University allowed him to tailor his education to reflect his interest in puppetry, it wasn't part of the formal curriculum and didn't provide the in-depth training he was looking for to take his interest to the next level.

"At the time I was looking into getting a Master's degree, I knew about the University of Connecticut's (UConn) Puppetry Arts Master of Fine Arts program, but decided to stick with theater design," Brandon recalls. "But I had always wondered what it would have been like going to UConn. So when I saw a post on a friend's Facebook page about the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Program, I immediately knew it would be the perfect way for me to fill in my knowledge gaps and allow me to get a more formal education in puppetry."

Part of the "inaugural" class, Brandon has completed two of the four required courses: DRAM 5607 – Advanced Materials Techniques and DRAM 5613 – Advanced Shadow Theater. Both courses incorporated extensive opportunities to critique other students' work and to be critiqued. Says Brandon: "In any artistic pursuit, critique is essential. We are creating art to be viewed and knowing how your peers see your work helps you understand whether you are communicating your story and characters clearly, or not. I find VoiceThread to be a great platform for critiquing."

An interactive, collaborative sharing tool.

Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate: Brandon Kirkham shows off the puppet cast of SPOOKLEY THE SQUARE PUMPKIN. Photos by Paul Ruffolo.

So what is VoiceThread and how is it used in the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Program? An interactive collaboration and sharing tool, VoiceThread allows students to add images, documents, and videos – then other students can add their voice, text, audio file, or video comments. "VoiceThread allows you to be as close as possible to other students without actually being in the same space," says Brandon, who used the tool extensively to provide critiques and in return, received the same level of feedback. "Since the courses are asynchronous, I'm able to provide my critique at a time convenient to me, usually later in the evenings when my wife has gone to bed."

Putting his new skills to good use.

Brandon's experience to date has already made a big impact on his work at First Stage, which operates the nation's largest theater academy for children. As part of his job as Design Supervisor, Brandon is involved with 11 productions a year. Says Brandon:

"We seem to be incorporating puppetry into more shows, which conveniently coincides with my involvement in the online graduate certificate program. For example, Lovabye Dragon, a show we adapted from the book by Barbara Joosse, features three styles of puppets – hand, shadow, and a 14-foot walk-around dragon puppet that takes three performers to operate. I would never have known how to create intricate shadow puppets before I took the Advanced Shadow Theater course with Penny Benson.

"Thanks to the knowledge and experience I have been gaining, I'm able to put my new skills into actual use. I'm learning techniques to make puppets take certain actions that you wouldn't think you could, such as having a shadow puppet jump across a pond and showing the surface water actually rippling at the same time. We also had a session on learning how to use old-school projectors to achieve very intricate special effects, like having puppets appear to weave in and out of trees in a forest."

Learning some of the business side, too.

The program isn't all fun and games. As Brandon notes, "Using Blackboard to have online discussions, we are exposed to a lot of very interesting ethical topics, such as rights, royalties, and copyright rules." Brandon is also required to write research papers. But the effort he has put in thus far has been well worth it. As he says, "I'm getting puppet arts training from a university with a world-class reputation in the field, while being able to continue working at a job I love."

Brandon's final project: Lovabye Dragon shadow music video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lvk31eeCDEc
Another class project: to emulate the style of Australian puppeteer Richard Bradshaw
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HRIK_1pHw3A

____________________

"If you can't get to Storrs, the online graduate certificate program is ideal. You can complete the courses from your home or studio, wherever. It's also a great way to test the waters to see if you're interested in getting an MFA in Puppet Arts from UConn. I know my degree will open all kinds of doors for me in the future." — Kimberly Van Aelst, Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Student

Kimberly Van Aelst, student and graduate of UConn's Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate discussing her experience in UConn's online puppetry courses in her puppetry workshop..

Kimberly Van Aelst lives with her husband and
four-year-old son in Hamden, Connecticut – and
an ideal place to create puppets, especially with
her studio (shown here) located right on their
property, just steps from their home.


