Warehouse Circus: Carnivale Puppet Parade at Floriade
Oct 18th, 2006 by Hil
Over the last few months most of my time has been taken up with a number of projects to do with Floriade, Canberra’s month-long annual spring flower festival, which finished last weekend. My biggest scale project was taking workshops with a group of kids from the Warehouse Circus, collaboratively designing and helping them to make some big puppets for a carnivale puppet parade during Floriade.
Robin Davidson was the artistic director, bringing together the eight characters the kids had proposed (The Dude (from the circus logo), the Evil Gardener, two tulips, The Pie, Mirrorman, Mini Me, and a pirate) into a kazoo band.
We used quite a broad range of building techniques and materials, many of which the kids hadn’t had experience with before. Six of the characters were on stilts, some on extension stilts, and I was really impressed with how well the kids took on the physical and mental challenges of performing the characters, and the level of confidence they developed.
Video clip: Click picture to see the Warehouse Circus Carnivale Puppet Parade.
Wow Hil! How I wish I could have been at that workshop! I’d have been a tulip. Were the kids actually walking on stilts? Also loved your espresso coffee hats. Wish you blogged more about the details of making for the uninitiated like me. It just looks like so much fun.
Thanks, Sally! Yes, the kids were the stiltwalkers!
Someone else was asking me about how the coffee cups were made. I’ve been meaning to do a post about them but have just been too busy. So when I do I’ll make sure I explain a bit about the making :-).