Spare Parts Puppet Theatre at the Joondalup Festival

Posted by hil

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 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.”

Mixed Media Productions joins World Puppetry Day celebrations

Posted by hil

Mixed Media Productions will be celebrating WPD by presenting ‘Shoreline’, a puppetry and story-telling performance for the whole family.

The Shoreline project is part of the this year’s Mountain Festival in Hobart which takes place from 19 to 28 March 2004. Shoreline involves performing artists Thomas Zotz and Heidi Callewaert of Mixed Media Productions as well as visual artist Chantale Delrue working with diverse community groups in the Eastern Shore region of the Derwent Estuary in the City of Clarence. The artists facilitate community workshops in making artworks including sculptural works, prayer flags, masks, costumes and puppets and storytelling as performance using the history of the region and ecology of Mt. Wellington as the focus. These artworks will become part of a public installation and be the site for a related storytelling performance encouraging audience participation, at the historic Bellerive Fort reserve with Mt. Wellington as a dramatic visual backdrop.

Van Gogh Hot Air Balloon

Posted by hil

I love the hot air balloon festivals in Canberra, particularly the one on now, part of Canberra Week. Getting up and mooching around the balloons as they set up on the lawns at Old Parliament House at dawn is a lot easier in autumn than in the cold of winter when the other major balloon festival takes place. I remember when the ballooning festivals started here about 16 years ago. I was blown away by the magic of the things: their sheer size, how they looked like giant pregnant women lying on the grass; the dragon’s breath roar of the burners; and their silence in between times. I also love the special shaped balloons. Over the years the most memorable have been the birthday cake, the upside down balloon, the cow, the polar bear, the Swatch watch, the Freddo frog, and the kookaburra. Its wonderfully surreal to see these things just appear out of nowhere in the sky, or see them floating among the clouds or drifting across the lake.

On Saturday, I went to this year’s lauch of the balloon fiesta. I was especially interested in the Van Gogh balloon, which was appearing in the southern hemisphere for the first time. And it was magnificent! Its a three-dimensional balloon replica of Van Gogh’s painting, Self Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, and was made in 2003 for the 150th anniversary of Van Gogh’s birth. The face has the rather grim exacting expresssion and textured brushstroke look that it should.

Apparently the balloon was made by modelling a 3-D plaster cast of the head from a digital photo of the portrait. The original portrait is kept at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Actually there are three self portraits in grey felt hats, two in dark felt hats, seven in straw hats and two in caps – obviously he was a man who liked hats! But I imagine it is this portrait that the balloon was modelled on. The brush strokes were copied onto the model on the areas of the head that were not in the painting, and then transferred onto more than 1000 pieces of balloon cloth. This was done with a computer-directed laser printer. Up close to the balloon you can see the cloth has a definite digital print appearance, but that is lost quickly as you step away.

The other special shape balloons this year are a frog (also from the Nederlands), a bunch of balloons, an Aussie Rules football, and the Liberty House (with two cats on its roof). The advertisment for tyres on the football flapped a little at one corner, gradually came loose all down one side, and then shimmered gracefully to the ground, even before the balloon took to the sky. Which was probably a good thing if it was going to fall off somewhere.

Many of the special shape balloons in the world, including the Van Gogh, are made by Cameron’s Balloons in Bristol, UK. According to the Wikipaedia entry, Don Cameron started making balloons in 1971 in his basement, and they now make about 500 a year. You can take a virtual tour around their factory here. Camerons also make airships! And they made the Breitling Orbiter balloon that made aviation history by flying round the world in 1999. There is a model kit of the orbiter, if you fancy such things.

One of the balloonists I chatted to was telling me that Kavanagh balloons are the only manufacturers of hot air balloons in Australia. She had a Kavanagh balloon (and immediately I noticed others), and was visting from Mildura where the The Nudie 16th World Hot Air Balloon Championship is going to be staged from the 26 June – 3 July 2004. With over 80 competitors from around the world already signed up, it sounds exciting.

Harvie Krumpet on SBS

Posted by hil

Adam Elliot’s animation Harvie Krumpet won an Oscar yesterday for best short animated film. It has already been shown in cinemas in Melbourne and Sydney, but next Monday we can all catch it on SBS at 9pm. The ABC Radio National program The Makers, always worth a listen, has an interview with Elliot on audio this week, and there is an interesting online interview with him, with a variety of the characters pictured, at Sleepy Brain.