puppetry

A tentacle mechanism

Posted by hil

When I was making puppets for ‘The Lost Thing’ a few months ago we had to come up with a simply-made tentacle that could start out straight, and then reach about a metre or more, and curl around to some extent at the tip. Here is the drawing I made of the mechanism I invented, in case its useful to other makers:

Tentacle
(click to enlarge)
The tentacle shape is made of a very soft foam, and has two tracks of heavy duty fishing line running up each side, though small sections of plastic tubing. The kind of tubing I found good was antenna housing that model-car hobbyists use, because it is strong and rigid.When the fishing line is pulled the tentacle curls, and when it is released the foam itself acts as a kind of spring, returning the tentacle to an at-rest straight position. I did have to put some additional spring and rigidity in the core of the foam, though. It was an experimental mixture of different lengths of spring wire, boning and strip plastic, with the idea being to incrementally decrease the rigidity towards the tip. You have to balance aspects like having the foam soft enough to compress easily, and the core springy enough to return but not too rigid to bend easily, and so on.The tentacle was covered: a very thin layer of dacron batting to make it all smooth, and then lycra.

The curls in simple tentacles usually only work in two directions. They are mechanically similar to those intriguing flexible wooden snakes and fish whose bodies are sliced into lots of cross-sections, and then constructed again with a leather or canvass strip running up the middle of the body:

Snakecurl
A tentacle made like this moves from side to side, not up and down, or with any twisting. The thing that excited me about the foam tentacle was that by pulling on both lines with varying pressures, it would twist around in a very sinuous way. It was not a feature that could be used much in the play, as the puppeteer only had one hand free to operate the tentacle, but it was an interesting discovery. It would also be worth experimenting with trying three or four operating strings, if the base of the tentacle was in a firm housing rather than being hand-held.

The Vulva Puppet

Posted by hil

In honour of V-Day which proclaims Valentine’s Day as its own until violence against women stops, step over to Dorrie Lane’s gallery of Wonderous Vulva Puppets ™.

Hina

Each puppet is individually made using silk, satin and velvet; anatomically correct, and explicitly detailed; given a name inspired by goddesses or great female characters from folk lore or literature; decorated with hand beading and semi-precious stones; and infused with fragrant flowers and herbs. They are described as ‘an ideal gift for lovers, mothers, therapists and educators’.Update: It looks as if the gallery above is an old one, as there is a newer gallery, and a collection made from Vintage Versace Velvet. Also, the puppets are about baseball mit size!


			


	
	





			
				



	

		
A puppet  production of ‘The Mousehole Cat’

				

			Posted   by  hil		

			


	

				
By chance I discovered that the British puppetry company Puppetcraft have done a puppet show of The Mousehole Cat, one of the books by Nicola Bayley that I mentioned in my previous post.  These are their carved wooden puppets of the legendary Tom Bawcock and his cat,


Mousehole


who ‘saved the villagers of Mousehole from starvation by putting to sea in a fearsome gale on the day before Christmas eve and catching seven sorts of fish, enough for everyone to make and enjoy a life-saving, local delicacy – starry gazey pie’. The pictures and reviews on their site, make it look like a great production, and they have a recipe for starry gazey pie, too. Apparently Tom Bawcock’s Eve is still celebrated in Mousehole on December 23rd each year.

			


	
	





			
				



	

		
Don’t miss Jigsaw’s ‘The Lost Thing’ at the Sydney Festival…

				

			Posted   by  hil		

			


	

				
If you are in Sydney, don’t miss Jigsaw Theatre Company’s production of ‘The Lost Thing’ this week. Its part of the Sydney Festival, and is playing at the Parramatta Riverside Theatre, from Jan 18 – 22. Its great news that the play will also be being presented by the Canberra Theatre Centre in March.


In December at the the annual Canberra Critics Circle Awards, Jigsaw’s artistic director, Greg Lissaman, won the The Canberra Times Artist of the Year award, and the company also picked up a theatre award for ‘the excellence, impact and theatrical creativity of Arborio‘. ‘Arborio’ is going up to the Sydney Opera House later in 2005. All cool news!

			


	
	





			
				



	

		
Seventh ‘One Van’ International Festival of Puppetry

				

			Posted   by  hil		

			


	

				
The seventh ‘One Van’ International Festival of Puppetry will be taking place on January 21-24, 2005 in Blackheath in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.Ailie Cohen from Scotland will be bringing 2 shows, ‘Rumplestiltskin at the Fairytale Laundry’, and ‘Jazz Mouse’, to add to the fabulous Australian shows coming from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and north coast NSW.

It will be a chance to see Richard Hart’s Dream Puppets ‘Dreamer’ trilogy, ‘Muckheap’ by Polyglot Puppets, Aphid’s ‘A Quarrelling Pair, ‘Moon Shadow’ by Sydney Puppet Theatre and two productions by Krinkl Theatre, among others.


There will be great workshops for adults in manipulation, writing, mask and shadow puppetry and puppetry making workshops for kids.  Philip Millar, Joanne Foley, Sue Giles and Gary Friedman are among those offering workshops.


‘Nature Band’ is a community puppet project being run as part of the festival too, as Sean Manners at Puppetry Australia explains:


‘Designed by Jenny Kee, a number of large street parade puppets, celebrating the flora and fauna of the area, are being constructed by local members of the community who then will use them in outdoor events in and around Blackheath during the Festival.


