puppets

Compagnie Philippe Genty’s ‘Vanishing Point’ currently touring Australia

Posted by hil

‘Vanishing Point’ had its Australian premiere in at the Canberra Theatre Centre last week. It is the latest production by Compagnie Philippe Genty to tour Australia, following Stowaways in 1996 and Dedale in 2000.

There were some wonderful scenes, of which I had two favourites. One was a conversation between a man and a dog whose mimed gesticulations extended into visual question marks, arrows, punctuation, aggressive lines and sharp angles that attacked, choked and tickled. It reminded me of Victor Borge’s aural Phonetic Punctuation skit, and also of the great ‘piece of rope’ puppet in Company Skylark’s production of Wake Baby some years ago. My other favourite scene involved a puppet that I particularly liked: a grotesque and huge inflated ogre who several times proceeded to swipe and eat the head of one of the men. In an article by Irma Gold in the current issue of Artlook,

“Genty explains that working through these ideas in Vanishing Point was cathartic. ‘I found that this huge, monstrous thing I had inside myself was actually deflating. Indeed, this is actually what happens on stage. At the end you have a huge monster almost four metres high, which is an aspect of the subconscious of the main character, and finally it deflates in the longest fart in theatre history!'”

I thought the manipulation of a bird puppet that was also eating a person was really good, as were the two scenes where people were floating and diving high in the air, and the tiny shadow puppet crowd at the very end. I also enjoyed the aesthetic quality of the music, lighting and illusions.

There were two themes along the lines of ‘maybe what you are seeing is a little bit of yourself ‘ and ‘the murderer is also the victim and vice versa’, but I didn’t follow any particular development of them beyond that. I understand that part of the idea of the play was to present surreal sequences of interior landscapes that, like dreams or inner conflict, are puzzling. The audience interacts by trying to figure it all out and interpret it like the images in a dream, rather than being given a rational path to follow. Hopefully they find different perspectives on their own inner experiences through recognizing some of the images. I have mixed feelings about the success of that. I think one probably needs to see the show more than once to really explore the images and the connections between them, and few of us get that opportunity.

Here are the dates for the Australian Tour of Vanishing Point:

Canberra: July 6-10, Canberra Theatre
Sydney: July 14 – 31, Sydney Theatre at Walsh Bay
Adelaide: August 4 – 7, Her Majesty’s Theatre
Melbourne: August 11- 21, Comedy Theatre

A review:
Vanishing Point, Compagnie Philippe Genty, by Jill Sykes, Sydney Morning Herald

Some pictures (by JoJo):
Canberra Theatre Vanishing Point Photo Gallery

The picture accompanying this post is from the collection above.

Australian Puppeteer Magazine call for reviews

Posted by hil

The Australian Puppeteer Magazine looks at national, international and historical puppetry news and events, reviews, and philosophical and technical discussions. You can recieve your copy by joining UNIMA Australia. The Winter edition of the magazine is due out soon, and the editor invites those of you who have attended recent puppetry performances to review them for the magazine. Please forward reviews to the editor. The deadline is June 10th, 2004.

touchy-feely

Posted by hil

Here’s an unusual concept: Kirsten Johnson’s touchy-feely galleries of oil paintings of sock puppets, each one expressing a different emotion. They remind me of emoticons.

Anita Sinclair’s book ‘The Puppetry Handbook’

Posted by hil

Anita Sinclair’s book The Puppetry Handbook is a really useful comprehensive resource for anyone involved with making puppets. It has detailed coverage (including many drawings) of the main techniques, processes and materials that are used for building all kinds of puppets, and also gives consideration as to which sort of puppet to build for different circumstances. It also has good advice on all kinds of puppetry performances and teaching puppet making. A friend of mine was showing me a new edition that she had recently ordered. Its now spiral bound and slightly larger (about an A4 size) than my old copy, both good changes I think.

Milo the Clown’s Snow Show

Posted by hil

I’ve recently finished a small Frosty the Snowman puppet for The Fool Factory. Frosty will be joining Mini Milo and Milo the Clown in Milo the Clown’s Snow Show, playing at Thredbo’s Fun and Games Room from April 10th through 16th.

Punching Nuns and other fighting puppets

Posted by hil

Now it looks to me as if my fighter pens might be part of a longer tradition:

If you google for boxing puppets, the one that comes up most often is the Punching Nun. I suppose there is something intrinsically funny about peacable or unlikely figures fighting. The punching nun and similar puppets – and there are a bunch of them – are bigger than the fighter pens, being about 30cm tall. They also have a springy neck so that they appear to duck and weave as they box. I haven’t seen one to look at closely, but here is a nice discripton from American Science and Surplus:

‘Maggie In A Habit
AKA “The Fighting Nun”. A nun puppet in full habit with two arms ending in boxing gloves. The puppet is mounted on a stick which you can hold in your hand (dare we say under her habit??) leaving two fingers free to work the controls for the spring mounted arms. A flick of the finger and she unleashes a swift left or right jab, fighting for the right!! We know she is fighting for the right, because under the habit is the face of Maggie Thatcher, as you can tell if you peek. Seems a manufacturer got stuck with the doll mold and a zillion heads just when she was ousted as PM. An entrepreneur bought up the works and created the fighting nun. Somehow, we think Maggie would approve. As will you.’

