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.
I was delighted to find Liz Christie’s cool Flickr photoset sequence of Men of Steel in full flight at the recent Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Men of Steel made its debut at Art for Puppet’s Sake, the production that showcased the work of the Victorian College of the Arts inaugural class of postgraduate puppetry students in 2004. It’s wildly raucous and messy: a funny, high energy piece of object theatre, by Hamish Fletcher, Tamara Rewse and Sam Routledge.
Men of Steel refers
to the little cookie-cutter puppets whose only language is of cries and grunts and shrieks. They perform a miniature circus act of their own with eggs and various kitchen implements, out of which comes dough, out of which come little dough puppets.
– review in The Age
And there is also the giant cookie cutter and the broccoli forest! I saw Men of Steel at the One Van Puppetry Festival in Blackheath in 2005, and it was also on the bill at the Big West Festival last year.
Liz has some other fine photos. I love her backyard set as well – lorikeets, a beautiful grub, and other stunning macros.
From south eastern Australia, possible evidence that the Flying Spaghetti Monster was known to ancient peoples:
I’m looking forward to reading Peter Wilson and Geoffrey Milne’s book ‘The Space Between, The Art of Puppetry and Visual Theatre in Australia’. The book has just been published by Currency Press, and was launched last Tuesday at the Arts Centre in Melbourne.
‘A history of puppetry and image related theatre in Australia, written from extensive research but which also offers a personal view from one of Australia’s most experienced and imaginative puppeteers, Peter J Wilson. The book includes practical information on how puppeteers go about their work and documents a host of innovative companies and individuals who helped shape puppetry in Australia in its broadest sense; and looks at how puppetry has influenced, and been a part of, major theatre company’s programming.’
In 2002, when Peter held an Arts Centre Senior Creative Fellowship at the Victorian College of the Arts, he also brought together the celebration that was the first National Puppetry Summit , and he has gone on to develop the first Australian tertiary course in the art of puppetry at the VCA.
Geoffrey Milne is head of Theatre and Drama at La Trobe University, Melbourne. He has worked in theatre since 1967 in many capacities, especially as a lighting designer, and since the mid 1980s as a theatre reviewer for print and radio.
‘The Space Between’ is available from all good bookshops, and retails for $49.95. I’ll have to check when I get my copy, but I think the cover photograph was taken by Jeff Busby, and the featured puppets were made by Rob Matson.
World Refugee Day 2004 was held last Sunday, June 20th. In Canberra the day was celebrated with the installation of a Field of Hearts on the lawns outside Parliament House. The hearts had been sent in from all over Australia, and with messages of support for refugees written on them, were symbolic of a wish for Australia to be a more open-hearted country for refugees.
I dusted off my my two John Howard effigies for the occasion. I managed to find a way of anchoring the John Howard scarecrow in one of the dreadful white plastic bollards which, at the cost of $80,000, were installed as a security barricade around Parliament House at the time of the anti-war demonstrations in March 2003, and have remained ever since. (The government has recently approved spending $11.2 million on building a “low wall” right round Parliament House to replace them). My other John Howard puppet was one made for the coincidence of World Puppetry Day and the anti-Iraq war demonstrations. This time I sewed his lips together.
The poster I would have liked to take to World Refugee Day is the one on the left, made recently by my daughter. Its made entirely out of plastic and tapes of various kinds. This picture of the poster was taken at Reconcilliation Walk, with Old Parliament House in the background, and the ‘garden sprinkler’ flag pole of new Parliament House behind that.
In Perth, Spare Parts Puppet Theatre in partnership with the City of Joondalup will celebrate World Puppetry Day with the spectacular opening of the Joondalup Festival. The project, Animus Maximus, is supported by Healthway, the Heart Foundation’s ‘Smarter than Smoking’ message and ArtsWA.
Spare Parts Company associates, Bryan Woltjen and Karen Heathey, will not only be bringing out the giant Wubba puppet, but are co-ordinating three festival parades comprising puppets made by the children, including large scale stilt walking creatures. Narelle Simpson, another talented multi skilled company associate has been doing stilt walking classes with children in preparation for the big event on World Puppetry Day. And Sanjiva Margio has also been working with the community to create large scale puppetry parade elements.
Overview:
“The performance is a spectacle street theatre event (devised by Bryan Woltjen and Karen Hethey in conjuction with Kinross College and Warrick Senior High School) based on the 2004 Joondalup Festival’s theme of Global Village. Through the project students have undertaken workshops in complicite’, performance development, introductory puppetry skills, and construction to bring to life giant multi-operated puppets on the streets of Joondalup.
Dillo the giant scaled shape changer, a magnificent glowing raptor the size of a two story building, a graceful stilt creature and the Five Fingered Puppet King will take to the streets of Joondalup to meet at the great cross-roads for a summit which will hopefully bring peace to the global village. A village whose clans have been left fractured and fearful from the great battle which has waged for four centuries.
The setting is the third Millenia, and the formidable Dillo the scaled shape changer, protected by the legions of Dillodians has dominated the clans through sheer force and numbers but the clans have grown tired, hungry for change. A small contingent of renegades, the Aeralians have held out against the all consuming might of Dillo. Through out time, woven into the mythological threads of the clans, a prophecy has for told of a time of change. Some think the prophecy to be nothing more than a children’s story or fools riddle, but the older wiser ones Annularis, Medius, Digitus, Index and Polex whose wisdom was born long before the clashing times know otherwise.
The prophecy fortold of a great winged creature
made from neither flesh nor wood or metal nor bone,
not feathers, skin nor wire alone,
whose force if harnessed and rode in flight
would turn the scales of wrath and mightA legion of Dillodians capture a great raptor. Is this the mythological beast of the prophecy? Is a time of change at hand? Or do the fates hold another story? Set to a sound track designed by Kingsley Reeves with SPPT company associate Nel Simpson playing the character of Arial, all is revealed at twighlight at the great summit of Animus Maximus, at the cross-roads of Grand Boulevarde and Reid Promenade in Joondalup March 21st.”
