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Since 1975, creator/ director/puppeteer John Higgins has performed with the puppets and conducted workshops and seminars for museums, recreation departments, art councils, universities, and schools. He holds a PhD in communication, specializing in electronic media.
John was introduced to puppetry at the age of 12 as an assistant to professional puppeteer Florence Backus in the Washington DC area Puppetry Guild.
After graduating college in 1974 with a background in communication and theater, John was drawn to puppets as a way of earning an income while traveling. It seemed to follow the path of his idol Woody Guthrie, who made money painting signs on store front windows decades earlier. The Dayton Department of Recreation hired him as the city's official puppeteer.
The efforts led to regular appearances on Dayton's WKEF TV's "Clubhouse 22," then performer and producer on "Shock Theatre" with Dr. Creep (Barry Hobart), and additional production positions at the station. John went on to graduate school at Ohio University to study community media; he managed university student-run community cable stations in Athens and Fairborn Ohio.
At a comic book store in San Francisco in the mid-1980s, hunting for issues of his favorite, Uncle Scrooge comics, John was mesmerized by the cultural analysis he found in How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Classic (Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart). He returned to graduate studies at Ohio State University and completed a PhD in communication and cultural studies.
From 1995-1996, John taught, set up production facilities and curriculum, and performed with the puppets at Eastern Mediterranean University in Cyprus and a memorable experience at the UN's 50th Anniversary Party at the Ledra Palace Hotel in Nicosia. In 1996 he moved with the puppets to San Francisco. The Cyprus experience set the stage for a residency with puppets and digital storytelling at Sidestreets in Nicosia in 2008. This was followed by a Fulbright Scholarship to Cyprus in 2010, working with storytelling at the University of Cyprus, Near East University, European University of Cyprus, and the Cyprus Community Media Centre (storytelling videos available at the CyprusStories YouTube channel). It was in 2010 on the patio of the Cyprus Fulbright Commission in the UN's Green Zone, and at the Büyük Han caravansari that John and the puppets performed what they consider their final performances using the "walking stage."
John's fascination with and love of stories, particularly personal stories and cultural myths, has drawn him to comics, puppets, community media, oral histories . . . and digital storytelling. His first digital storytelling workshop in 2004 with Berkeley's Story Center was an eye-opener, both professionally and personally. It reawakened his love of `real' stories and the process of bringing them to life through the Story Circle in the classroom, workshops, and everyday life.
John's most recent explorations with Obie, Roscoe, Merkle the Wizard, Captain Cosmos, and the Demon Brew have been video shorts, mostly through digital stories including Obie& Roscoe's Pandemic `Pick-a-Flower', and the more personal Night Visions and Riding with Ringo
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- SELECTED CREDITS:
 Fulbright Scholar, Cyprus Fulbright Commission, Nicosia, Cyprus (August-December 2010);
Residency with Digital Storytelling at
"Sidestreets," Nicosia, Cyprus (October-November 2008);
 30 Year Anniversary Festival, "Summer of Love" (Golden Gate Park,
San Francisco, October 1997).
 United Nations's 50th Anniversary Bicommunal
Celebration (Ledra Palace, Nicosia, Cyprus, 1995);
 Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, Ohio,
1991);
Dayton (Ohio) Art Institute (1987, 1988);
Residency at Evansville
(Indiana) Museum of Arts and Science (1979).
Weekly appearances on Dayton late night TV show, Shock
Theatre with Dr. Creep (1977-1980);
Toured internationally as Dayton, Ohio's
"Ambassadors of Goodwill" (1977). |
NIGHT VISION PUPPETS
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