Snuff Puppets recently entertained crowds at Federation Square in Melbourne with their amazing Human Body Parts puppets.

(Photo credit: Dalo_Pix2)

Royal de Luxe have just staged a Mexican re-imagining of their Little Giantess street theatre spectacular in Guadalajara as part of the Celebrando el Centenario de la Revolución Mexicana. I love the little giantess’s beautiful colourful dress and pigtails. She was accompanied by her farmer uncle, and a new character, a giant hairless Mexican dog, Xolo, who is satisfyingly doggy in the way it pricks up its ears and lopes along. There are  good photos at the Guadalajara Reporter, Super Punch, and Royal de Luxe Central. I also love this street art of Xolo.

Previous posts about Royal de Luxe and their influence.

(Photo credit: anthonyung. Thanks for the CC licence. Click to enlarge)

This magnificent tiger puppet was one of the highlights of the recent Chinese New Year Twilight Parade celebrations in Sydney. Videos at the ABC, and on YouTube show it in action, and e_yew at Flickr has a close-up of the tiger’s head.

According to Street Corner:

The 3.5 metre tall City of Sydney float is operated by nine puppeteers and has an audio system in its belly to make it roar and purr.

Constructed from found and recycled materials, the float celebrates the Year of the Metal Tiger and is a symbol of City of Sydney’s commitment to sustainability.

The Metal Tiger was built by renowned prop maker Erth and its parts include vacuum cleaners, take-away food containers, aluminium cans, bicycle parts, grid iron and hockey guards, pool noodles, old speaker boxes, kitchenware, hub caps and motorbike components.

The float will be adorned with 100m of LED bud lighting, 90 metres of rope light, and tips the scales at approximately 300kg.

(photo credit: Verieihnix, thank you)

Celebrations are taking place in Berlin this weekend for the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the re-unification of Germany. At the centre of the celebrations is a 4-day performance by Royal de Luxe‘s giant street theatre puppets, featuring their little giantess, and her giant uncle, the deep-sea diver.

Earlier this year in June the diver debuted in Nantes in La géante du Titanic et le scaphandrier, but in Berlin the back story, already one of separation and reunion, has been redrawn as an allegory for the divisions of Germany:

Berlin was once a swamp inhabited by giants.  One day, land and sea monsters tore the city in two and the Big Giant and Little Giantess were separated. The Little Giantess fell into a long sleep. When she awakes, she finds a large old mailbag containing letters between East and West Berlin, and sets out to deliver them.  After each searching the streets of the city, the two giants are reunited and symbolically return tens of thousands of letters once intercepted by former East Germany’s Stasi secret police to people watching their procession through the city.

Photos and videos are starting to appear at Flickr and YouTube, and many others will follow, but here are some links to items that have grabbed my attention so far:

• Official site: Risesen-in-Berlin: The Berlin Re-Union
• @dieriesenkommen on Twitter
• Promo with nice footage from Nantes
• Four videos of the Giantess
• Video of diver surfacing and a close up of the puppeteers
• Reuters video: Giants re-enact German Re-unification
• ABC News video: good summary in video, includes reunion between giants
• Die KlieneRiesen: photo by Gofio of the reunion, Brandenburg Gates
• Royal de Luxe Central photo pool at Flickr
• Search ‘Riesen berlin’ at Flickr, or YouTube

I’ve posted a lot about Royal de Luxe and their influence on the genre of giant puppets over the last few years and you can search here to go to those posts.

(photo credits and thanks: zetavares)

This fabulous giant Pinóquio puppet premiered last weekend at the Imaginarious Festival in Santa Maria da Feira in a street theatre production called The fantastic history of a child called Pinóquio by the theatre company Trigo Limpo ACERT. They come from Tondela, a small town in the centre of Portugal.

The choice of Pinocchio, the classic tale of a wooden boy who wants to become human, is particularly pleasing, because it reflects the puppeteers’ conceit of being able to bring inanimate things to life. And he looks beautifully articulated – I really like the way his leg and foot can turn and rest in his signature stance.

