Plea for a fingertip bandaid

Posted by hil

You would think that we cut our finger tips enough for someone to have brought out a bandaid that fits over the top of one’s finger without little raggy ears at the corners, and without having to wrap a second bandaid around the finger to prevent the first one coming off. It’s easy. Here is the necessary design:

Better bandaid for finger tops

The bit at the top comes down over your finger, and the bits at the sides wrap over it and around. The cut-away sides in the middle mean no raggy ears.

Simple. You read about it first here.

National Puppetry Summit: Ward 13

Posted by hil

ward13

(photo by Glenn Watson)

I really laughed my way through Peter Cornwall’s Ward 13, one of a number of terrific Australian animations screened at the summit. It’s a stop-motion animation – action/horror/comedy – about a guy who has a road accident and wakes up in the hospital from hell, complete with bizarre medicines, a green tentacled blob, experimental puppy surgery, and a doctor and nurse who menace with huge dirty knives, cleavers, shears and sticks. You can download the trailer to get a taste of it, and check out how it was made.

Links updated 2015

National Puppetry Summit: John Xintavelonis

Posted by hil

John X

John Xintavelonis, a Tasmanian actor who played the part of Pumbaa the warthog in the Melbourne version of The Lion King gave an entertaining address at the National Puppetry Summit. As well as relating some amusing behind the scenes experiences, he said that although some regarded Disney as the McDonalds of the theatre world because it runs the exact same show using a rigid script in numerous countries around the world, he felt it should be encouraged for several reasons:

It provides big chunks of work for actors/ puppeteers, 10 to 18 months of work or more, on a good wage.

The success of The Lion King will mean that more such work will follow, too. Tarzan is already playing on Broadway and I think The Little Mermaid was also mentioned.

Puppetry enables the story to go live on stage, and to differentiate the look from the animated film versions, so its generating live puppetry as big theatre.

Disney don’t publicly call The Lion King puppetry (they employ actors and singers rather than puppeteers) because they don’t want it labelled as a kids show, so they are actually working towards framing the artform for adults, and getting away from the common preconception that puppetry is only for children.

John also wanted to encourage people to diversify and be prepared to learn other skills. He had started as an actor and diversified into singing and now puppetry, and felt it paid returns.

(My attendance at the puppetry summit was supported by the ACT Government)

Melbourne International Puppet Carnival

Posted by hil

The International Puppet Carnival is an exciting new puppetry event happening at Federation Square, Melbourne from today through 2nd July. Take a look through the wonderful line-up on offer – The Carnival, After Dark, Special Events, and workshops.

Close-Act: Sau’rus

Posted by hil

Saurus

(photo by digitaldust)

A few weeks ago I was impressed by a number of photos at Flickr showing some fabulous big dinousaur walkabout puppets at the Paradise Gardens festival in London. This was Sau’rus, an act by the Dutch theatre group, Close-Act Street Theatre. Close-Act was formed in 1991 and ‘has since grown to a professional community of actors, musicians, stilt-walkers, dancers,
fire-throwers and acrobats’. Along with technical details and the story, they also have a cool video of the dinoaurs, which shows them as quite agile and menacing, especially with the noises they make and tails whipping around as they stalk along. Looks like they have some other cool acts in their repertoire, too.

Flyingbut_hodman

The festival also had the pod puppet Flying Buttresses, a tiny elderly couple called Hodman Dodmanott and Sally Forth who ‘venture out in search of fame, fortune and friendship with all their possesions strapped to their backs. After living alone for hundreds of years they have lost touch with the realities of modern life.’ They look fun.

Update: Andrew at PuppetVision reports that Sau’rus is performing in Toronto in the The Celebrate Toronto Street Festival, July 8th and 9th. Maybe he will take some photos :-)? Yes, here they are! Thanks, Andrew.

National Puppetry Summit: Beginning

Posted by hil

IMG_1679

IMG_1678

These were some more puppets on display at the National Puppetry Summit. They featured in Terrapin Puppet Theatre’s 1985 production, Princess With The Echo.

