This is one of a cool set of images of FaultyOptic’s production, Horsehead, or The Rise & Fall of the Back & Front, taken by Chris Daniel. FaultyOptic is based in London, and is described as ‘haunting visual theatre, automated sets, strange animated figures, cronked inventions and macabre humour’ and ‘surreal adult puppetry at its best.
Erth‘s impressive Gondwana dinosaur puppets have been doing some roaming street theatre gigs. Here are some photographs of them at WOMAD, Adelaide’s world music festival, in March. These were taken by John King, and are used with his permission.
(copyright: John King)
At Flickr, Georgie Sharp also has two cool photos of her encounter with them. I think they also roamed Melbourne during the recent Commonwealth Games.
Updated links 2015
Jose at Titereblog has followed up his puppetry search engine with Puppetsfeed, a site where feeds about puppets and puppetry are being collected and listed. It’s a great idea, and it looks attractive, too. I’m enjoying the feeling that another person on the other side of the world is thinking in similar ways about using new technologies to share these things. I’m beginning to think I will have to learn Spanish, Jose! – it’s wonderful that you do so much in English.
I’ve also recently come across Jose’s Directorio de compañías y espectáculos de marionetas. Am I right that this is a directory of puppetry theatre companies in the Spanish-speaking world, Jose? I’m not sure if I should list it in Spanish or English in my OPML directory that’s running in the sidebar. Which would you like?
Updated links 2015
You know, if I was a scriptwriter, or puppetry director or TV producer, I would seriously be thinking about a production based around Mimi Kirchner‘s wool dolls. Mimi’s latest are these fabulous robots. Can’t you imagine them as the main characters in a show? Could they be some strange new manifestation of the couple in American Gothic? ;-)
Alternatively, put them together with Mimi’s big men, grandmas, fat fairies and others, and I can see them all becoming part of a whole imaginary world that has its own original style and aesthetic.
Royal de Luxe’s wonderful spectacle, The Sultan’s Elephant, is coming to London from 4th – 7th May, brought to you by Artichoke. It will take place in the streets and public spaces of Westminster, in thearea around Horse Guards Parade in St James’s Park, St James’s, Piccadilly, Haymarket and Trafalgar Square. There is a new promotional website for London, The Sultan’s Elephant. Thanks to Elfie for letting me know.
Update: I’ve added this to my previous links, and started updating there. Might as well keep it all in one place. I’ll keep tracking links there as the London spectacle develops.
Updated links 2015
I’ve been fiddling around making an OPML directory of online puppet links. I’m just feeling my way, and at the moment I don’t know how selective I want to be or how far I want to take it. It may turn out to be not very far, though it does have the capacity to include other people’s lists through distributed data entry. You can see it in my sidebar over there on the right. Try clicking all the way through on the blogs and Aussie websites; those are the ones I have been concentrating on.
Thanks to Dave Winer (OPML, OPML Editor) and Mike Kowalchik (Grazr).
Updated 2015.
Swazzle, a San Francisco puppetry company doing live theatre, has started up a great online presence over the last six months or so. Their puppeteers and builders are blogging individually, but also as a team:
They also have an interesting behind the scenes section, where you can follow the whole process of making some of their puppets. At the moment on his blog, Sean is showing how to make some pea puppets. They are pretty cute: look here and here at Puppet Greetings. Sean also has a valuable puppet building tutorial outlining how he made Ratchet,a cat in Swazzle’s show B.A.R.K. the Robot Dog.
Updated links 2015. Swazzle has a new website now.
Here is a slightly spooky thing to listen to when you are making a doll or puppet, as happened to me yesterday: The Dollmaker, a radio play by John Aiken. The doll becomes an alter-ego of its maker. I’m not sure how long the audio remains available, but give it a listen, its well done.
Another radio program I heard that caught my attention recently was about a puppet production, Operation, showing in Melbourne for the Next Wave Festival which was running at the same time as the Commonwealth Games. It was an interview with Sam Routledge, the co-director and puppeteer, and one of the graduates from the VCA post-graduate puppetry course, from which a new company, Blood Policy, has emerged. But I can’t find a trace of the interview on ABC Online.
I also heard an interview with puppetmaker Andrew McDougall a while ago, and was interested to hear that he is currently doing his Masters in Puppetry at the VCA, too.
I was wondering today — do we say puppetmaker in Australia, whereas in the US and other places they say puppet builder?
Update: I just happened across a website for Blood Policy’s Operation. It has a gallery with photos from the production.
Updated links 2015
Jose at titereblog has built a specialized puppetry search engine using Swiki. How cool is that! Thanks for the link to my puppetry links at del.icio.us (edited Oct 2014 – link now defunct), too, Jose.
I’ve just realized that my favourite puppetry blogs like titereblog and PuppetVision weren’t in my del.icio.us pages, because I am subscribed to their feeds, and read their posts as a matter of course. So I’ve added them now, and will try to add the other puppetry blogs I read as well. I’ve been meaning to make a proper list of them in my sidebar, too. Should get around to doing that.
