Vince Anthony: A Tribute

Vincent Anthony has contributed to the growth of puppetry in the US and around the world for a long time. He has had a storied career, and there are few others living today who can match his record of service to the field, which has not only been highly effective, but has been imbued with tremendous humanity and personal generosity.

I have assembled a handful of short pieces written by various puppet artists (some of whom have known him and worked with him for more than fifty years) on the occasion of the second NYC Puppet Fringe Festival, which is dedicated to Vince Anthony as a way of honoring his multifaceted career.
–Andrew Periale

The Origin Story – by Nick Coppola

There was nothing unusual about that day in September of 1963, when I held auditions for actor/puppeteers to tour nationally in one of our four troupes of the Nicolo Marionettes. No one could have guessed, then, that such an ordinary event as a casting call would be the first step on an amazing journey for a young Vincent Anthony.

Vincent, having answered our ad in Backstage, a weekly trade paper, was on time, very presentable and affable. An audition started with the actor reading scenes from the play (in this case “PINOCCHIO”) as the puppeteers were the voices for many different characters in the show. Having had experience in theatre, his readings were very imaginative and precise.

Next was the test to see how the actor responded to the marionette, and to see if he or she had the potential to be taught the style of manipulation we employed in our productions. Vincent did not appear to be nervous or intimidated by the control or the loose-limbed puppet, and, in a short time, successfully aced this part of the audition.

Vincent was hired, of course, not only for his talent as an actor and potential as a puppeteer, but for his earnestness and serious approach to this unusual form of theater.

A reliable and skilled performer, he performed with us for a number of years, until he decided to strike out on his own, and adapted what he had learned, touring with Nicolo Marionettes, for his own successful and remarkable career. That amazing journey has led Vincent to the fulfillment of his unique vision: The Center for Puppetry Arts, devoted to the presentation and preservation of all forms of Puppetry.

I can’t help but be proud of the accomplishments of my friend and colleague of so many years, which were achieved by his imagination, tenacity, and sheer hard work!

Bravo Vincent!

The Never Ending Festival – by Jon Ludwig

The Center for Puppetry Arts is a space for artists to develop, to explore, and to flourish. Vince Anthony created not only a physical space to house a museum, a library, an educational department, a digital learning department, and multiple theaters, but he created a spiritual space celebrating puppetry in all its glorious variations and cultures, a hub for imagination and wonder.

I have been lucky to have been at the Center since 1978 when Kermit the Frog cut the ribbon. I had answered an ad in the paper. “Puppeteer wanted, will train.” I got the job and have been training ever since. It was a leap of faith in hiring me since I had absolutely no puppetry experience.

While I was out touring for the Center's sister company, the Vagabond Marionettes, Vince was making preparations for an UNIMA World Festival in Washington DC. He urged me to make my way to DC, if I could. I went and was blown away. It changed my life. I had no idea the scope of this art form. I had no idea how many puppeteers there were in the world.  I was hooked. I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I can thank Vince for my career and a place to work. Many artists can thank Vince for inspiring them to work, or I should say to "play" in puppetry.

There are so many things for me to be thankful for about the Center and Vince. One of the best perks is getting to meet and present guest artists from around the world and around the corner. The variety of artists that have walked through our doors is a testament to Vince's vision that puppeteers should get together. As evidenced by the staggering number of master classes that have been offered at the Center over the years. Not to mention chit chatting with artists over meals. Even an impromptu soccer match has brought us together.

Vince is quite remarkable. He saw the need for a permanent place dedicated to the art of puppetry and made one with three branches: Performance, Education and Museum. The spirit of the DC World Festival was poured into the Center and that spirit is still alive. Visitors say that they can feel the energy.

The result of Vince’s grand idea has been a puppet festival in Atlanta that has gone on for 40 plus years and doesn’t look like it's stopping! Thanks, Vince for a great party!

Vince as Mentor – by Manuel Antonio Morán

 The first time I visited the Center of Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, I was mesmerized. I was so surprised to find a place that encompassed everything that I had envisioned for my own theater company, Teatro SEA. If you are familiar with the center, you know that they are a comprehensive center with theatres, a museum, workshops, educational programs, etc. everything you can dream of. Immediately, the center became an ideal example for us. Vince became a role model for me, as the founder and creator, and we wanted to replicate and recreate their model, from the top down.

From this moment on, I began to admire Vince and the tremendous work he was doing. In fact, we were lucky enough to get a grant, which gave us the opportunity to bring Vince to New York and to work directly with him.  He did an audit of our organization and worked closely with me and our staff. We also had the opportunity to visit the Center with our staff and learn directly from the Center’s staff.

