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

Aha! The new UNIMA 2008 website has been launched, and registrations are open for a wonderful time next April in Perth! Looks like there are going to be some fabulous international puppetry acts, performances from many Australian puppet companies, exhibitions, master classes, carnival day, and an attempt to set a new world record for the largest number of puppets on display in the Million Puppets Project (you can send a puppet, even if you can’t get to Perth). Appropriately, given the festival theme of ‘journeys’, a bunch of intrepid puppet companies are making the journey to Perth overland from the eastern states in the Puppet Caravan road trip, giving performances and workshops along the way.

There are a range of Festival Explorer Packages and if you get in early and book one now, you can take advantage of early registration prices. This exclusive priority booking period ends at midnight Monday Oct 1, Australian Western Standard Time: (GMT+8.00), so go to it!

I’m hoping to go, not certain yet.

Unima 2008
Unima Australia
Spare Parts Puppet Theatre
Million Puppets Project
Million Puppets Project on MySpace
The Puppet Caravan
The Puppet Caravan on MySpace

If you need a jumpstart to make a puppet, there are various simple puppet design templates ready to dowload, or you can strike out on a design all your own. Let your imagination run free! Puppets will not be able to be returned to you, but they will be donated to charities afterwards. And when the display is being finalized in April 2008, you will be able to see the installation in progress via a web cam linked to the site.

Following on from yesterday’s post about the puppet-based theatre adaptation of Shaun Tan’s picture book, The Red Tree, today I discovered that Spare Parts Puppet Theatre’s adaptation of Shaun’s new book, The Arrival, had just finished it’s season in Perth. The production, which The Australian gives a rave review, uses digital animation, puppetry and acting, and is visual theatre:

‘The absence of words not only makes the story perfect for puppetry but emphasizes the isolation that is experienced by many people arriving in a new place.’

Although The Arrival book doesn’t come out until October, there is an online preview, in which you can see some of the pages, and read Shaun’s detailed description. It looks wonderful – a 128 page book of illustrations without words, a
silent graphic novel, arranged and presented rather like a photo album, which can be interpreted rather like a silent film. ‘Through a series of connecting images, it tells the story of an anonymous migrant leaving some unfortunate
circumstances in his home country, crossing an ocean to a strange new city, and learning how to live here.’

The Lost Thing, another Tan book that was made into puppet theatre by Jigsaw Theatre Company here in Canberra a few years ago, and for which I made puppets, has been touring since, and is due to have a season in Melbourne this November at the Arts Centre.

I also came across some photos at Flickr of a Shaun Tan mural at the Subiaco Library in Perth.

Update:
Talking Squid’s review by Russell B. Farr

One project that was unknown to me before, is Aquasapiens. Tan was commissioned by Spare Parts Puppet Theatre in Fremantle, WA, to design large-scale puppets for a street theatre event as part of the 2005 Perth International Arts Festival. The director was Philip Mitchell, the puppet maker Jiri Zmitko and sound designer/composer Lee Buddle. These creatures are fabulous! Here are drawings of the Yellow Naut’ and ‘Shrimpy’. I also love this.

Aquasapiens is going to be part of the Adelaide Fringe in February and March, and is available to perform at schools from February 27 to March 10.

Apparently Spare Parts will also be adapting another of Tan’s books, The Arrival, which is about migration and is due to be published in April.

‘An enchanting story where anything is possible if you invest it with
enough belief and love. Based on the classic children’s story by
Marjory Williams, (and adapted by Greg Lissaman) the velveteen rabbit is the much cherished toy of a
young boy. To his family it was merely a plush toy, in amongst many,
but the boy (and the rabbit) knew he was real. Was it just imagination
or can the bond of love make something real?’

Dates and times are available here.

I caught an interview about the production with Philip Mitchell, the Artistic Director of Spare Parts, on the ABC program Life Matters last week. You can still listen to it by following the audio link for June 7th here.

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 might

A 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.”