street theatre

The Scott Parkin Case

Last week an American non-violent activist, Scott Parkin, was arrested and removed from Australia, after having his visa revoked. The Federal Attorney-General, Ruddock, said that the Minister for Immigration, Vanstone, revoked Parkin’s
visa based on an ASIO Security assessment. “I understand the decision was based upon a security assessment, and security assessments are notsomething about which I can comment in any detail.” SourceWatch has a detailed account.

According to a radio piece on the ABC’s The Deep End on Thursday 15th (which you can listen to) Parkin uses street theatre and puppetry. For instance, his groupdoes an act called Hallibacon, which features a large inflatable pig, and protesters wearing snouts and pig masks being fed cash from a trough of public money by Cheney.

Feeding

Such protests have for a long time been regarded as freedom of speech here. In the absence of other reasons, we have to be worried that is being curtailed. On the other hand, there is speculation that our government was doing someone else’s bidding. Crikey outlines the scenario. On the ABC’s The National Interest on Sept 18th, Terry Lane claims that Kellogg Brown Root, subsidiary of Halliburton, donated $50,000 to both major political parties here, suggesting both a question mark over the opposition’s acquiescence, and an alternative avenue for foreign corporations to exercise power. The Law Report, broadcast Tuesday 19th, will talk to Parkin’s lawyer about the case.

Update: Scott Parkin’s own account of his experience

Updated 2015 – most links outdated.

Royal de Luxe: The elephant and the small giantess


Update: I’ve posted a lot about Royal de Luxe and it’s influence since this post. Click here to go to search links to all those posts.

Update 2015 – removed and struck out some broken links

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I’m blown away by the French street theatre company Royal de Luxe’s amazing street parade, ‘The Visit of the Sultan of India Atop His Time-Travelling Elephant’, which took place in Nantes last week, in honour of the centenary of Jules Verne’s death. A rocket landed just outside the cathedral in place Saint Pierre, and from it a young giantess emerged. Together with the Sultan’s huge 11 metre tall elephant with a house built into its back, she explored the streets of Nantes, taking time to eat an icecream, ride a scooter, take a shower and nap, be lifted up onto the elephant’s trunk, and eventually to return to take off in her rocket again.

Deluxe

I’ve been collecting links! If you are short on time go to the ones with asterisks. (edited Oct 2014 to remove defunct del-icio.us link).

2007:

2006:

The Sultan’s Elephant in Antwerp (added 8 July 2006)

The Sultan’s Elephant in London (added 21 Apr 2006)

2005:

Nantes official site (in French):

Other photo galleries:

At Flickr:

Blog entries:

  • dirty beloved: great links about the company; thanks Ajax! I’ve included most but not all of them here
  • jzw:1, 2 (include accounts by Ian Flanigan)*

Amiens:

About Royal de Luxe:About Royal de Luxe (French sites):

  • VTi: A Short Introduction
  • Royal de Luxe – not an official site, but pretty comprehensive – history, links to photos and reviews (thanks for the image above)* (updated link 2 June 2006)
  • Royal de Luxe
  • French Wikipedia entry
  • 1995-2002 – Karen Maldonado
  • Interview with Jean-Luc Courcoult, director (in Spanish)
  • Interview with Jean-Luc Courcoult, dirctor (pdf in English)
  • BBC Royal de Luxe photo gallery, from older productions (added 6 May 2006)

Royal de luxe at Wikipedia (added July 2007)

Machines of Spectacle

  • Machines of Spectacle exhibition

‘Hunters of the Giraffes’ photo galleries:

‘The Giant’

Catamini Attraction

Poster

  • Royal de Luxe poster for sale (image on the right)

Tour dates:

2005:

  • Nantes (France) – 22, 23, 24, 25 May. Debut.
  • Amiens (France) – 16, 17, 18, 19 June
  • La Havre – mid July (didn’t happen as far as I know)
  • London (UK) – 8, 9, 10, 11 September. (I think this did not happen because of the London bombings)