All About Timing

Timing is everything, at least for Kimberly Van Aelst it is. Since 2008, she had been interested in applying for a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Puppet Arts at the University of Connecticut (UConn), School of Fine Arts, Dramatic Arts. But life has a funny way of sneaking up on you and taking over. Finally, eight years later, the timing was just right, and Kimberly applied to the program. At the same time, she discovered the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate program and decided to get some credentials under her belt while she was waiting to hear about being accepted.

Who would have thought someone with a Master's of Public Health, specializing in International Health, could end up in UConn's Puppet Arts MFA program? Kimberly Van Aelst did. While working overseas in Afghanistan as a Social Media Project Manager with Handicap International, she met a puppeteer who produced educational puppet films for children to help prevent land mine injuries. As she recalls, "It inspired me and helped me to envision a way to blend puppetry with my public health and occupational therapy background. I started thinking of applying to the MFA in Puppet Arts program in 2008. I remember telling my colleagues, 'One day I will be in the graduate puppetry program at UConn.'" 

Life can take over.

But like so many of us, life has a way of taking over. Kimberly and her husband, a professional freelance photographer, bought a house, got married, and had a baby. "We put other dreams on hold as we lived in bliss as new parents," says Kimberly, whose Mystic Aquarium wedding in 2011 became a YouTube hit, with nearly 5,000,000 views, when the couple's mariachi band was filmed serenading a Beluga whale!

While Kimberly continued to work in her field, she found time to cultivate her passion for puppetry, performing in puppet slams – in New York City, New Haven, Boston, and even on the West Coast – and with performance companies, such as Drama of Works in Brooklyn, New York. In fact, Kimberly developed a new puppet show piece called "WAAC the Puppet Show,"* which was recently showcased at Dixon Place in New York City during a World War II-themed slam hosted by Drama of Works. 

But finally the time was right.

In January 2016, the time was finally right, and Kimberly applied for the Master's program. Knowing she would have to wait to hear about acceptance – then wait several months before coursework would begin – she decided to jump into the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate program and took DRAM 5607 – Advanced Materials Techniques. Says Kimberly, who also took DRAM 5613 – Advanced Shadow Theater to hone her skills in shadow puppetry: "I wanted to start accruing credits, get a feel for the Master's program, and meet some of the faculty. The online courses were fantastic."

So what specifically did she find so worthwhile?

During Advanced Materials Techniques, Kimberly learned all about puppet construction using a wide variety of materials and tools. For example, she says, "We learned how to design a puppet head and construct it out of neoprene latex. Our teacher, Paul Spirito, showed us exactly what adhesives and paints would work on latex, and how to add eyes, a nose, and even a mouth that can move." Kimberly also found VoiceThread, to which she uploaded her various project for critique, to be extremely easy to use.

Even though Kimberly has had a lot of experience in shadow puppetry, taking the Advanced Shadow Theater course from Penny Benson taught her how to use multiple projectors at once. She also learned how to incorporate her body into the performance while greatly improving her masking and rod techniques. "It was so helpful. Penny taught us how to attach puppet joints so they aren't stiff and how arms and legs can move and appear three-dimensional, rather than being flat and lifeless."

A great way to test the waters.

When Kimberly completes her MFA in 2019, she envisions developing puppets for local theater companies, such as the Downtown Cabaret Theater in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She encourages anyone with a love of puppetry to give it a try, even for people like her with a background in a field unrelated to performance arts. Plus she says, "If you can't get to Storrs, the online graduate certificate program is ideal. You can complete the courses from your home or studio, wherever. It's also a great way to test the waters to see if you're interested in getting an MFA in Puppet Arts from UConn. I know my degree will open all kinds of doors for me in the future, hopefully helping pave the way for me to develop and perform larger scale pieces in festivals around the world."

* WAAC stands for Women’s Army Auxiliary Corp.