Gran’s Bag

Posted by hil

Baba Yaga puppet

(Photo credit: Tim Raupach @ www.cutflat.net)

There are still a few days left to take your kids to Gran’s Bag at Tuggeranong Arts Centre. It’s for preschoolers through to about Year 2, and the season ends on Saturday.  The story is told imaginatively by Chrissie Shaw, and it has an innovative and picaresque quality that comes both from work-shopping with kids and Greg Lissaman’s playful scripting and direction.

Some other strange and wonderful things come out of Gran’s big red bag.  Imogen Keen and I did the design and make.

Gran’s Bag premiered in Brisbane in 2008, and has since had seasons in Sydney, Canberra and regional areas, so look out for it coming your way.

Gran's big red bag

Cross-section wheat seed

Posted by hil

Cross-section wheat seed

I have some catching up to do on posting about my work projects.

First up is the cross-section wheat seed that I made for CSIRO Plant Industry, for their annual display at Floriade in September. In other years I’ve made a caterpillar and cross-section flower for them.  The wheat seed is carved out of polystyrene, and surfaced with a mixture of materials: fabric, paper mache, paint and latex. There is a photoset of the process.

I was pleased when I realized I could use a strange stretchy and very synthetic fabric for instant and variable cell textures.  I had used this fabric for skin texture on a goanna puppet in a TV pilot years ago.  At the time the pilot program was taken to a childrens’ program market in Cannes, and there was hopeful anticipation of it being sold to China. Someone with dollars in their eyes advised buying up extra fabric against the day when we went into full goanna and other animal puppet production, but there I was ten years later cutting into it for the first time!

The unlikeliest thing about the wheat seed was how cute it was. Everyone who picked it up cradled it like a baby, and admired its cute little tuft of bristles!

Special baby!

Interview with CTC’s Sonny Tilders

Posted by hil

ABC’s Radio National Artworks program has a great interview with Sonny Tilders who is the creative director at  Creature Technology Company in Melbourne, the company that produced the amazing arena show Walking with Dinosaurs Live, and is now making a giant King Kong for the stage. Exciting stuff.

The hobbit by Figurentheater Wilde & Vogel in Seattle

Posted by hil

This is a taste of a German production of the hobbit that Figurentheater Wilde& Vogel and Florian Feisel are taking to Seattle in their first tour to the US.  I’d love to see this!

The company was founded in 1997 by the puppeteer Michael Vogel (graduate of Department for Puppetry Stuttgart) and the musician Charlotte Wilde as a professional freelance touring company based in Stuttgart, since 2009 in Leipzig. In 2003 Wilde & Vogel co-founded the Lindenfels Westflügel Leipzig, where they organize events and work as artistic directors.

Terrapin puppet sale

Posted by hil

Puppet

(Disclaimer: I have no idea which puppets will be for sale, so please don’t assume the puppets in the photos here are in the sale)

Terrapin Theatre Company in Hobart is selling off many puppets from its 35 year history and that of its predecessor, Tasmanian Puppet Theatre.

The puppets will be on sale on Wednesday 25 November from 4pm to 5pm at 23 Wellington Street, North Hobart.  They are priced from $10 to $180, with the majority of older puppets at $25. CASH ONLY payment required on the day. Please don’t bring kids with you as there is as there is little room and it is semi-industrial.

When I was at the 2nd National Puppetry Summit in Hobart in 2006 there was a window display of  a wide variety of puppets from Terrapin from over the years.  This puppet with its huge head and little body was my favourite. It was made by Greg Methe for the 1997 production The Fork.

Puppet

I also loved these platypus, quoll, and Tasmanian tiger puppets that were made by Axel Axelrad. I took a number of photos of other puppets in the display, a few of them are here.

Puppets by Axel Axelrad

Baleful

Posted by hil

Red (finished)

I finished the red bird creature today and started a yellow one. I keep on thinking of this look as baleful, but the dictionary definition has more of a connotation of menace than I’m reading into it.

Yellow and Red

New adaptation of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival coming to the Sydney Festival

Posted by hil

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.

Arrival redleap

(photo credit: Robin Kerr)

arrivalship

(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