Where you find the Punching Nun, you are likely to also find these versions: the Devil, a Rabbi, and an Amish, and, less commonly, skeleton, alien, dinosaur, and kangaroo punching puppets. There are also a couple of punching puppets related to the “Lunar” gaming series, anime figures called Ghaleon and Alex (links not available anymore). And these punching puppets are being sold as items to go in a photographer’s bag of tricks to make people smile. Perhaps they are Moe and Curly from The Three Stooges?

The Punching Abe Lincoln puppet is not the only punching politician. Here is Ronald Reagan duking it out with Mr.T. Mr. T and Rocky from the film Rocky III appear as a set, too.

Going back further, it looks as if this idea may have originated with puppets of real boxers. A few weeks ago Ebay sold a set of Mohammad Ali and Howard Cosell boxing puppets for US$19.99, described as follows:

“The puppets have a company logo that appears to be the letters S.Y.C. (the Y might be a V) inside an oval, and they are marked Made In Hong Kong. I cant find a date on these toys, but they appear to be younger versions of both men. They are wearing boxing gloves and have on red robes with white rope sashes. Iside the robes are two levers to control the punching action. Both of these puppets are in excellent condition, with very little, if any wear, although there is a bit of on the ends of the rope sashes. The boxing action on both puppets is in great working condition. As stated above, I am not sure of the name of the manufacturer of these puppets or when they were made, but if you are a boxing fan and remember the friendly antagonism between Ali and Cosell, you should appreciate and value these unique collectibles.”

And at Mr.Punch’s Old Toys, there is a 1970’s African-American boxer punching puppet, ‘undoubtedly inspired by boxing legends such as Ali and Frazier’.

And what directions for the future of punching puppets? The Character Shop mentions the Duracell boxers characters created for a Duracell commercial, which have animatronic movements of heads and arms.

And The Intelligent Machines Design Lab has a page of final papers decribing an intreguing range of robots. One of these details ‘Sister Roboto’, a robot designed by Phillip Thomas, which uses a punching nun mechanism which has ‘servos to position it for optimal punching’. ‘It seeks out targets in need of a pummeling and attempts to destroy them by punching them repeatedly until they are knocked over’. If she is successful in knocking over her target ‘ she celebrates by spinning around, if she is unsuccessful she shakes back and forth’ before moving on the find another target.’

Kangaroo Boxing Pens

Posted by hil

A few months back someone gave me two kangaroo boxing pens. They are unwieldy to write with of course, but as gag puppets they are fun and surprisingly well made. They have two levers in the back which you operate with your thumb, so the kangaroo can box with each arm individually.

Now these aren’t the only fighting pens on the market!

For a start, these relatives of my kangaroos don’t look as amiable as mine. They have more arm muscle, and if they didn’t have such long ears could be mistaken for dingos. But they do have see-through torsos, and it would be cool to be able to see the mechanism working inside without having to take it apart. (Been there done that, broken pen). And they come in brown, russet, grey and tan.

Then today I discovered that my pens are part of a larger family of fighter pens made by My Chance, a Taiwanese company ‘devoted to plastic injection items, all in-house manufactured’. Take the link to pages 2, 3, and 4 of their pens section, and you strike gold :-P! I had seen the frog and smilie (they call it a ‘ha-ha’) before, in this clip of them doing battle. But there are also squadrons of fighting pig pens, horse pens, unicorn pens, and hippo pens! Most are available with round pen caps, or caps which look like shoes. Possibly even more exotic, there are Halloween pumpkin, ghost and witch fighter pens, and Christmas elk, Santa and snowman fighter pens. For peace on earth, presumeably.

Hiram Terrazzo’s Lounge of Leisure

Posted by hil

Some new season’s dates for Hiram Terrazzo’s Lounge of Leisure, which features puppetry, magic, music, site acts and kooky acts:

New seasons dates : Fridays 19th March, 23rd April, 21st May, 18th June 2004
Where : Dante’s Fitzroy, cnr Gertrude and Napier, Fitzroy, Melbourne
Show starts : 8.30pm

Mention this poster for a smile and a wave at the door.

Puppet making workshops with Gary Friedman

Posted by hil

Gary Friedman, who is an internationally renowned producer, director and puppet performer, with over 30 years of experience working on educational puppetry programs throughout Africa, Canada, Australia and Europe, is running some puppet making workshops in the middle of the year.

Gary has conducted puppetry and visual theatre workshops in a number of interactive environments. In the early 1980s, he produced and performed socio-political live performance satires such as Puppets Against Apartheid. He is also known for his puppetry programs, such as Puppets Against Aids, Puppets in Prison, Puppets for Democracy, Puppets Against Corruption, and Puppets Against Abuse. In 1994, he formed African Puppet Television, and later developed and co-produced a children’s educational series, in six local languages, in which he performed a character that travelled the country discovering children and their cultures throughout South Africa. Gary immigrated to Australia in 2002 and is now based at the Seymour Theatre, University of Sydney.

In collaboration with AFTRS, FTI, and Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, Gary will be conducting workshops in Fremantle, WA, from 5-9 May 2004. These include workshops on Puppetry-in-Health, Education and Community Development and an Introductory Workshop on Puppetry for Television.

Gary will also be holding a Puppetry-for-Television Workshop during June and July 2004 at the Seymour Theatre, University of Sydney.

Details of these programs can be found at Unima Australia, or by contacting Gary:

Gary Friedman Productions : Seymour Theatre,
University of Sydney, PO Box 1125, Bondi Junction, NSW 1355, Australia
Office : 02-9351.7948
Mobile : +61-401-038.985
Email : gary@africanpuppet.com
Web : africanpuppet.com