2006: (only London confirmed as far as I know)

  • London (UK) – 5, 6, 7, 8 May. See here for official website coverage.
  • Antwerp (Belgium) – 6, 7, 8, 9 July
  • Calais (France) – 28, 29, 30 Sept & 1 Oct
  • La Havre (France) – 26, 27, 28, 29 Oct
  • Paris, Bilbao, Marseilles, Valance possible

Snuff Puppets: Nyet Nyet’s Picnic

I wish I could be in Melbourne this weekend for Snuff Puppets‘ latest production, Nyet Nyet’s Picnic, which starts on Friday at Birrarung Marr on the banks of the Yarra.

In a collaboration between indigenous and non-indigenous artists, Nyet Nyet’s Picnic is a contemporary work that revives ancient stories from the dreamtime, and uses giant puppets, dance, and music in an exploration of local monsters, bunyips and spirit creatures. Described as a ‘genuinely scary, culturally enlightening and engaging night of theatre’, the performance is the cultural highlight of Reconciliation Week and is free to the public.

The photo above was taken by Ponch Hawkes, and there are three others here:
The Nyet Nyet Women
One of the Nyet Nyet Woman
The Nyet Nyet Men

Making of Nature Band Parade Puppets

Over at Puppetry Australia, Sean Manners has put together a pictorial account of the building of the parade puppets for Nature Band, a community puppet project that ran as part of the One Van Puppetry Festival earlier in the year, held in Blackheath in the Blue Mountains out of Sydney. The puppets, five yellow-tailed black cockatoos, four trees and three
waratahs, were made by participants in community workshops that were held over several months.

‘The puppets were initially designed by Jenny Kee; realized by Paula Martin, a local designer and sculptor; the workshops were facilitated by Sean Manners, puppeteer and community artist; and the performance and project as a whole was directed and choreographed by Sue Wallace of Sydney Puppet Theatre.’

The Victory Theatre Cafe and Antique Centre in Blackheath has a cool community mural along one side, that surely must also have been designed by Kenny Kee:

There is also a bus shelter on the edge of Blackheath that I liked because it has been painted to celebrate the puppetry festival (click on the thumbnails for larger images):

'One Van' Bus stop mural
'One Van' Bus stop mural

I heard the distinctive yellow-tailed black cockatoo calls when I was in Blackheath. They are wonderful birds, quite big – about 60cm – and I always feel its a good omen when they are about, though their calls are somewhat plaintive. In Canberra it used to be quite rare to see these cockatoos, but since the devastating bushfires in January 2003 they have moved into the suburbs. A few weeks ago, we had the first ones in our garden. They spent several hours ripping the bark and branches of a dying gum tree to bits in search of borer insects.

The Big Heads

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

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.’

Freeda the Free Range Canberra chook and other big mascots

bheads

Friends travelling through Sydney on election day said they had seen a number of ‘lying rodents’ outside polling booths. While I’ve seen a number on the TV news, its hard to find pictures of them online. Ambit Gambit has one – I’m guessing from the text that its Chas from The Chaser – but if you know of any others, I’d be interested.

In The Chaser’s latest series, The Chaser Decides, did you notice the blurry satirical rendition of the Abu Ghraib atrocities going on in the election tally-room backdrop behind them? In the local ACT election coverage a week ago, it was funny to see Freeda, the Free Range Canberra chook mascot making the most of that backdrop space, too. She positioned herself very visibly in the crowd milling behind the commentators, and then appeared to have a lot of fun jumping and waving to the cameras, and enthusiastically blowing kisses to us as the credits rolled at the end of the night. Free Range Canberra is a campaign and a registered political party that aims to ban the production of battery eggs in the ACT, and encourage consumers to buy free range eggs. Freeda was also pictured in the Canberra Times casting her vote, and she features in a nice Abbey Road cover spoof, the chicken ‘crossing the road to get elected’, on World Egg Day 8 Oct 2004.

