street theatre

From the UNIMA World Puppetry Festival

Posted by hil

I’m spending the first few days here at the in Perth at the 20th UNIMA World Puppetry Festival doing the master class Making Ningyo-Joruri, given by Nori Sawa. I’m really enjoying it. Nori says his workshop usually takes a week, so we are working hard to fit it in in 3 1/2 long days. So not much time to dally on the web at the moment! One of the nice aspects so far has been meeting up with fellow bloggers Naomi Guss (who is sharing the masterclass with me) and Gary Friedman.

I’ll have some photos taken in the workshop later on, but here are some taken during the first evening.

Some of the roving entertainers, Riders, were at the Welcome BBQ and Official Opening at the Perth Town Hall last night.

UNIMA World puppetry Festival

UNIMA World puppetry Festival

UNIMA World puppetry Festival

Molly and Jacko were part of the official party and the Welcome to Country given by the local indigenous people.

UNIMA World puppetry Festival

UNIMA World puppetry Festival

The UNIMA poster catches the light on a lovely mild Perth night.

UNIMA World puppetry Festival

Gabrielle Griffin performing at the Transit Lounge:

UNIMA World puppetry Festival

actgov.jpg

My attendence at Unima 2008 is supported by the ACT Government

Walk against warming

Posted by hil

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The Walk against Warming on Sunday drew about 9000 people in Canberra. It felt substantially bigger than last year. As yet neither of the major parties are addressing the issue with the seriousness it deserves, which has surprised me in a way. I thought it might be the clincher issue for a Labor victory. The tubeman above was at the side of the crowd, encouraging us to keep industrial relations rights in mind when we vote. This puppet was perhaps, but not conclusively, a John Howard?

I had some fun looking at Flickr for other WaW puppets. By far the most interesting to me were four big puppets at the Adelaide walk: Al Gore, Albert Einstein, Vandana Shiva, and Mikhail Gorbachev. I’d like to know who made them. Here is a selection of others:

DIY Jabba the Hutt

Posted by hil

A thread on Star Wars Crafts documents the making of a cool giant Jabba the Hutt parade puppet. This photo is from about midway through the process, before it is skinned. It’s made from all kinds of things that I am very familiar with working with – mattress foam, irrigation pipe, tons of hot glue, spray adhesive, stretchy fabric and so on! And it has a suitably gross tongue, seen in action here. (It reminds me of the Big Heads.)

If you are interested in the making of the original Jabba, follow the links in this post at PuppetVision.

(via Boing Boing)

Leunigology

Posted by hil

Boat of faith

(Photo credit: Cheryl Lawrie)

I’m kicking myself for missing Born in a Taxi’s The Boat of Faith street theatre act at Floriade. It was created for the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games and is based on Michael Leunig’s whimsical cartoon characters Mr Curly and his direction finding duck, old favourites of mine. Bryony Anderson was the designer maker.

Mr.Curly's direction finding duck

(Photo credit: Cheryl Lawrie)

I have found a few nice photos online, though:

Born in a Taxi: a sweet short video and photos under the entertainment tab

The Boat of Faith at Floriade: 6 photos

Leon~’s photos from Floriade: 9 photos

At the Melbourne Festival

Influence of Royal de Luxe spreads

Posted by hil

Dogpuppet

(photo credit: jazamarripae)

It’s interesting when you can see a show like Royal de Luxe having an influence on the culture. I think something like that might have been at work in this dog puppet that was at Barcelona’s Món del llibre, an annual fair to promote book reading/purchasing, oriented towards children. According to jazamarripae (thanks!) there were a couple of dogs and some camels, and this strange thing, all mounted on wheels and operated by levers and pulleys.

I mentioned a giant Korean boy puppet before, but have found a few more pictures of him in Korean now: photos from anomi1: 1, 2, 3,4. I’d still be interested to find out more about him and who made him. From the same occasion there is also this face which has the same puppet mechanism marks at the side of it’s mouth.

This cool girl puppet (photo by driguiluza) in Chile, where Royal de Luxe toured earlier this year, is another example.

_Kreibel_, who started the Royal de Luxe Central group photo pool at Flickr, has some related stencils, and a tutorial on how to do them. He also has some photos of Kijk mij! a street exhibition of Jordi Bover’s photographs of the audience watching Royal de Luxe.

Where the Wild Things Are: link dump

Posted by hil

Sendak

(Photo credit: wellingtonany)

Mentioning the Spike Jonze film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are a few days ago reminded me that I had a bunch of WWTA/Sendak links that I collected when I was trying to scrounge information about the film. (As it happens they are keeping things very well under wraps, which is understandable.)

