A little paper puppet child is walking up to a cottage made of cardboard surrounded by mountains, trees and clouds created out of scraps. The kid is visiting grandma Nana, a paper puppet giant who shares a home-cooked meal with the tiny child.
“With love to all the grandmothers that made us feel like children again,” said puppeteer Ailin Ruiz, as she translated the Spanish caption to an audience at the institute last Wednesday.
Ruiz is the co-founder of Lormiga Títeres, a non-profit puppet company based out of the Sonoran desert of Mexico. She helped produce the short puppetry film “Nana” with co-founder Sarina Pedroza who, Ruiz said, created the film for her grandmother.
The film is currently viewable at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at UConn Storrs. It’s an example of modern Mexican puppetry, but it’s among a multitude of masks, marionettes and toy theaters as part of the “Somos Uno”, or “We Are One”, exhibition celebrating the past and present of Mexican and Mexican American puppetry.
“This is a tangible way to see the culture and the history itself,” Ruiz said.
‘An opportunity to pay attention’
Last March, Ballard Institute and Museum Director John Bell traveled to Mexico City with exhibition co-curator and UConn graduate Sol Ramirez to visit different puppeteers and puppet museums for the creation of the exhibition.
“Mexican puppetry has a very different trajectory than United States puppetry,” Bell said. “It's fascinating and amazing.”
A key difference is in the influences of the pre-Columbian Mexica, an indigenous people often relabeled as Aztec, which aren’t found in the New England puppetry scene, Bell said.
“At the time of the conquest, Spanish culture included a lot of puppet and mask and dance and object performance as part of a Catholic ritual calendar. They incorporated or connected with traditional Mexican forms of performance with masks and puppets,” Bell said. “Whereas in New England, with a few exceptions, [Europeans] wanted nothing to do with indigenous culture.”
Mexico also had folk and religious influences that are notable in various performance objects, Bell said, including the display of over 40 masks. The masks depict men, wild animals, deities, and skulls with horns, antlers, long beards and pointy curved noses.
At the exhibit, visitors will be able to learn about key players in this form of entertainment as well, he said, like the Rosete-Aranda Company, which officially formed in 1850 and performed for over a century. Then, there’s the Cueto family, which bolstered the Mexican educational puppet theater movement in the mid-1900s.
Unlike the United States, where puppetry was thought of more as an art form for children, Bell said Mexico has a history of supporting educational puppetry on topics like public health for both kids and adults.
Looking at the contemporary side of the timeline, Bell said Mexican American and Chicano culture used puppetry to connect with the widespread community and make political statements.
One set of tabletop puppets on display is from Edwin Salas Acosta’s “Seven Deadly Sins in the Border”, a story of a Mexican immigrant confronting the seven deadly sins at the border to get to the United States.
The exhibition even features Connecticut skeleton puppets from Unidad Latina en Acción, a pro-immigrant rights community group based in New Haven, Bell said. They have been used in the group’s Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead processions.
“American puppeteers are oftentimes pretty insulated. We're not always aware of what's happening around the world,” Bell said. “The performance forms of Mexican and Mexican American puppetry have so much to say to us, and we don't always pay attention to that. This is an opportunity to pay attention.”
‘Embrace it and make it yours’
Having Lormiga Títeres as part of the exhibition is important, co-founder Ruiz said, because the history of puppetry in the Mexican state of Sonora is not as well-known or well researched as that of central Mexico.
“Most of the tradition of Mexican puppetry happens in the center part: Mexico City, Tlaxcala, and all the center part,” Ruiz said. “In Sonora, where I live, there's only two puppet companies: Florentino, Jaime (of Jaime Florentino Cía Títeres) and ourselves. That's the only thing you got.”
For over a decade now, Ruiz said the company has been working to research that history and present it with a museum exhibition through partnerships with museums in Sonora and around Mexico.
“The puppets from Sonora have built, themselves, their own tradition,” Ruiz said. “Since our research, our own way of doing puppetry has been because we have created our own way.”
They also diversify their programming. Ruiz said the company has a publishing house that produces children’s coloring books, a summer education program and an annual puppetry magazine.
That’s all on top of their Saturday theater shows for family audiences, puppet slams, traveling theater wagon, and their “Tales for Counting Stars” program which features a live broadcast of 10 episodes between October and November for kids to watch as part of their bedtime routine.
Sharing their work in a state like Connecticut is more than just an opportunity to connect with audiences abroad, Ruiz said. She calls it an adventure.
“Every time we travel,” Ruiz said, “we create bridges in between.”
Ruiz said she hopes their work and this exhibition can be a way for those of Mexican descent living in Connecticut to reconnect with their heritage, and for all Latinos to connect with their culture.
“This [exhibition] is an achievement, not just for us, but for the Mexican community that lives here [in Connecticut,]” Ruiz said. “Come see the exhibition. Embrace it. Make it yours, because at the end of the day, this exhibition belongs to the entire community.”
Learn more
The exhibition “Somos Uno: Mexican and Mexican American Puppetry” is on display at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut through March 8.
To view puppet shows and future programming from Lormiga Títeres, visit their Facebook, Instagram or YouTube pages.
