About Bart
Bart Buch is a puppet artist, poet and arts educator who focuses on interpreting poetry from written text into puppet performances and looks for the poetic qualities of any story to highlight. He calls his work “puppet poems.” Bart’s most recent puppetry work was a project exploring his neighborhood. In 2016-2018, he conducted a community residency with youth, artists and community members, co-creating several performances about the “helpers” of the Phillips neighborhood. The neighborhood project ended in a main stage production called Make-Believe Neighborhood at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre (HOBT), featuring puppets, projections, live music by Martin Dosh with mixed-in covers of Fred Rogers’ songs by Sylvan Esso, Andrew Bird, Bonnie Prince Billy, Karen Peris of The Innocence Mission, Jayanthi Kyle, Leslie Ball, and MPLS imPulse Chorus. Make Believe Neighborhood was received warmly by theatre reviewers and audiences and was rated the 3rd best Twin Cities theatre performance in 2018. Other notable puppet poems Bart has created independently and at HOBT are Ode to Walt Whitman (2006, 2007, 2009, 2015) Mortal City (2011, 2014, 2015), Nature Boy (2010), kid enkidu (2013), and Music Animated (2016-17).
In 2009, with support from the Jim Henson Foundation, Bart performed Ode to Walt Whitman at Here Arts Center, curated by Basil Twist, in New York City to sold out shows, earning an illustration in The New Yorker and high praise from the Jim Henson Foundation. He received his second Henson Foundation grant in 2011 to develop a new show called kid enkidu, which premiered in 2013 at HOBT. In 2015, Bart toured his show Mortal City to the International Puppet Festival in Chicago, curated by Blair Thomas, and remounted Ode to Walt Whitman at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis as part of their Catalyst Series. Bart has received support and recognition from the NEA, Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, Jim Henson Foundation, Puffin Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Forecast Public Art Affairs, and is a Playwrights’ Center McKnight Theater Artist Fellow 2017-18.
Bart is currently the Executive Director and an Artist for Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts, a small arts organization in Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, that focuses on energizing youth and adults to use their creativity to build a healthier, safer and more beautiful community. He is working on re-creating his first puppet show about the salmon and starfish as a beach show to be toured to beaches around the world. Bart works as a COMPAS Teaching Artist and is also founding a new puppet company called hinterhands puppet company. More info. on that at Hinterhands.com
Artist Statement
I started in puppetry 25 years ago creating nighttime puppet shows about a salmon and starfish falling in love in my backyard for friends and neighbors. Since the salmon and starfish stories my aesthetic has stayed rooted in the poetic, romantic and intimate but deepened in skill, style, and technique. I worked at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre (HOBT) for 25 years as an artist performing, directing, teaching, and building puppet theatre of all types. I served as Education Director at HOBT for 12 years, creating several new puppetry programs in that time. My love of working with youth, community and teaching feeds and deepens my love for puppetry and vice-versa. Independently and through HOBT, I have worked with over 300 schools and communities in puppet residencies with widely varying groups of people all over the country. HOBT has served as a home in my puppetry career but I have ventured far and wide to find very specific training and growth opportunities, studying with Eric Bass of Sandglass Puppet Theatre and working with Basil Twist, both very accomplished puppeteers who also explore the intersection of poetry and puppetry. I also have studied with Michael Rohd, Artistic Director of Sojourn Theatre exploring techniques and processes of working with communities to develop and translate their voices into poetic, authentic, meaningful dialogues and theatre works. I’ve developed a distinct voice and aesthetic as a puppet theatre artist independent of, aside and within HOBT.
In my independent productions I focus on interpreting poetry from written text into puppet performances and look for the poetic qualities of any story to highlight. I seek to convey poetry through evocative and gestural puppet movement, subtle and simple visual imagery that exposes underlying materials, an enveloping musical language and an absence of spoken word. I have presented several independent performances working with the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, Wendell Berry, Dar Williams, Rumi, Deena Metzger, Fred Rogers, Antoine de Saint Exupery, Mary Oliver, Joy Harjo, GLBTQA youth and elders, as well as my own poetry.
I’m a holistic practitioner of puppetry, meaning I play a comprehensive role in many aspects of my artistic process usually involving puppet design, set design, directing and puppeteering. My directing begins when I start designing and creating the object that will be brought to life. I start developing a puppet character by carefully choosing and listening to simple materials. I want the audience to sense the clay in the puppet’s shape, the tree in the paper’s surface, bringing out something intuitive and accepting in the audience. I feel most satisfied directing or performing the animation of a puppet I have created. In creating performance I usually develop collaborative relationships and work over a period of years with a consistent group of people. These relationships and the piece grow together slowly and create a great trust, depth, and shared ownership of the work. In creating art and performance with youth and communities I also choose to work with groups of people and artists for ongoing, extended periods to develop trust and understanding. These longer-term relationships are a strong, fertile base of personal and artistic growth for all involved. A current example of this work is The Phillips Project, a project I directed, created and existed at HOBT for eight years. The Phillips Project was a year-round, weekly arts program providing an immersive puppet and mask theater experience to a highly diverse population of neighborhood youth who have limited access to arts programming, partnering with staff and youth at Little Earth of United Tribes, Waite House, and Collaborative Village Initiative in the Phillips neighborhood in Minneapolis. I am currently continuing and reimagining this work with partners, youth and community independently of HOBT.
“I work through puppet theatre to contribute to a new world paradigm that honors the place of queerness and poetry in our cultural evolution, nurtures the invaluable visions of youth and elders, and strengthens intimate connections of people to one another and to the animate earth.” -Bart Buch