At this moment, Vince took me under his wing. I felt very lucky that for my early stages of producing in New York City, he was there to answer questions and share ways of doing things. He then brought Teatro SEA to the Center to perform and develop a Latino audience for the center. Our first time performing there was a hit, so he brought us back for many more seasons which helped deepen our relationship with the center and my personal relationship with Vince. All this helped me grow as a leader, as well as helping to solidify Teatro SEA as a leading company in New York.

I am eternally grateful for his mentorship, which helped me develop my performing arts administration, board development, fundraising and leadership skills. Furthermore, working with Vince on the board of UNIMA-USA, gave me a chance to witness his ethics, his tactical strategies for sustaining and moving the organization forward, as well as his determination to always have transparency, order and procedure. All of this would serve me later on, at the International level with UNIMA.

My leadership at the international level started thanks to Vince. After serving as international Councilor and VP for many years, he decided to step down from his role from UNIMA international and proposed me to replace him. I guess he saw in me some leadership skills and he wanted to develop that further, so he sent me to represent him and UNIMA-USA, to the Tolosa UNIMA Council.  This was my first-time being part of the international organization. Later I became, like Vince, the Vice President, where I served for 13 years.

He is highly respected and admired worldwide. Everywhere I went, everyone asked about him and sent him their regards. I always kept in my mind, that I was representing not only UNIMA-USA, my country Puerto Rico, but also Vince’s previous work and all the leaders that preceded him. Procedures, order, inclusion, transparency, and financial clarity were very important for him, especially in an international organization with so many different cultures, languages and ways to do things.

If you look at my work and tenure as VP and as part the Executive Committee, the Board and the Statues Committee, you can see that I was following his footsteps and his example.  I have learned to be good at conducting meetings, in a democratic, fair and organized way, following procedures, keeping the time and following an agenda, always exercising diplomacy and respecting differences. You need all of these skills and more when you are trying to have a productive and meaningful meeting with representatives from more than 90 countries. I attribute all my learning and mastering many skills, to the mentorship, and especially to the trust that Vince had in me.

Today, Vince is moving on from the Center’s leadership, just as I am venturing into something even bigger than running my own puppetry center, Teatro SEA in NYC, which is producing an international puppet festival: Puppet Fringe NYC. I am dedicating the 2nd edition of this festival to him. I wanted to somehow thank and repay Vince, not only because has he been a mentor and a role model to me, but for his tremendous life’s work for puppetry, as an outstanding administrator, producer, leader and artist. What better way to honor him than to dedicate the entire festival to his legacy.

When I grow up, I want to be just like him.

An Appreciation of Vince Anthony – by Nancy Staub

The first time I remember meeting Vince Anthony was at the 1974 Puppeteers of America Festival in New Orleans. As Director, I invited his company, Vagabond Marionettes, to perform Jack and the Beanstalk. We chatted about our mutual passion for puppetry. He asked me to present my Puppet Playhouse Production The Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings, at the Southeast Regional Festival that he’d organized in Atlanta. We each soon found a mission as administrator rather than performer and became lifelong friends. We have cooperated on many boards, committees, and projects, including the 1980 World Puppetry Festival in Washington, DC.

Vince is a visionary with amazing skills at organizing and fundraising, which he used to realize his goal of establishing a Center for Puppetry Arts to promote the art form in America. He wisely chose Atlanta as it was a growing metropolitan center. I donated a small collection of puppets to decorate the lobby for the opening in 1978.This inspired Vince later to establish a museum as part of the Center. Thanks in no small part to the generosity of members of the Henson Family, the museum and archives share a new state of the art wing that opened in 2015. The collection now includes over 6000 objects including 600 from Henson productions. Attendance soared to nearly 100,000 annually before the pandemic shutdown. The Center for Puppetry Arts Museum in Atlanta is my dream come true, thanks to Vince Anthony.

Vince: Fostering International Friendship through the Art of Puppetry – by Kathy Foley

When I asked Vince Anthony what the president of UNIMA-International does he said: “The president is mostly ornamental, and the General Secretary does all the work.”

That made sense since this is the way things often operate at the UNIMA-USA level. I, like other presidents, have come and will go, but Vince has been there holding this organization together since he took on the General Secretary job nearly 30 years ago. Without him this organization would not be what it is. Through his willingness to house UNIMA-USA at Center for Puppetry Arts, his wisdom of what is fiscally doable and politically advisable, his collective memory of how past boards have thought, and in so many other ways, he gently guides and organizes our disparate efforts. While presidents and board members – however committed – serve relatively short terms, his ongoing commitment has allowed this organization to run, grow, and impact.

