I’ve been making some puppets for Biami, the creation story of the Wiradjuri people, by Duncan Smith and Maitland Schnaars, which will be performed for the Kids, Creatures and 100 Harlequins – Centenary Children’s Week Celebration on 25 & 26 October in Glebe Park. (It’s part of the Centenary of Canberra project.) Today I finished the goanna!
I was flipping around the channels on the TV a few minutes ago trying to find CNN. (This sounds nonchalant, but it really means beating the living daylights out of the remote to make it work). Instead, I landed up on the Information Channel – I have no idea what this usually shows, I will have to ask the kids – and much to my surprise it was showing tumblegum.com, a pilot show that I helped make puppets for in 1999. My puppet was Spike, the larrikin goanna, played beautifully by Peter Wilson, Australia’s most outstanding puppeteer. Here’s Spike on location at Googong Dam:
He was about 6 feet long, and had huge claws made from chopping board plastic (which incidentally is a very useful material, being relatively strong and soft to work). I have pictures of him lolling immodestly on our trampoline in the sun while his paint dried.
As far as I know the show never made it beyond the one-off pilot, though it was marketed with great optimism overseas at Cannes and in China, so it was unexpected and good to see it at least getting a showing. As a puppet maker, you have to get used to the reality that the time it takes to create a puppet is usually quite out of proportion to the time it’s actually on stage or screen. So it’s a nice feeling when their lives are extended into another season, or the show tours here or overseas for some years to come.
