Here’s another election campaign protest involving large puppetry: Snuff Puppets took the form of one of their large Skull characters holding a jumbo jet to confront Howard and accuse him of creating terrorism.
The Skull originated as a character in the highly acclaimed Snuff Puppets production ‘Scarey’, ‘the story of a travelling troupe of giant puppets, their technical crew of skeletons and a group of exploited and neurotic humans who are a novelty act in the show’… which ‘ examines the fragility of human existence when the customary relationship between puppet and puppeteer is reversed.’
Snuff Puppets was established in the early 1990’s, having developed out of Splinters Inc, a company that produced large-scale outdoor visual works in Canberra in the late 80’s. Their reputation is for challenging, often grotesque, highly unusual and inventive works on a large scale. They also run Peoples Puppets Projects where they workshop with specific groups or communities to enable the making of ‘glorious puppet spectacles that express the joys, concerns and spirit of unique communities’.
Their web site is up-to-date and has lots of inspiring images of their puppets and productions for those of us unfortunately too far away to see their shows. Snuff Puppets and Polyglot Puppets both recently received some funding from the Melbourne City Council. Snuff Puppets will use theirs ‘to create an outdoor work for Reconciliation Week at Birrarung Marr in May 2005. It will be a collaborative work with playwright John Harding and choreographer Bernadette Walong, based on Victorian indigenous bunyip stories.’