Vince combines the best of both worlds: the dream and the street smarts. The dream is big—how can UNIMA-USA foster the art of puppetry across the country and share creatively with puppeteers across the planet. The pragmatic street smarts get down to earth by being the one to ask: “who will do that?” As an all-volunteer organization, he keeps the board’s feet on the ground and reminds us that we – and our other UNIMA-USA members – must do the work in order to actualize our dreams. I meet with him regularly and I see his concerns – how can we grow, diversify our membership, collaborate with Puppeteers of America and UNIMA-International, avoid creating any aura of favoritism or regionalism, and avoid creating so much work we will fail to come through?

The strength and artistic leadership that has allowed Center for Puppetry Arts to excel, he gives to UNIMA-USA with no strings attached. The contacts he has cultivated across the country and the globe, he uses to advance the art of puppetry. That is the larger mission, and to achieve it UNIMA-USA is just one of the conduits through which his labors have flowed. Excellence and building the art as a whole is what he is about. He has trained up a several generations of puppetry artists in Atlanta through Center for Puppetry Arts. Through UNIMA-USA he extends the same service to puppetry across the US and links us to organizations across the globe. He has consistently supported Puppetry International, from its initial proposal to the significant journal it has become. He oversees the board as it has established or expanded the idea of citations, collaborations, etc.

UNIMA-USA was founded in 1966, “To promote international understanding and friendship through the art of puppetry.” Running UNIMA-USA is sort of like trying to make a bunraku-style figure come to life. Vince Anthony is like the master artist, the omozukai, who holds the head and right hand. The President of UNIMA-USA is like the hidarizukai, left hand operator, watching how the master artist makes the inanimate object breathe, cry, shout for joy (and hoping someday to have such consummate skill). Below is the foot operator, ashizukai, and on the side are the musician, narrator, and so on. The magic works because we are all focused on the same figure. Out of many we become one, and step by step we work to enhance the art puppetry even as we grow individually in skill, understanding, and find friendship through our art.

Vince and Publications – by Andrew Periale

Bonnie (my wife and partner) and I have known Vince for over thirty years. During that time he has presented our work as performers, put me up in his guest room for a stint as a resident artistic fellow at the Center for Puppetry Arts and supported our work producing the magazines for UNIMA-USA. He has been incredibly generous with both his time and resources, serving the field of puppetry globally by making connections between individuals in a very personal way.

Bonnie and I took over the roles of editor and designer of UNIMA-USA’s semi-annual periodical, A Propos, in 1985. We worked closely with then General Secretary Allelu Kurten. It had a very homegrown feel. In 1990, Anthony organized the first of three Puppetry Futurism conferences (with Jim Henson’s support and Nancy Staub’s counsel). Details of this meeting and those that followed were written up in Puppetry International’s Futurism issue (PI #40, fall 2016), but the action item that most interested us was that there should be a magazine that was dedicated to puppetry from around the world, that would reach beyond its members and appeal to anyone with a serious interest in puppetry, theater, or art in general. We presented a mock up of the magazine a year later and with support and encouragement from Vince – who took over the job of General Secretary of UNIMA-USA in 1992 – and the Board, we put out our first issue of Puppetry International in 1995. Issues of PI alternated with those of A Propos for several years, but before the turn of the millennium we had completely switched to Puppetry International as UNIMA-USA’s official publication.

No one has been a bigger cheerleader for this enterprise than Vince Anthony. Vince’s notes – and his consistent support in board meetings, has given us both the means and eagerness to continue this experiment during his nearly three decades as General Secretary.

Because of his work on behalf of both the Center for Puppetry arts and UNIMA-USA, we have naturally covered him and his work in Puppetry International. To name a few: PI #3 “Puppetry at the Summer Olympics,” PI # 8 “Wrestling Macbeth,” PI #34 “Jon Ludwig, Director at the Crossroads,” PI #36 “The Center for Puppetry Arts,” PI #40 “UNIMA-USA Publishing,” PI #41 “The African Collection: The Center for Puppetry Arts Museum,” PI #42 “’Distance Learning’ and the Center for Puppetry Arts,” PI #49 “Center for Puppetry Arts Global Collection.” You may not see his picture, or even read his name in some of these articles, but none of these pieces would have been possible without his consistent work and vision. Vince has always seen the importance of publishing as a way of promoting puppetry, aiding in the development of puppeteers, and supporting the mission of UNIMA. He has been one of our biggest supporters over the past three decades. The success of Puppetry International and all the other publications of UNIMA-USA are a part of his legacy.

