A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
Thomas Blair looks at the camera with and a wooden sculpture holds its arm around his neck.

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Blair Thomas

Associate Professor, Adjunct

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Bio

Blair Thomas is a puppeteer, director/designer & festival curator active in Chicago since 1985. Currently he is the artistic director of the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival which he founded in 2015. He also founded and leads the Ellen Van Volkenberg Puppetry Symposium which runs concurrent with the Festival. Since 2016 he has been an active member of the Union Internationale de la Marionnette’s International Festivals Commission. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Jim Henson Foundation NYC.

Additionally he co-directs the Chicago Puppet Studio, the design and fabrication wing of the Festival with Tom Lee, with puppet credit designs for the Metropolitan Opera NYC Florencia de Amazons (2023), Lookingglass Theater’s Mr & Mrs Pennyworth (2016), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (2018), Steadfast Tin Soldier (2018-22) Atlanta’s Alliance Theater Christmas Carol (2019), Lyric Opera The Magic Flute (2016) and as well as producing the puppet animated film Vancouver (2020) with MiYi Theater from NYC.

From 2002-2018 Blair produced touring productions as Blair Thomas & Company, such as: Pierrot Lunaire (2005 MCA), The Selfish Giant (2007 Chicago Childrens Theater), The Ox-Herder’s Tale (2008 MCA), Hard Headed Heart (2009 The Biograph Theater), The Vinegar Works (2014 Loyola Museum of Art), Moby-Dick (2016 MCA) and Buried Alive With Edgar Allan Poe (2018 Nordland Visual Theatre Norway). He has performed in festivals in France, Spain, Slovenija and Mexico and across the US.

He had started Redmoon Theater in 1989, where he served as the artistic director and co-artistic director until 1998, during which time he was principal in the creation of all its productions, parades and pageants, such as The Annual Winter Pageant (1992-1998), The Halloween Parade & Spectacle (1995-1998), You Hold My Heart Between Your Teeth (1989), Moby-Dick (1995), Frankenstein (1996), Frankie and Johnny (1997), and Long Live the King (the King is Dead) (1998).

Twice Blair has received the international UNIMA-USA awards for excellence in the art of puppetry and twice awarded the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship awards and Jeff nominations and awards. He was the first artist to fill the Jim Henson Artist-in-Residence position at the University of Maryland.

Blair is a graduate of Oberlin College (1985), with a dharma teacher ordination from the Maitreya Buddhist Seminary (2009) and an MA in Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2023).

 

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Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This course serves as an introduction to the puppet as performing object from traditional forms to contemporary practice. The class will focus on performance techniques with only basic instruction on fabrication. Students will create short form works centered on the puppet or informed by the language of the puppet. Additionally techniques of co-performance with the puppet and the puppeteer are introduced exploring themes of the doppleganger and the other.

Students are exposed to work in the field by attending 3 productions outside of class and viewing of video documentation work such as Handspring, Giselle Vienne, Geumhyung jJeong and Bread & Puppet. Additional readings on contemporary puppet theory are included.

The first half of the semester specific performances techniques are introduced such as Guignol hand puppetry, overhead projector and screen and rod shadow puppetry and three-person and one-person Bunraku style doll puppetry. Also introduced are rod puppet, scroll theater, Cantastoria and toy theater performance. Each technique then includes a theme and focus for the creation of a short original work. The second half of the semester focuses on the creation of work of the student?s choosing.

Class Number

1795

Credits

3

Description

Combining both medieval and contemporary performance practices, this class probes the possibilities of object and figure theater performance in the outdoor setting. We will examine the Renaissance spectacles of Piero di Cosimo, the Eastern European Happenings, the public ceremonies of Welfare State International and the street protest of Bread & Puppet Theater. Exercises will explore the making of large-scale graphic image making, such as Cantastoria, Banners and Scrolls. Through group collaborations the class will learn giant puppet making techniques and construction. The class will culminate in an all class outdoor spectacle.

Class Number

1509

Credits

3