Abigail Baird is a physical storyteller who turns puppetry, animation, and aerial acrobatics into theatrical performance, and who teaches and makes by hand between shows.
Over roughly twenty years of study and practice, she pioneered a way of aligning physical theater, animation, and puppetry to create interactive performances with moving images for both stage and screen. Her work uses puppetry to harmonize humanity and technology, and aims to shape the rising field of media theater toward something genuinely human and relatable.
She holds an MFA in Puppet Arts from the Department of Dramatic Arts at the University of Connecticut, and a self-designed BFA in Technical Theater and Sculpture from the College of Santa Fe. Today she serves as Director of online puppetry education at the University of Connecticut.
Training & background
- MFA in Puppet Arts, University of Connecticut
- BFA in Technical Theater and Sculpture, College of Santa Fe
- Former Creative Director of Educational Programming, Kinetic Arts Center, Oakland
- Toured and trained with Wise Fool New Mexico; studied hand-to-hand acrobatics under master Lu Yi
- Certificate in Circus Arts from Circomedia, Bristol, England
- Taught and trained at the New England Center for Circus Arts, Brattleboro
You have ideas and imagination. You take something we’ve seen a million times and bring us into an animated world. I love your mind.
Howard Stern, America’s Got Talent