Spirits Dancing

(Photo credit: Tim Raupach @ www.cutflat.net)

There are still a few days left to take your kids to Gran’s Bag at Tuggeranong Arts Centre. It’s for preschoolers through to about Year 2, and the season ends on Saturday.  The story is told imaginatively by Chrissie Shaw, and it has an innovative and picaresque quality that comes both from work-shopping with kids and Greg Lissaman’s playful scripting and direction.

Some other strange and wonderful things come out of Gran’s big red bag.  Imogen Keen and I did the design and make.

Gran’s Bag premiered in Brisbane in 2008, and has since had seasons in Sydney, Canberra and regional areas, so look out for it coming your way.

Red Leap Theatre from New Zealand will be bringing a new theatre adaptation of Shaun Tan’s book The Arrival to the Sydney Festival in January. I love the look of what I can see in this video of highlights, in particular the aesthetic feel and muted colours, the puppets and the imagery.

(photo credit: Robin Kerr)

(photo credit: John McDermott)

I saw the adaptation of The Arrival by Spare Parts Pupppet Theatre at the Unima 2008 Puppetry Festival in Fremantle. It has gone on to win a number of awards, and recently had a season at the World Puppetry Festival in Charleville Mezieres, France.  I felt the strength of that production was in the projected animations and digital imagery, and that the story line and emotional content had been simplified for a very young audience.  I hope Red Leap’s production will be able to tap further into the richness and drama that the book holds.

Previously:  Shaun Tan

Tags: puppetry, puppets, red leap theatre, shaun tan, spare parts puppet theatre, the arrival

This is the first episode in a new on-line serial exploring the adventures of the enigmatic Apocalypse Bear. A stage version of Lally Katz’s Apocalypse Bear Trilogy by Stuck Pigs Squealing Theatre Company premiered recently at the Melbourne International Arts Festival.

Photo credit: Simon Schluter, The Age

This spectacular 7-metre-tall animatronic puppet of King Kong is being built by the Creature Technology Company in Melbourne, the company that produced the amazing arena show Walking with Dinosaurs Live, which is currently touring the UK after extensive performances in the US.

The puppet is being built for King Kong on Stage, a stage adaptation for New York’s Radio City Music Hall in 2011.

According to an article in The Age,

The partially built King Kong is now a high-tech assemblage of steel, fibreglass, airbags and Lycra-encased polystyrene. When modelling is finished by late next year, he will be controlled by 70 cigarette pack-sized motors. His face alone will conceal 40 of the motors to communicate his emotions as he is transported from Skull Island to Manhattan, where he finds love with a young blonde and a precarious position on top of the Empire State Building.

King Kong Live on Stage will use up to five models of King Kong with each operated by three puppeteers using remote technology called a ”voodoo rig” from backstage.

Interestingly, in the light of the suspension of the puppetry course at the Victorian College of the Arts, Creative Technology has 32 full-time staff and 14 VCA graduates working in its puppet fabrication department, and expects to employ 60 people on the King Kong project by next year. They see the VCA puppetry course as a vital in training the type of skilled people they will be looking to employ in the future.

‘Melbourne is in the running to become the world centre for animatronic design and puppetry but it won’t happen if they remove the puppetry course,” said Mr Barcham (CTC general manager). ”Those people [making the decision] wouldn’t even know there’s a new genre of entertainment coming out of Melbourne.”

Previously:

• Walking with Dinosaurs Live
• Save the VCA and its puppetry course

I had a really enjoyable build recently, making a swag of zany puppets and props for Canberra Youth Theatre’s production TANK, which is playing now at Canberra’s spring flower extravagaza, Floriade.  TANK is a rather Pythonesque look at our relationship to water, written by Adam Hadley, directed by Pip Buining, and designed by Imogen Keen. It’s told in six 6-minute stories, played to an audience of six per story. Performances are free and run at Floriade on 12,13, 19, 20, 26 and 27 September 2009. Later, on 23 – 28 November, it will play in Garema Place in Canberra CBD, at 11am and 12noon.

Here are some of the puppets and props; check my Flickr portfolio set for others.

The meercat and the meercat hat:

Yiying Lu in the meercat hat!