Place, Time, Situation: Vincent Anthony and the art of creating space for the divine – by Kristin Haverty

“In Balinese there is a phrase, desa, kala, patra, which roughly translated means place, time, situation.  On one level it refers to the localization of customary practices, which can differ from north to south, east to west, village to village.  But in a larger sense it suggests the need for contextualization, the necessity of trying to understand how meanings of events or objects are unique to specific circumstances and can differ by location and over time… . For Balinese, a statue is not a deity in its own right, merely a receptacle for the visitation of the divine.  It is through ritual acts - invitations to the gods, ornamentation of temples, presentations of offerings, and incantations or mantras - the vessels become sacred objects.”  Natasha Reichle, Bali:  Art, Ritual, Performance.

The Center for Puppetry Arts arose from a very particular desa, kala, patra – the late 1970s in Atlanta, GA and the confluence of a visionary entrepreneur/artist, committed and connected stakeholders, and an empty school house. For 43 years the Center has served as a home for the development, preservation, and presentation of the artform and now stands as the largest nonprofit center in the United States dedicated to the art of puppetry. Each passing year has seen continual visitations of the divine – a young child seeing a live performance for the first time, innovative artists coming into their own as they experiment with the form, artists and cultures from all over the world celebrated on the Center’s stages and its award-winning museum collection.

The art of sustaining such a nonprofit organization dedicated to puppetry through the vicissitudes of the decades in a state that consistently ranks at the lowest rungs of arts spending per capita is perhaps as complicated as performing a trick marionette show in zero gravity. Yet for over 40 years Vince Anthony, the Center’s Founder and Executive Director, has managed to guide the organization to where it stands today. This takes not only vision, but a continual drive to bring stakeholders to the table by articulating that vision clearly and succinctly. It takes constant pivoting and engagement to achieve that vision and courage when the path forward may seem unclear.

In 2018, I assumed the role of Producer at the Center. Our final production for the season, my first new work as the Producer, was slated to be an adaptation of Harold and the Purple Crayon. For anyone not familiar with this classic of children’s literature by the imaginative graphic artist Crockett Johnson, Harold is a small boy who continually creates his world through drawing it with his trusty purple crayon. The Center’s Production team had for over a year been experimenting with exactly how best to stage such a magical feat and ultimately settled on the innovative idea to erect a Pepper’s Ghost rig on our 35’main stage which would allow the puppet Harold and animations of his drawings to appear as if side by side in the playing space. This would not be an inexpensive feat for the scale of the production. While a foundation stepped up to cover the bulk of the effect costs, the remainder of the season had been a challenging one and budgets across the Center were being evaluated to see where we might trim in order to return to the black. I’ll never forget sitting in Vince’s office as we discussed the fate of the show’s trajectory. Until we actually mounted all of the expensive gear to make the effect work, there was no way to tell if our smaller experiments would read on the larger scale. Vince asked, matter-of-factly, whether I felt this was the right decision. I argued this was indeed the best decision artistically, but I acknowledged there were risks. Vince sat for a moment and then said, “well, as George Latshaw once said, sometimes you just have to jump and say wheee.” Much to our team’s collective sigh of relief, the effect worked seamlessly and the show stayed true to the charm of Crockett’s original vision. It garnered an Atlanta Theater award for “Best Design” that year, had the honor of opening the TYA-USA National Festival, and subsequently was invited for a tour to the Kennedy Center. Just as importantly, it challenged our technicians and artists in new and invigorating ways. And in the end the technique served the story and delighted our audiences. One review captured this feeling quite succinctly:

“The entire effect is wonderful, whimsical, liberating, and genuinely comforting. The large audience of young children, including my eight-year old niece and her older friends, were enchanted and amused from beginning to end. As was I. Like Crockett’s beloved books, the Puppetry Center’s 45-minute show isn’t worried about life lessons or adults setting rules or saving the day. There is just pure experience, imagination, and childhood run wild. Ludwig’s Harold and The Purple Crayon invites people of all ages to see the magic in everyday objects and ordinary moments — to create our own reality.”

Edward McNally, Atlanta’s Creative Loafing(1)

Success, indeed, is not measured in ticket sales alone.

This is only one small example of what has been 43 years of such challenging decisions. While a secular interpretation of the Balinese concept, I see each project, dependent on its particular desa kala patra, as a “receptacle for the visitation of the divine” in which artists and audiences come together to fulfill the Center’s mission of inspiring imagination, education and community through the global art of puppetry. I will always be grateful to Vince for taking those leaps in dogged pursuit of that mission and creating a space for the divine.

1 - https://creativeloafing.com/content-426437-scenes-motions-sleepless-nights