Construction workshops are being run every weekend in November, December & January apart from Christmas and New Year from 10.00am to 4.00pm in Blackheath next door to the Fire Station on the Great Western Highway. All are welcome over the age of 16 to come and join in. Come for the day or for an hour.’


A full list of performers and activities for ‘One Van’ can be seen at a glance here.


An umbrella event of the festival will be a 2-day Puppetry Conference on Jan 19 & 20th in Blackheath in which there will be discussion and focus groups on various topics.  All puppeteers are welcome, but the emphasis is on puppetry in NSW. For information contact the directors:


David Collins – drcollins@ozemail.com.au

Sue Wallace – Ph/fax: (02) 9550 6457, or email spuppet@ozemail.com.au


For further information or to be on the festival mailing list contact:


Blackheath Area Neighbourhood Centre,

Gardiners Crescent

Blackheath

NSW 2785

Australia


Phone: (02) 4787 7770

Fax: (02) 4787 7777

Email: puppets@banc.ngo.org.au

			


	
	





			
				



	

		
Brumby Jack

				

			Posted   by  hil		

			


	

				
I forgot about Brumby Jack, the official mascot of the Super 12’s Brumbies, the ACT Rubgy Union team. In a daggy interview in the Canberra Times he listed ‘The Man from Snowy River’ as his favourite movie, and ‘Horse with No Name’ as his favourite song. Its possible to buy a rather frightening Brumby Jack toy.


Brumbies are wild horses in Australia, and most mums and kids know the song Brumby Jack from watching the ABC’s Playschool — ‘Here comes Brumby Jack, bringing the horses down the track…’


The other local football mascot is the Canberra Raiders Victor the Viking. His muscles always look lumpy and migratory…


Updated links 2015

			


	
	





			
				



	

		
Trauma Teddy

				

			Posted   by  hil		

			


	

				
Continuing in my quest to collect all the large puppet mascot characters around, may I present Trauma Teddy, ‘the bear that cares’, and the fund raising mascot for the Australian Red Cross. November is fund raising month for the Red Cross, and November 23nd was National Trauma Teddy Day.


While Trauma Teddy himself visits sick children in hospital and travels to schools to entertain and inform children about the activities of the Red Cross, the Trauma Teddy program is one where people in the community knit individual bears which are then given to comfort children and adults experiencing trauma. Although the bears are made to a special pattern, and you have to be a registered knitter with the Red cross to get it, each bear is different.


In hospitals now they have a machine with which you can self-administer morphine when things are getting tough. The nurse comes along and coos ‘Now how would you rate the pain you feeling on a scale of 1 to 10? 7? Well then I’ll just link you up to the … (imagine dramatic psycho stabbing music and cackles) … PAIN MACHINE!’  My only concern with Trauma Teddy is his name. Does someone come up to you and coo ‘There there, let me give you a …(uh-oh) … TRAUMA TEDDY’.

			


	
	





			
				



	

		
The Big Heads

				

			Posted   by  hil		

			


	

				
bheadsHere are some wonderful walkabout puppets: The Big Heads, made by Bim Mason. There are a few thumbnail pictures of The Big Heads if you scroll down in the ‘Companies’ section of Fool’s Paradise, and check the publicity images links. But on JaneandRichard I was excited to find two great close-ups among photos taken of the street performers at the Brighton Festival Big Weekend, part of the Brighton Festival in 2002: Big Head and Another Big Head. No wonder kids find them scarey!


Here is Fool’s Paradise’s  description of the heads:


Three giant sized latex heads (one metre high) with protruding/retractable tongues and emerging arms made by renowned mask maker and street theatre author Bim Mason. The heads can lower down to conceal the actor’s legs within, enabling intimate contact with smaller people.


The actors are linked by walkie-talkie to a minder enabling synchronised response to opportunities for interaction. It also enables sudden synchronised dancing without apparent cues. The heads are truly carnivalesque in the sense that they induce two conflicting simultaneous reactions – attraction and recoil allowing the actors to strike the right balance according to the situation. Can perform in any weather.


The University of Exeter School of Perfromance Art has some images of cool carnival masks made by second year students working with Bim Mason in 2002.  He is also the author of ‘Street theatre and other outdoor performance’ (Routledge Publisher, New York, 1992). In a paper on Wearable Performance, examining how ‘wearable computers offer the street performer powerful tools with which to create innovative experiences for the audience’, the writers (Flavia Sparacino, Alex Pentland and Glorianna Davenport) refer to five catagories of street performance that Mason identifies in his book:


“Bim Mason has carried out an extensive study of street performers. He has defined five categories that group performers according to their motivation and artistic intent. There are: Entertainers, Animators, Provocateurs, Communicators and Performing Artists. (snip…)


Entertainers are defined as those performers with the simple aim of pleasing the audience, either by making them laugh or by impressing them with skills such as juggling, acrobatics or magic. In contrast, Animators play games with the audience. They use audience interaction not just for part of the show but as the main act itself. Provocateurs are more concerned with loosening-up society as a whole. They ask questions of society by going to the limits of conventionally acceptable behavior. Communicators see themselves as educators who feel they have something to teach to the rest of society or a message to pass on. Finally, Performing Artists are mainly interested in showing an artistic work, and their own personal view of art, focusing more on form rather than content.”


Unfortunately the book seems to be hard to come by now. Maybe the library has it.

			


	
	





			
				



	

		
Snuff Puppets

				

			Posted   by  hil		

			


	

				
bheads


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.’