ANIMALIA BY
HOBEY FORD'S
GOLDEN ROD
PUPPETS

“Animalia” 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 to the delight of audience members of all ages.

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.

There is a special kind of magic in Hobey’s beautiful, animated, carved foam puppets, each one a work of art. In creating these “Foamies,” he carefully studies each animal’s characteristic movements before designing various control mechanisms to make the puppets move in a life-like manner.

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Hobey Ford is the winner of puppetry’s highest honor, the UNIMA Citation of Excellence, and recipient of three Jim Henson Foundation grants. He is known for excellence in puppetry performance and craft.

Hobey’s performances incorporate a variety of puppetry styles including Bunraku, rod, marionettes, Foamies, and shadow puppetry. He uses his own voice to create characters and sound effects, tell stories, and sing, adapting folk tales from various cultures for many of his performances, and always adding a special “Golden Rod” twist.

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”.