The Chicagoland Puppetry Guild Annual Banquet Dinner + Show

The Chicagoland Puppetry Guild's 2019 Annual Banquet dinner and show with the special guest performer: Dave Rozmarynowski of The Roz Puppets.

The Roz Puppets presented "The Boy Who Saw Martians" a spin-off of the classic fairytale: "The Boy Who Saw a Wolf". Dave performed alongside his partner and bride: Carolyn. Roz's beautiful stage and puppets were all handcrafted by himself using a combination of both hand and rod puppets, with live voices and sound effects. The show was extremely well-written and performed from start to finish. Never a dull moment for the audience as whoopee cushions and Martians collided.

Afterward, the guild headed to Pizano's Pizza for dinner. During the dinner, the Marc Dunworth Foundation for the Performing Arts was introduced to the guild. Tim Dunworth and company graciously joined and presented the Chicagoland Puppetry Guild with a $1k donation. The Chicagoland Puppetry Guild was the first recipient of the Dunworth foundation, as they continue to promote and honor their son: Marc Dunworth's legacy by supporting the arts and puppetry.

An excellent evening surrounded by wonderful friends & family.

Thank you so much to all who came out & supported the event!

Eugene O'Neill Theater's National Puppetry Conference 2019

Hello again everyone,

I wanted to share a few experiences from my time at the 2019 O'Neill National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center.

Before I go into the specifics, let me tell you a little bit about what the National Puppetry Conference is.

The National Puppetry Conference is an annual puppetry conference held in June at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut.

Every summer, they host week+ long intensive for all areas of theater, including playwriting, acting, puppetry, and more with a large site/campus to house all their participants, staff, and teachers. In addition to housing, the conference provides food from their dining hall during your entire stay. The staff is accommodating and always around the corner.

All the shops are on-site, including the puppet building workshop, rehearsal halls, theaters, and more. (Including the famous pub. Woot woot.)

The conference hosts both a pre-conference and the main conference. There are only a certain number of people allowed per year, so to attend each year - you need to sign up and fill out an application on their website.

While signing up, you can select what you would like to be doing during the conference. Every year they provide a variety of different classes and teachers to choose. These are called tracks. Outside of tracks, they also have resident company members where people can sign up to audition & work on a particular artist’s piece. This year was a whirlwind.

This year, I applied for the Marionette strand to be able to work more with Jim Rose as well as learn marionette technique.

There’s something I find exceptional about marionettes. Especially being surrounded by the energy and love of them from my fellow friends/mentors: David Herzog, Marc Dunworth, and Fred Putz. It’s something that’s not very common that I wanted to help contribute to and learn. I applied with this intention in addition to wanting to develop CPC‘s “Hands & Strings: A Puppet Variety show” to include marionettes.

This year, I was fortunate enough to be accepted into that exact strand and received a scholarship. (Thanks Gene M.)

This would be my first main conference since the year prior; I was only able to attend the pre-conference.

Unfortunately, this year Jim Rose wasn’t able to attend but chose two exceptional people to take his place.

Kurt Hunter and Ulysses Jones.

Before I go into the class, this for anyone who doesn’t know of the Rose family.

The Roses (Margo and Rufus Rose) were the world-famous puppeteers who worked and created the Howdy Doody show amongst many more credits. One of their most uniques was using string for joints. The string was thread through the various body parts (arms/legs/etc.) that joined them together and provided a very natural, smooth movement.

Kurt and Ulysses stepped up big time and worked wonderfully together to help each participant, including myself, take home completed marionettes in 5 days!

There’s so much more to say, but I’ll leave that for another post.

I’m so grateful to have met and caught up with so many faces while creating new works of art under one roof. Until next time... 🎭❤️#oneillsummer #npc19 #NoSleep #LoveAndPuppets

Photos by Richard Termine #richardtermine

Photos by Richard Termine #richardtermine

Monkey Marionette built during the Marionette Construction strand led by Kurt Hunter and Uylesses Jones using Jim Rose's techniques.

Photos by Richard Termine #richardtermine

Caterpillar Circus - Piece created for Creventive Puppet Company's upcoming "Hands & Strings: Puppet Variety Show".

Photos by Richard Termine #richardtermine

Photos by Richard Termine #richardtermine

O'Neil Puppetry Conference - Recap

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Creventive blog! This year has been filled with so many new adventures, opportunities, performances, and networking - and it's ONLY JUNE!!!! Anyways, let's get straight into it!

I was accepted to into the annual Eugene O'Neill Theatre's National Puppetry Conference in Connecticut. The conference is organized by Pam Arciero as a way to gather puppeteers from all over the world for a week-long intensive of learning from the best in the business, networking with fellow puppeteers, along with many opportunities to create new work. Ever since I heard about the conference - I made it a goal to attend and finally had the chance this year. The O'Neil has both a pre-conference and main conference, each with a variety of different classes. I was fortunate to have a few days off to attend the pre-conference only before my summer schedule began.

I applied and was accepted into Jim Kroupa's puppet mechanism class. I took this class in particular because I wanted to further my learning in mechanisms and construction because it was one of my weaker skillsets. And who better to learn mechanisms from than Jim Kroupa. Kroupa is well-known for his famous mechanisms. He began creating mechanisms because he felt many of the original Henson puppet's mechs were difficult to operate because they were built by engineers with technical aspects in mind instead of performance and wanted to creating something that performers could operate much easier to focus on the performance. Each year, Kroupa brings a new mechanism for students to build. This year Kroupa brought a clown puppet with an opening jaw and pop-out teeth that each student built. Besides the vast amount of information, some of the highlights of the class were working alongside the fellow participants and hearing some of Kroupa's stories about his work over the years.

After 3-intense days and many stories, we all ended up with a functional 

I’m so grateful to have met so many new faces, and catch up with others I haven’t seen in forever. Learned so much and made friendships that will last a lifetime. 
Already miss it so much, hope to attend next year. The conference and experience was unforgettable and one I will miss deeply.