UConn Winter Puppet Slam Set for March 2026 at Ballard Institute

The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and the UConn Puppet Arts Program will present the 2026 UConn Winter Puppet Slam on Friday, March 6, 2026 at 8 p.m. in UConn's Harriet S. Jorgensen Theatre, on the lower level of the Jorgensen Performing Arts Center at 2132 Hillside Road, Storrs, CT 06269.

The UConn Winter Puppet Slam will feature new and experimental short works by professional puppeteers and performers, including Puppet Arts alumni Mackenzie Doss; and Joe Therrien, with his Boxcutter Collective colleagues Ali Dineen and Tom Cunningham, as well as new works by UConn Puppet Arts students. Mansfield's Waldron's Studios 88 will return once more as the Puppet Slam house band. 

The 2026 UConn Winter Puppet Slam welcomes back UConn Puppet Arts alumni Joe Therrien and Mackenzie Doss. Brooklyn-based Joseph Therrien, along with his Boxcutter Collective colleagues Ali Dineen and Tom Cunningham, will perform Cop & Cold Milk!, which welcomes you to Coney Island, the magical land of carnivals, clowns, and conmen—where even Policemen aren't safe from the mischievous puppet hijinks! Vermont-based puppeteer Mackenzie Doss will perform Transcendence, which explores transformation as a universal process governed by chance and the things we are willing to let go, and how entering a state of transformation includes finding that anything is possible. The UConn Winter Puppet Slam also features new works by graduate and undergraduate students from the UConn Puppet Arts Program, and music by Mansfield's Waldron's Studio 88 band, led by Derek Waldron. Funding for the slam is made possible, in part, by the Puppet Slam Network. These performances are recommended for mature audiences.