In Brief: March 19

BGSU puppet ‘legend’ Bradford Clark to speak

The “Legends” series continues celebrating notable faculty across the arts with a lecture by Dr. Bradford Clark, whose research, creative work and teaching is in scenic design and puppetry.

Clark, theatre, will speak at 5 p.m. March 23 in the Eva Marie Saint Theatre in Wolfe Center for the Arts. His talk is free and open to the public.

In talking with Clark, it is clear that while he loves scenic design, his passion is puppetry.  “Puppetry is a good way to explore the world,” he said. “It can combine aspects of every art form, as well as the arts' importance to cultural and even religious life around the globe.”

His interest in puppetry started at a very young age, but became a driving passion when Clark was 16 and met Francois Martin and John Ralph Geddis of the Tantamount Theatre in Carmel Valley, Calif. “They were retired professional puppeteers, working with beautifully crafted hand puppets,” Clark recalled. “Ralph died months after I met him, and I went off to college the next fall, but I kept in contact with Francois, who pretty much taught me everything.”

Clark’s love of puppetry and other theatre has taken him to many parts of the world to study, including India, Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, Japan, China, Taiwan, the Czech Republic and the Soviet Union, where he interned as a design assistant at the Bolshoi.

“I want to do interesting things with interesting people,” he said. “Field research in puppetry and Asian theatre has taken me to places I might not have ever visited. But it all goes together — the travel feeds the productions and gives me something worthwhile to bring into the classroom.” 

His most recent BGSU puppetry production, the haunting “Frankenstein,” combined elements of several of international styles along with evocative set design.

Along with teaching and researching puppetry and theatre, Clark finds time to work with theatre companies and museums around the United States and internationally. He serves as curator of collections for the Center for Puppetry Arts, the largest puppetry center in the U.S., where he is helping to conceptualize new galleries for the museum's extensive collection. He is also planning the exhibits for a proposed Jim Henson Wing, which will draw from a large collection of figures and other objects to be donated by the Henson family. He curated and designed three preview exhibitions, the third of which, “Jim Henson: Wonders from his Workshop,” opened in the fall of 2008.

“I need to go to puppet festivals and museums in Europe,” he said. “However, the immediate goal is to get the new galleries at the Museum of the Center for Puppetry Arts open in the next year.”