the promise

Testing an elephant trunk

 

The elephants in yesterday’s post reminded me of this big elephant trunk I made for The Flying Fruit Fly production, The Promise, in 2008. It was meant to wave out from behind some set element, implying the whole elephant was just behind. The mechanism was based on a tentacle mechanism I had worked out previously, but was more complicated because the control lines were too long for the see-saw lever and instead required spools to wind the lines onto alternately to take up the slack. In turn there was a lot of tension exerted on the spools, and the trunk weight added to that problem. So, not a perfect solution, but an interesting make.

 

 

I also thought this was nifty – wrinkly elephant skin made by painting latex on stretched lycra! This idea was suggested to me by Tim Denton, from AboutFace Productions, who did the major build for the show, and it worked brilliantly.

 

The Promise

Little elephant and boy 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.

Little elephant and boy puppets

Little elephant and boy puppets

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.

promise_rev

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