Zetavares has a great Flicker photoset of the 7 metre marionette, and has kindly let me post some of his photos here. He also has interesting sets of the making of the puppet, and the rehearsing the manipulation.

The character was sculpted by Carles of Madrid and Nico Nubiola  of Taller de escultura De la Madrid & Nubiola, both of whom were involved with the production of the opening ceremony for the Barcelona Olympics. They have a cool video of  how they made Pinóquio:

Teatro e Marionetas de Mandrágora were involved with the manipulation of the puppet. I first saw pictures of Pinoquio on their blog Espaço das Marionet@s, which I have been following for a while now.

Trigo Limpo ACERT have previously made some other great street theatre pieces, two of them large versions of traditional wooden push-along children’s toys. Memoriar na rotunda had a man pedalling a bicycle, (making photos here) and Golpe d’Asa, a bird whose wings flap as its wheel base rotates.

Remember the little elephant and boy puppets I was working on last year? Here are some pictures of how they turned out. They were for the Flying Fruitfly Circus production The Promise, which premiered at the Sydney Festival about a month ago. The build for the show was quite big, and largely undertaken by Tim Denton and Annie Forbes in Melbourne, but I was asked to make these little ones and a life-size elephant trunk (more of the trunk soon in another post). The designer was Richard Jeziorny, whom I really like working with.

It’s part of the business that directors sometimes need to alter significantly or completely cut scenes and props, and in this case the elephant was altered or remade in Melbourne so that it could have more head movement than the original design. I was given the opportunity to do it, but couldn’t take it on at the time. It looks from this picture as if it was covered and the head possibly remade completely.

The production received great reviews such as this at the Australian Stage Online. I’d like to see it one day if they tour up this way.

Previously:
A little heffalump
Playing
Studio pics
Nearly done

(photo:  rafael rybczynski)

My interest was piqued by photo #32 in the Big Picture’s post about Carnival. It’s an impressive dragon puppet float that took to the streets in the Nice Carnival recently. I don’t know who made it, but there are resonances with Royal de Luxe’s giant puppets, for instance the carving of the head, elements of the construction and operation and the way it breathes smoke.

There are some photos at Flickr. In particular, Sparrowlight has a cool sequence of photos of the dragon, including a couple of short videos, here and here ; there is a shot of the puppeteers;  and debs-eye caught the dragon at rest (click to see enlarged):

This great spider is one of the newest creatures by the French company, La Machine (that I posted about a few days ago).  Known as la Princesse, her performance in the streets of Liverpool, England, last September was a highlight of  the 2008 European Capital of Culture celebrations there. She was commissioned by Artichoke, the company who brought Royal de Luxe‘s Sultan’s Elephant to London a few years ago.

A giant spider conjures up dramatic visions of Shelob, huge rearing fangs, giant trapdoors, buildings being webbed in, or the populace being picked off one by one and spun into food parcels, tasty morsels for later. But in one of the BBC videos, her creator, Francois Delaroziere, described the emotion he wanted to provoke as ‘sweet and in love’.

There are squillions of photos of la Princesse online now; here a few links as starters:

Flickr pool
La Machine’s webpage on the event
Main BBC webpage (portal) about the event
Revealed: The secrets of the 50ft robo-spider – ‘There is never a dull moment in Liverpool’ :)

Cheryl Linnaker’s Yawaru gecko

Joan Baixas’ masterclass present the ‘Great Laughing Mutant Project’

Hersute Monsiour Telefon, the puppet I put in the Million Puppet Project

Trans Faunas by Swerve Association

Perhaps one of the creatures by Edith Cowan University Contemporary Performing group?

Murphy’s Puppets Allenby’s FAMOUS Flea Circus

Swerve Association’s sheep

My attendence at Unima 2008 is supported by the ACT Government

More photos in my Flickr photoset.

My attendence at Unima 2008 is supported by the ACT Government