Take a Swim on the Wild Side: article about the filming taking place in Nov 2006 on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. There are two pictures of one of the monsters on the beach,and wading out in the water, but don’t get too excited – they are so tiny you can’t really make anything out! It describes the puppets (made by Henson) as follows:

The seven creatures stand up to 275 centimetres tall. Although made of foam, they are heavy and hot for the actors and stunt doubles operating them. Word is they wear them with the head on for no more than 30 minutes at a time, with 10 and 15-minute breaks in front of an air-conditioner… Heavy boots inside the suit and massive clawed hands make it difficult to move.

Loungelistener’s photoset of the performance of Where the Wild Things Are at Detroit Opera House, performed by the Grand Rapids Ballet. Some very cool picture of huge puppets on stage and behind the scenes.

Hand puppets and soft toys, and here
Action figures 1,2,3,4,5,6
Graffiti/stencil in Melbourne
Stencil art
Jack-o-lantern
Leg tattoo
Max tattoo
Mural in LA
Mural at the Philadelphia Flower Show, 2006
Costumes at DragonCon
Float in Mardi Gras, New Orleans, 2006
Pavement chalk art
6 part home videos of WWTA Interactive Metreon theme park – glimpses of one of the big puppets.
The Rosenbach Museum has Sendak Gallery (holding original drawings), shop, and is hosting a Spring Festival this coming week
Mommy a video about Sendak’s new pop-up book.
WWTA animation, I think the 1988 one.

There now, I can delete my Wild Things bookmark folder!

FantiSea: Giant sea creatures in Esperance

Posted by hil

Haylis_logo (Cool festival image by Haylie Michelle)

Over in Western Australia, designer and maker Bryan Woltjen and animateur Karen Hethey have been engaged for the last few months on the huge task of designing and building 8 giant puppet sea creatures for FantiSea, which will be held on 22 March as part of the Esperance Festival of the Wind. The festival was at first an art-themed celebration of the positive energy wind brings to the town, and has now evolved into a celebration of ‘community, art, culture and shared fun’.

The building of the giant marine puppets is one of those great projects in which the participation of number of community groups, schools and individuals is integral. The festival’s Workshop Gallery has photos that were taken during the first phase of the build at the end of last year, when the ‘unskinned‘ puppets were built, and some of them were used in the inaugural Christmas pageant in Esperance. You can see how the frameworks are made from a mixture of bamboo and cane, with wire and gaffa joins. I love this picture of the unskinned eel! I would really like to be involved with making puppets of this sort sometime…

More recently during the second phase, the puppets have been skinned with muslin, dipped in diluted PVA, and dyed. Also, Karen Hethy is now teaching performers how to animate the giant puppets and doing stage rehearsals in conjunction with local scriptwriter, Derek Clarke.

Lurk, the shark:

day 07 lurk first fitup

Lighting up Ziggy, the leafy sea dragon:

3 ziggy lighting install-1

The gorgeous Dame Agatha, octopus:

6 dame agatha the painted lady

The crab (love this one!):

day 05 bruce & bryan in sailboat

The workshop shed full of finished puppets:

8 to this (wk 6 day 5)

You can click the photos to see them enlarged, and there are more photos here. I think they are wonderful! Thanks, Bryan, for sending me the photos and telling about it all, and I hope to be adding more photos of the actual event.

Update: Photos from the event have now been added.

Now a giant boy marionette

Posted by hil

Today I came across this photo of a giant boy marionette, taken in Sydney’s CBD in late January. It’s very much like Royal de Luxe’s little giantess (who has been visiting Santiago, Chile, in the company of a rhinoceros) but I doubt he is theirs. Does anyone know the film company, or what production they were working on?

Update: A couple of people have uploaded videos of the puppet. Apparently it is to be in a Korean clothing commercial of some sort:

Marionette
Giant Puppet in Syndey

I assume this was a practice session, since the articulation has a way to go, but it’s interesting to see how tricky it is after the seemingly faultless performances by Royal de Luxe. The hips look a bit too wobbly as if they might need to go back to the drawing board, but the untidy looseness in the legs and arms lend a bit of boyishness at times. I wonder what it is made out of? I’d guess plastic not wood. I was really surprised that Royal de Luxe uses wood.

Look what I found…

Posted by hil

Two video clips at YouTube of that cool puppet in Berlin that I blogged about in October!

Puppet Run
Titere Andante

Still no clue as to who the performer group is.