Bending Fuchsian groups in complex hyperbolic space

In this talk, I will describe a family of embeddings of the Teichmüller space of a cusped Riemann surface Sigma in the $PU(2,1)$-representation variety of the fundamental group of Sigma. These embeddings are obtained by a bending process which allows an explicit description of an equivariant mapping from the universal cover of Sigma into the complex hyperbolic plane.