‘Most of Terrapin’s earlier shows were designed and built by Jennifer Davidson and Greg Menthe, however Terrapin sometimes commissioned other designers. Well known Tasmanian artist Tom Samek designed these Czeck style marionettes. The heads are carved from Huon Pine.

In her welcome to the summit, Annie Forbes used these puppets as a starting point, asking if such use of the endangered huon pine could be justified, and suggesting it could, because puppetry as an artform can evoke the spirit of the tree, and take us to magic and sacred places, an idea returned to later in the weekend when Neil Cameron talked about puppetry as celebration, and a way of transforming and illuminating our everyday experiences.

Annie also spoke of some of the questions being asked about old and new puppetry, issues around which the summit program was structured:

Does concentrating on traditional puppetry forms and skills hold back new ideas and approaches?
Does not using them, in favour of, for example, the non-verbal and experimental, make modern approaches less effective?
And what can be done about the vulnerability of traditional forms in rapidly modernizing societies?

We also welcomed international guests:

  • Peter Manscher (ASSITEJ and Teatercentrum – Denmark);
  • Simon Wong (UNIMA & Ming Ri Institute for
    Arts Education – China);
  • Nyoman Sedana (HOD Balinese
    Theatre & Culture, Denpasar University – Indonesia)
  • Dadi Pudumjee (UNIMA & Ishara Puppet Theatre – India);
  • Peter L. Wilson (National Theatre for Children, NZ);
  • and several other puppeteers and makers from NZ.

(BTW, I’ve made a photoset at Flickr for my summit photos. I’m adding them gradually as I get time.)  See below instead:

(My attendance at the puppetry summit was supported by the ACT Government)

Links updated 2015

Back again

Posted by hil

Puppets by Axel Axelrad

I’ve been back a few days now, and finding it a bit hard to get my head around where to start in relating the great experience that was the National Puppetry Summit. Firstly, perhaps, a thank you and congratulations to Annie Forbes, the Summit Director and Artistic Director of Terrapin Puppet Theatre in Hobart, and all her team that orgainised it all. I hope you are all kicking back a little now it is all over!

The Summit was held in the Salamanca Arts Centre, and there were some puppets on display in the foyer. I don’t know the makers and shows they all came from, but someone told me the ones above were made by Axel Axelrad, the maker of Ossie Ostrich, and that they were never used, because the company they were made for folded before the production went on stage. Possibly this was the demise of the Tasmanian Puppet Theatre in 1980?

(My attendence at the puppetry summit was supported by the ACT Government)

2nd National Puppetry Summit, June 9 – 12, 2006

Posted by hil

Tomorrow I’m heading down to Hobart in Tasmania for the 2nd National Puppetry Summit. It’s hosted by Terrapin Puppet Theatre. I’m excited to be going, as I really enjoyed the first one four years ago in Melbourne, and it will be cool to catch up in person with other people in the puppetry community, and what they are doing. Sometimes it feels quite isolated in Canberra. There’s lots on offer in the program. I’m being supported by the ACT Government, through a travel grant.

I’m also going to be taking a short holiday in Tassie for a few days afterwards. I’m also excited about that, since I haven’t been there before.

Robotic, puppet and tape giraffes!

Posted by hil

Giraffe

Andrew at PuppetVision (now here) kindly told me about Make’s report on this huge robotic Electric Giraffe, aka Rave Raffe, a walking vehicle built by Lindsay Lawlor. It’s design follows the mechanism of a toy Tamiya giraffe:

The front and back legs opposite each other step ahead at the same time, propelled by an electric motor. When those legs land, hydraulic brakes lock the wheeled feet, and the other two legs take a step. Canting from side to side, Raffe lumbers ahead at about a mile an hour. A propane engine runs only to recharge the batteries, so the beast is quiet and efficient. When Lawlor let Raffe shuffle off alone in the desert, it walked for eight hours.
— Popular Science

You can follow the building process through to it’s completion in time for Burning Man 2005, when it fulfilled Lawlor’s original purpose, to see Burning Man from a height. The giraffe has done various gigs since then, most recently appearing at Maker Faire. (Still going 2014) Plans are now to add ‘computer-controlled flashing giraffe spots, an electroluminescent circulatory system and a gas grill’. :-)

Some other giraffes of note: