Puppets Against Hunger for Food Connection with Hobey Ford

Join us to expand our mission to reduce food waste and ease hunger as winner of puppetry’s highest honor, the UNIMA Citation of Excellence, and recipient of three Jim Henson Foundation grants, Hobey Ford is known for excellence in puppetry performance and craft.

Hobey Ford will be donating his time and talents for Food Connection to help us continue to reduce food waste and ease hunger in our beautiful mountains.

About the “Anamalia” performance

This beautiful production explores the world of animals through movement, music and visually stunning puppetry. Breaking out of the traditional puppet theater booth, Hobey Ford turns the whole theatre into his performance stage. The performance includes a magnified look at butterfly and frog metamorphosis, the world of birds and a classic undersea ballet of whales, frolicking dolphins and otters. Witness the magic of beautiful, animated, carved foam puppets, each one a work of art. In creating these “Foamies,” Hobey carefully studies each animal’s characteristic movements; he then designs various control mechanisms to make the puppets move in a life-like manner.

About Hobey Ford

Hobey’s intricate shadow puppetry work and creation of the original rod puppets, the “Foamies”, have earned him a place on stages across the world. Hobey’s performances incorporate a variety of puppetry styles including Bunraku, rod, marionettes, “Foamies”, and shadow puppetry. Hobey adapts folk tales from various cultures for many of his performances, always adding a special “Golden Rod” twist. He uses his own voice to create characters and sound effects, tell stories, and sing. Hobey utilizes his artistic study at The State University of New York at Purchase and the University of North Carolina at Asheville to design and construct all of his Golden Rod Puppets and the beautiful sets that surround them. Hobey also draws on his early experiences growing up in coastal Connecticut or living in a Nevada Native American community in writing the scripts for some of his performances such as “Whale Walker” and “Turtle Island Tales”.

Hobey is considered both an innovator in puppetry craft and a master storyteller. He has created both the “Foamies” and the clever hand puppet known as “Peepers”. The “Foamies” are large animal puppets carved from blocks of foam. After studying each animal’s characteristic movements, Hobey designs various control mechanisms to make the puppets themselves move in a life-like manner. The “Foamies” are presented using both stage and house performance space.art desires. You can write articles, long mission statements, company policies, executive profiles, company awards/distinctions, office locations, shareholder reports, whitepapers, media mentions and other pieces of content that don’t fit into a shorter, more succinct space.