This is a preview of The Grimstones – Mortimer Revealed , the second show in Asphyxia’s magical gothic fairytale about the Grimstone family, following on from The Grimstones – Hatched. I love the look of these marionettes, and hope to catch a performance sometime when they tour up this way. Their touring itinerary is here.

(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.

(photo credit: stephenccwu)

This huge wire marionette appeared at the opening of the new Vancouver Convention Centre last weekend; I gather it was associated with Cirque du Soleil. It was a performance by the Underground Circus, and the marionette was made by Peter Boulanger (who was kind enough to let me know in a comment below). It’s made of aluminium (I guess it’s really thick round wire?) , and at about 40 feet, billed as the tallest marionette in Northern America. The puppet moves to music and is operated by 5 puppeteers working pulleys. In this photo you can see it standing fully, supporting two acrobats: the one in the ball and one on the length of material. This is a great photo of it, too.

(influence of Royal de Luxe? Peter says not directly, though he knew of their work)

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’ :)

This giant marionette performance was presented at the Beijing Olympics last year by the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson.  It derives directly from Royal de Luxe’s giant puppets, but the story is about a Chinese girl and a butterfly awakening one of the terracotta warriors.  If you dig down in Johnson & Johnson’s site, you can see the trailer, the story board and some cool photos of how the puppets were made.  The tie to the theme of  J&J caring seems somewhat tenuous to me, but never mind!

The companies Poetic Kinetics and AiRealistic who were commissioned to design and develop the puppets and rig, both have interesting galleries of the process. And Bankai has a Flickr photoset.

(photo: Sidat de Silva)

Looking for a Monster is based on an original puppet play written by a thirteen year old boy, Hanus Hachenburg in the Terezin concentration camp in 1943, shortly before his transportation to the Auschwitz Death Camp. In 1999, puppeteer Gary Friedman discovered the play in a Jerusalem archive. It was performed for the first time in 2001 and has just been filmed in Sydney for inclusion in Gary’s documentary film about the life of Hanus Hachenburg. Gary has a slideshow of photos taken at the shoot in the sidebar of his blog, Puppetry News, and you can also see individual photos in this gallery.

Incidentally, Gary is running another Puppetry for TV course starting in June.

(photo credit: jazamarripae)

It’s interesting when you can see a show like Royal de Luxe having an influence on the culture. I think something like that might have been at work in this dog puppet that was at Barcelona’s Món del llibre, an annual fair to promote book reading/purchasing, oriented towards children. According to jazamarripae (thanks!) there were a couple of dogs and some camels, and this strange thing, all mounted on wheels and operated by levers and pulleys.

I mentioned a giant Korean boy puppet before, but have found a few more pictures of him in Korean now: photos from anomi1: 1, 2, 3,4. I’d still be interested to find out more about him and who made him. From the same occasion there is also this face which has the same puppet mechanism marks at the side of it’s mouth.

This cool girl puppet (photo by driguiluza) in Chile, where Royal de Luxe toured earlier this year, is another example.

_Kreibel_, who started the Royal de Luxe Central group photo pool at Flickr, has some related stencils, and a tutorial on how to do them. He also has some photos of Kijk mij! a street exhibition of Jordi Bover’s photographs of the audience watching Royal de Luxe.

I caught Ronnie Burkett’s 10 Days on Earth up in Sydney last week, and it is a real treat. If you get a chance to see it, go!

The story is about Darrel, who is middle-aged and simple. His life revolves around his elderly mother, with whom he lives and on whom he is dependent, and various friends he regularly meets on his way to work as a shoe-shine boy. At the beginning of the play his mother dies, and we follow his gradual realization of what has happened, interspersed with flashbacks to other times in his life.

But there is also a play within a play, as, from time to time, Burkett reveals a separate smaller stage to tell the comic story of Honeydog and Little Burb, Darrel’s all-time favourite picture book. Honeydog’s search for an understanding of family and home gives Darrel his inner reality and context in life, including, at the end, an understanding of what has happened to his mother, and how life can continue. In other words, it’s beautifully scripted, as well as being wonderfully made and performed.

We stayed for Ronnie’s talk after the show, and it was a pleasure to hear him chat about the ideas behind the show, and many aspects of his work. He covers some of the same ground in Margaret Throsby’s interview with him on Thursday 22 Feb. I don’t know how long this interview will be available, so here is a back up. John Lambert has an excellent Ronnie Burkett page, which has reviews, technical details of the staging, a photo gallery, and a visit to the studio. I especially liked Liz Nicholl’s review, because it mentions Honeydog and his companions more than others. I also enjoyed Bryce Hallet’s account in the SMH.

Ronnie Burkett’s new show 10 Days on Earth is coming to Sydney in from 15 February – 3 March, and there is an early bird special of $38 for tickets bought for any performance from 15th to 20th February (a saving of $10 on a normal adult price). The offer expires at 5pm on Friday 9th Feb, so get in quick! If you get a chance to go, grab it; I saw Burketts’s show Tinka’s New Dress in Melbourne in 2002, and it was truly amazing theatre.

Bookings can be made on (02) 9250 7777, or at the Sydney Opera House website. They also now have an information page about the show. Burkett will also give a free post performance discussion, on Tuesday 20th Feb. I’ve heard him talk in person, and thats not an opportunity to be missed either.