I got rather fond of the hat…

The pirate captain (finger puppet):

The rat (rod puppet):

Kevin, the polar bear (worn on shoulders):

Hans and Donaldine, or the other way around… (glove puppets):

The shark (worn on shoulders):

The amoebas (glove puppets):

The eggbeater time machine! Love this great design idea!

Two rockets:

The multiple eyes of Veruna, the water goddess. In motion.

Tags: canbarra youth theatre, canberra, finger puppet, floraide, glove puppet, meercat, puppetry, puppets, rod puppet, tank

These are some of the shadow puppets I made recently for Jigsaw Theatre Company’s production of Wendy, a new musical re-imagining of J M Barrie’s Peter Pan. These and others can be seen in more detail in my portfolio set. The play had a public season at the Street Theatre and performances in schools, and received a good review in the Canberra Times.

One of the Peter Pan puppets is above. There were two crocodiles. This big one needed a handle as well as the jaw rod.

This is John flying and some set elements for the flying sequence.

Unfortunately I didn’t get photos of the puppets in action,  because they look so much more attractive and bright on screen. The only screen shot I have is this blurry one of the Marauders Rock mermaid scene, taken without proper lighting behind. I like the water in particular.

On FriendFeed today Amy today pointed to a British House of Commons debate about trying to save traditional crafts. I rather fear it is a lost cause. The upsurge in crafting and making in the last few years driven by the web is great in many respects, but I suspect probably can do little to help the traditional crafting skills of the sort referred to in the debate, as economies of scale are lined up against them.

But the article did remind me of some lovely images of traditional craftsmen by printmaker Stanley Anderson. Here are three:

Coppicing:

Chairmaking:

Basket weaving:

These are from Country Bazaar, a 1970’s book about country crafts.  (I’m not sure about copyright here – please let me know if it is an issue). You can find a few more if you google, for instance The Violin Maker, but wouldn’t it be cool if it were possible to see the whole series?

Tags: craft, make, stanley anderson, traditional craft

This is the big dead manta ray prop that I made for the Street Theatre’s production of Jacques Brel is alive and well and living in Paris.  Sadly Desirée – my name for her  – was cut from the final production, but I loved making her.  Manta rays are such awesome creatures!

Because she had a wingspan of over 2 metres, I decided chalk on the floor was a good way to start drawing up a pattern. I also bought myself a little plastic model of a manta to refer to, which turned out to be useful.

From this I traced a pattern onto butcher’s paper and from there onto sheets of polystyrene which were then built up and glued into a block.

I also decided to insert a strip of thin plywood into the underside right across the width of the wingspan, so that the wings would be protected from breaking, especially at the tips. I also did that with the fins that I added.

Then much shaping with a really sharp knife, a narrow power belt  sander, and sandpaper. I decided to keep the surface a bit rough, which often makes it easier for an audience to read.

When I use polystyrene that will just have a painted finish I skin it with muslin first. Here you can just see some of the muslin draped over the spray adhesive can on the right.

I usually add a little bit of latex to the first coat of paint to help make everything stick to the styrene.

Then it’s on to colouring; for the final shading I used spray paint so that the colours merged softly. It was tricky to seat in the eyes (painted and glossed wooden door knobs) and get the shape of the upper eyelid right.

There are a few more in-between photos in my photoset at Flickr.

Tags: Add new tag, make, manta ray, polystyrene, prop, street theatre, theatre

I noticed a flurry of searches on my blog recently for puppets from Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials but only realized that there was a new production by Blind Summit Theatre when I read on Stitches and Glue that Paul Vincett was one of the makers of the new puppets, along with the puppet designer Nick Barnes, and Billy Achilleos.

I’m really excited by the exquisite aesthetic of these puppets. Take a look at the showreel slide show or the album of stills. They suggest the essence of the creatures with the simplest of lines – just beautiful!

Blind Summit Theatre was founded in 1997 by Nick Barnes and Mark Down to make new plays with puppets for adult audiences. His Dark Materials is on at Birmingham Rep: 13th March – 18th April; and then at the West Yorkshire Playhouse : 28th May – 20th June.

There is some great puppet making information on the Blind Summit site, too, though not specifically for this kind of puppet.

Tags: blind summit theatre, his dark materials, philip pullman, puppetry, puppets

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

Tags: elephant, flying fruitfly circus, make, puppetry, puppets, the promise