President

Matthew Leonard (mleonard) has served on the Board of Directors since 2007. In that time, he has chaired our events and nomination committees and served as the Vice-President (2013-15) and has served as the President since 2015. He has also acted as the Newsletter Editor since 2017. As President he hopes to “expand upon our outreach efforts and provide an open forum for puppet artists, teachers and enthusiasts to share and interact with each other”.

Matthew is an alumni of the UCONN Puppet Arts program and has been touring the Northeast through his LionHeart Puppet Company since 2001. He ahas also worked for The Paper Moon Puppet Theater, The Great Arizona Puppet Theater, The Growing Stage Theater of Netcong, NJ and Purple Rock Productions.

V. President

Sandi Smith (ssmith) first fell in love with puppetry as a University of Connecticut student in biology who wandered into the Puppet Lab Fall of 1995 and did puppet construction for “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”. She is a teacher, amateur artist and crafter, and nature-lover.

Sandi joined the Guild in order to help support puppetry and puppeteers and spread awareness and appreciation for the art of puppetry in all its forms.

Secretary

Christopher A. Grande (cgrande) has served on the Board of Directors since 1999 and as Secretary since 2010. His love of puppetry started at an early age which got him in contact with the Guild in the mid 90's. He also acts as the Guild's graphics and web designer — getting the Guild on the internet in 2000 and maintaining the Guild's digital presence since then.

While he constructed marionettes at an early age he now mostly creates creature and costume effects for Scare Crew Productions, Inc — designing and constructing 20-30 custom masks a year for the Trail of Terror in Wallingford, CT.

Treasurer

Karen Bruce (kbruce) has served on the Board of Directors since the early 2000s. She is currently the Treasurer and the Membership Chair. She has been a past President and Newsletter Editor.

She has also served on the Board of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry for many years starting as a Student Representative while attending the UCONN Puppet Arts program.

She has worked for 16 years as a children’s librarian developing programs with puppetry at the Westport Library, ranging from early literacy storytimes to middle school children building and performing various types of puppets.

Directors

Marilyn O'Connor Miller (moconnormiller) has served on the Board of Directors ever since moving to Connecticut from Michigan in 1996, serving as President for three years. Previously, she had served three years as President of The Detroit Puppeteers Guild, during which time she was Director of the 1994 Great Lakes Regional Puppet Festival.

A puppeteer for over 60 years, she was a performer for the celebrated ABC TV Hot Fudge Show, as well as a live multimedia storyteller DBA ‘The Puppet Connection’ having developed a dual focus presentation as both teller and puppeteer.
Favorite quote re signature puppet, ‘Piccolo’: “That puppet was real, even though we knew he wasn’t!”

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Robin McCahill (rmccahill) is a professional puppeteer who designs and builds puppets for stage, walkabouts and performances. Specializing in large roaming puppets who can interact with humans (and animal companions) delights audiences as does a repertoire of one person performances including The Snow Queen, Caws for Recycling and The Prince and The Pea. Being a fiber artist, professional Bicycle Fitting specialist (Intuit Bike Fit), mechanic and licensed massage therapist .creates a delight in figuring out mechanisms to make puppets move or fly.

Teaching puppetry and art inspires creativity in the child in all of us. Robin regularly holds workshops and classes at Artsplace in Cheshire, Silvermine Art School in New Canaan as well as workshops, walkabouts or performances at libraries, schools, nature centers, art festivals and special events.

Adelka Polak (apolak) is an interdisciplinary performing artist who founded Sova Dance & Puppet Theater in CT in 2013. She has performed in Denmark, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Bulgaria and Taiwan with Masque Theatre since 2008. She performed at LaMaMa with the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre, Ibex Puppetry, and Michael Pestel. She worked with Squonk Opera from 2002-2004 and tour internationally with this avant-garde theatre troupe that went “from junkyards to Broadway.”

Sova Theater provides puppet & dance theater programs to early learning centers, museums, public schools, and home-schooled youth in CT & NY. Sova Theater advocates responsibility to humanity and the environment through arts and education.

Kimberly Van Aelst (kvanaelst) is a professional puppeteer and artist with a Masters in Dramatic Arts in Puppetry from the University of Connecticut. She is a resident teaching artist for Arts for Learning Connecticut and educator at Yale University. She is the proud recipient of a 2020 Connecticut Office of the Arts DECD Award, a 2020 New Haven Creative Sector Relief Award, the 2019 Kennedy Center VSA Award, the Connecticut Coalition on the Arts Award in 2012, the 2017 Emma Louise Warfield Grant in Puppetry and a performance award at the 2012 World Festival of Puppetry in Prague.

Her company, OompaPossum Puppets performs children’s puppet shows and facilitates workshops in libraries, schools, museums and festivals throughout the state. She also revels in developing puppet shows for adult audiences at La MaMa, Dixon Place, The Tank, Galapagos, the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, Puppet Showplace Theatre and at the Museum of American Art. Her puppet film, Lost & Found was featured at the International Festival of Puppetry in Prague as well as the Puppet Film Festival at 92Y Tribeca. In 2019, Kimberly was thrilled to have puppeteered in a production at the Jim Henson Carriage House in NYC.

Kimberly also holds a Masters of Public Health and license in occupational therapy, specializing in developing arts based programming in mental health and for neuro-diverse populations. Her international work includes developing programming for non profit organizations while in Afghanistan, Angola and Haiti.

Newsletter Editor

TJ Jacobs (nutmegpuppetnews@ctpuppetry.org) is a theatre & puppet artist dedicated to the cultivation of sustainability, mindfulness, and creative expression through multi-disciplinary means.

TJ serves the northeast region of Puppeteers of America through performances, volunteerism, publications, and workshops. He boils his being down into a simple mantra: "Peace, Love, and Puppets!"

The Board