![\"Abigail](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/2024-01-09_BairdAerialPuppetry-6-300x200.jpg\")
Whether through hand-to-hand acrobatics<\/a> with a partner or with the help of an aerial fabric sling held up by a four-legged pyramid rig, Baird uses movement to convey experiences, thoughts, and moods.<\/p>\n In \u201cNothing Really Matters,\u201d<\/a> she adds a backdrop of animation and puppets to the mix to ride a horse, get chased by a bear, fall off a cliff, and get shot out of a cannon, all while staying suspended mid-air in a sling.<\/p>\n That\u2019s what\u2019s fun about the show, she says, staying in the same place in the center of the stage yet traveling so far.<\/p>\n \u201cI call it a one-woman show, but not a one-woman production,\u201d Baird says. \u201cI have a whole team of graduate and undergraduate students working on the show with me – animators, puppet arts<\/a> students, lighting design students. This show really wouldn\u2019t have been possible without their creativity and insights. I wouldn\u2019t have been able to do this completely on my own.\u201d<\/p>\n With support from Alison Paul, an associate professor of illustration\/animation in the art and art history department<\/a>, and Anna Lindemann, an assistant professor of motion design and animation in digital media & design<\/a>, Baird\u2019s show marries the varied departments in the School of Fine Arts<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAnimation has the power to transform time and space,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can be miniature or giant. You can go into outer space. You can be one thing that suddenly becomes something else. But puppets breathe and they have life, and that life essence that relates to human movement is what makes them incredible storytellers.\u201d<\/p>\n The convergence of animation and puppetry has been the focus of her UConn studies the last three years under Bart Roccoberton Jr., professor and director of the dramatic arts department<\/a>\u2019s puppet arts program, and John Bell, associate professor and director of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2018I can still remember hearing the applause\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n But before that, in 2008, Baird started the company Aerial Animation<\/a> pairing her physical skills with animations from a cartoonist friend who together came into their own as artists, she says, starting with simple line drawings and basic aerial acrobatics skills and progressing to what audiences saw in 2014 on \u201cAmerica\u2019s Got Talent\u201d<\/a> and in 2017 on \u201cThe Incredible Talent of France.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n She made it to the semifinals \u2013 the next-to-last round \u2013 in both programs. With each performance, she and a growing group of animators created a piece of the full \u201cNothing Really Matters,\u201d building on what had been previously done and, in the end, giving her large sections of the full show.<\/p>\n \u201cI can still remember hearing the applause and rush of what it sounds like to hear 6,000 people clapping all at the same time,\u201d Baird says. \u201cI am so grateful for those experiences. They propelled my career and solidified my artistic voice. That was the first real maturity of my work. I toured the world afterward with those organizations and performed in Dubai, London, and Las Vegas.\u201d<\/p>\n But she wanted to refocus on her art instead of entertainment.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to be able to create my own stories and my own drawings,\u201d she explains. \u201cBut animation is very expensive, and in order to be able to tell all the stories I want to tell, I knew I needed to have some of those skillsets of my own. So, by coming back to school, studying puppetry, and dipping my toe in the DMD and art departments here at UConn, I was able to access the resources I needed.\u201d<\/p>\n Her equipment has overtaken the Harriet S. Jorgensen Theatre \u2013 in the back of the main Jorgensen stage \u2013 since mid-August, while she\u2019s worked on the animations and shadow box and toy theater puppets for the show, which will be performed Jan. 26 and 27.<\/p>\n Ironically, the physically demanding \u201cNothing Really Matters,\u201d funded with a Puppeteers of America Margo and Rufus Rose Endowment Grant, centers on sleep and rest, the body\u2019s reliance for it, and one woman\u2019s self-shaming need for it, Baird says.<\/p>\n \u201cIn our society, most of us have an internal struggle with our need for rest. People will say, \u2018what are you up to,\u2019 \u2018what are you doing next,\u2019 \u2018what\u2019s happening for you,\u2019 and no one ever admits, \u2018Oh, I just watched Netflix all day and it was great. I feel so much better today.’<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an internal conflict we all have,\u201d she continues. \u201cAdmitting that rest is part of our hero journey is hard for us even though it\u2019s part of our ability to thrive. Success comes with moments of pause and reflection, and in that stillness new information comes that wouldn\u2019t otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n She says it\u2019s a topic adults can relate to and a show that\u2019s exhilarating for children, making it ideal for any mix of audience members. After all, who wouldn\u2019t want to see a bed do double-duty as a monster?<\/p>\n Perhaps some of the most beautiful and serene parts of the show are Baird walking through a stop-motion animation forest<\/a>. It\u2019s created using a technique that gives one-dimensional paper trees and leaves the illusion of depth.<\/p>\n Laser cut in a variety of colors, the trees change from season to season as she walks along. It\u2019s an example, she says, of the synthesis of puppets and animation \u2013 the inanimate paper being manipulated to give it life as it scrolls across a screen.<\/p>\n She also has included in the show live-cued animation, just like sound effects or light changes layered into a narrative. Another area downstage near the audience shows off a smaller, second set of projections, these seemingly two-dimensional, or what she calls 2.5-dimensional.<\/p>\n \u201cI would really like to see moving images and animation become part of university theater experiences alongside lights and sounds. It\u2019s happening more and more on Broadway, and I think UConn is ready for it,\u201d Baird says.<\/p>\n She is too.<\/p>\n \u201cI always knew this is what I was going to do, but it\u2019s been an evolution and I really believe that theater is a collaborative art form,\u201d she says. \u201cAllowing myself to be influenced by the opportunities that have been presented to me over the last two decades is what got me to where I am.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNothing Really Matters\u201d will be performed Friday, Jan. 26, at 8 p.m. and Saturday, Jan. 27, at 2 p.m. at the Harriet S. Jorgensen Theatre. Tickets are free and can be obtained online.<\/a> It\u2019s one of eight shows in \u201cRojoFest: The Jerry Rojo Festival of Original Student Work,\u201d co-sponsored by the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry<\/a> and Connecticut Repertory Theatre<\/a>. The festival runs Jan. 25-28 in multiple locations around campus. A list of shows and free tickets to performances are available online.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ‘I am a physical storyteller. I really like to tell stories nonverbally because it creates a universal language’ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":208587,"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":[1711,2459,156,1914,99,2235,2225,2227],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-208568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-graduate-students","category-profile","category-sfa","category-student-life","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-storrs","category-uconn-edu-homepage"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-29 19:09:49","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\/208568","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\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208568"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208749,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208568\/revisions\/208749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/208587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208568"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=208568"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=208568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Abigail](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/2024-01-09_BairdAerialPuppetry-5-300x200.jpg\")