![\"PhotZach](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/ZachDorn_TONIGHT-A-CLOWN-WILL-TRAVEL-THROUGH-TIME.jpg\")
<\/a>Dorn, who works with puppets, cartoons, and fast-paced storytelling, exploring themes of dread, enchantment, and disappointment, has previously received support from the Heinz Endowments, the Artist Foundation of San Antonio, and The Jim Henson Foundation.<\/p>\n
Bart Roccoberton \u201990 MFA, director of puppet arts and professor of dramatic arts in puppetry, remembers Dorn as a student. He says Dorn\u2019s strong ability for storytelling was clear early on in his studies.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was in the Hand Puppetry class in the Spring of 2008 that I saw Zach Dorn\u2019s ability to create stories,\u201d Roccoberton says. \u201c[His] story was the most intriguing that semester. Location, characters, and dramatic quest were spellbinding. … From that day forward, I gave him every opportunity to \u2018tell stories.\u2019”<\/p>\n
Dorn’s senior project, \u2018Band Aid Boy,\u2019 Roccoberton adds, “remains among the most exciting theatrical events the Puppet Arts Program has produced.\u201d ‘Band Aid Boy’ led Zorn to be accepted as an Emerging Artist at the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O\u2019Neill Theater Center.<\/p>\n
As a student in puppet arts, Dorn served as a Geraldine Waring Fellow at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry. His responsibilities included curating the first exhibition of the Ballard Institute’s collection of marionettes by Frank and Elizabeth Haines, who were Philadelphia puppeteers active in the 1930s.<\/p>\n
\u201cZachary\u2019s work was quite unusual for an undergraduate student,\u201d says John Bell, director of BIMP and associate professor of dramatic arts.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter his graduation,” Bell adds, “Zachary invented a new tech-savvy form of live puppetry by livestreaming miniature toy-theater-style puppet shows on the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dorn says he continues to evolve his productions: \u201cMy style of puppetry changes a lot, doing new media work. I\u2019ve been doing a lot of toy theater recently, which is two-dimensional puppetry. I take cameras and build these miniature dioramas and send the cameras through the dioramas and they live-project.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dorn will begin his Taymor Fellowship year in September, studying with Kuro Tanino of the Niwa Gekidan Penino theater<\/a> and Toshiki Okada of the cheltfisch Theatre Company<\/a>, who each have received the Kishida Prize for Drama honoring new playwrights in Japan.<\/p>\n He says Karakuri is an overlooked form of puppetry in America. “Most puppeteers don\u2019t know a lot about it. I think just having the experience and knowledge and bringing it back will be very useful to the community here.\u201d<\/p>\n Dorn says he will use social media, such as Instagram and Tumbler, during his fellowship year to provide information for puppeteers about what he has learned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Zach Dorn ’10 (SFA) will spend a year studying with Japanese theater artists, thanks to a travel fellowship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":114096,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,1711,88,1914,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1918],"class_list":["post-113896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-arts-culture","category-global-affairs","category-sfa","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 05:32:43","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113896"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114506,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113896\/revisions\/114506"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/114096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113896"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=113896"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=113896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}