Eric Testroete, a 3d artist in Vancouver, made this awesome papercraft self-portrait head mask for Halloween last year. If you scroll along at his site you can see the making process. Wouldn’t it be cool to use heads like this in theatre?
puppets
Hand shadow wallpaper design
I rather like these wallpaper designs from Paper Boy Wallpaper. The hand shadow puppet one comes in inverse colouring, too.
Two puppet-related iPhone apps
Small Wonders’ Battle of Puppets is described in a detailed review in the Your Local Guardian as ‘a quirky, inventive, beautifully styled and thoroughly likeable castle defence game’. Likewise, most reviews I have seen have been favourable. It’s certainly a cute idea to frame the game as a puppet show. I quickly lost interest in the game itself, though lets face it, I’m not particularly adept or interested in that kind of game.
I think I might have more fun with Elmo’s Monster Maker:
Erth’s magnificent tiger puppet
(Photo credit: anthonyung. Thanks for the CC licence. Click to enlarge)
This magnificent tiger puppet was one of the highlights of the recent Chinese New Year Twilight Parade celebrations in Sydney. Videos at the ABC, and on YouTube show it in action, and e_yew at Flickr has a close-up of the tiger’s head.
According to Street Corner:
The 3.5 metre tall City of Sydney float is operated by nine puppeteers and has an audio system in its belly to make it roar and purr.
Constructed from found and recycled materials, the float celebrates the Year of the Metal Tiger and is a symbol of City of Sydney’s commitment to sustainability.
The Metal Tiger was built by renowned prop maker Erth and its parts include vacuum cleaners, take-away food containers, aluminium cans, bicycle parts, grid iron and hockey guards, pool noodles, old speaker boxes, kitchenware, hub caps and motorbike components.
The float will be adorned with 100m of LED bud lighting, 90 metres of rope light, and tips the scales at approximately 300kg.
Australian puppetry links and news
Towards the end of last year I added an Australian puppetry links page here. It’s listed above with the other site navigation tabs. It is a little more than links because there are brief notes with some of the entries. I also started up @OzPuppetry, a Twitter account for Australian puppetry news, which you can see running real-time updates in the widget in the sidebar to the left.
What prompted me to do both was the frustration I felt when I received an out-of-the-blue email asking my thoughts on the ‘puppetry industry, or lack thereof’, in Australia. Although in many ways I’m only on the periphery of the industry, I was aware of lots of exciting and diverse puppetry at the time, as I tried to convey (pdf). So I decided to write down publicly what I did know as links, and to track news as I saw it on Twitter.
But I should say straight up that I don’t know how long I’ll keep doing either. At the moment I’m enjoying it, but I don’t intend to tie myself to it if my interest wanes. Also, with many of the puppetry community here taking to FaceBook for notifications and networking, perhaps it is only a matter of time before it becomes redundant?
Gran’s Bag
(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.
Interview with CTC’s Sonny Tilders
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
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
(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.
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.