Meanwhile, PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who were behind Lucy, the large sheep puppet that hugged Howard and Latham during the federal election campaign, trying to bring attention to their cause of stopping the live sheep export trade, have managed to persuade the American fashion chain Abercrombie and Fitch to ban the use of Australian-produced wool in its clothing.

Speaking of large mascots, I met Constable Kip Koala, Kenny Koala’s new friend the other day ;-). As a kid – and maybe even now! – I would have run a mile from any of these big creatures, but the kids at the family day seemed to love him.

I’ve also noticed that the National Heart Foundation Australia now has a big red heart mascot.

Floriade: Giant Lifesavers, Tyre Swans, Rainbow Serpents

bheads

Here are some pictures of a few other things that took my fancy at Floriade – I like the roving entertainment more than the massed European flowers.

There was a rainbow serpent swimming in Nerang Pool, designed and created by Aeon Mortimer. Its a big inflatable, and apparently it can spray a fine mist of water from its spines, creating rainbows in the air around it. Nice idea. Aeon’s puppet play The Great Big Story Book was also there. Designed as a giant pop-up book, it tells a version of the dreamtime story of Tiddalik the Frog, with puppet creatures stepping out of the pages of the book. (My favourite picture book version of Tiddalick is What Made Tiddalik Laugh by Joanna Troughton. It has lovely illustrations, and the kind of lame jokes that pre-schoolers love because they are so lame.)

I was also enjoyed catching up with Jigsaw‘s Flotsam and Jetsam, a one-woman show acted by Chrissie Shaw, and based on collected stories of children who lived on lighthouse islands in Australia. I particularly liked Mrs Ingram’s windswept dress that could be slipped into and out of in a flash.

Icarus Performance Troupe from Sydney were lots of fun, jogging about the gardens as giant muscle-bound lifesavers. They blew their whistles, bossed the crowds into swimming between the flags, and struck stong-man poses (complete with appropriate grunts and roars!) at the drop of a hat.

The flock of 100 black swans made from old rubber car tyres interested me not so much for what they were, but as a reflection on the fact that when they were common garden decorations in the 50’s and 60’s (or earlier) they were always painted white. I suppose they were part of that era’s acceptance of the idea of England as the home. As reported in the Canberra Times, the swans were made by Greg Hedger of Limestone Creek Enterprises:

‘Mr Hedger said each swan took about an hour to fashion – once he had the design sorted – plus a bit of time for painting. The tyres were heated by engine exhaust or in a glasshouse so the rubber was easier to cut and twist inside out.

The tyres were sourced from a company in Melbourne, which was believed to have held a stockpile for use as swings. While the steel belting in a modern radial tyre is good for motorists, it does not wear safely in children’s swingsets. Neither is it suitable for swan sculpting, because it’s too difficult to slice.

Sizes ranged from 12- and 13-inch car tyres to truck tyres. Mr Hedger’s offerings have been planted with a new variety of pansy, named Waterfall.

After the festival, Mr Hedger intends to take the swans under his wing. While the Floriade examples are under offer – Mr Hedger’s wife has her name on two – he’ll take up the slack afterwards. He’s already had orders from ladies in Burra and Orange and a school in Armidale. He had no idea what the swans would sell for, but would probably charge less than $100 apiece.’

There is an article about the traditional Australian art of sculpting swans from old tyres here.

Finally the Scarecrow Competition :-). I have a soft spot for the scarecrows because they come so much from the everyday community, and because such a wide interpretation of the concept of a scarecrow is acceptable. Here are some photographs of just a few of them that took my fancy:

Domestic Goddess (Woman of Steel, With Forked Tongue, Ready to Spring) by Barlin Event Hire
In Bega Everyones Dreaming of Rain, by Merimbulla Rudoplh Steiner School. The Bega Valley down on the south coast is dairy country, and must be feeling the drought as much as any of us.
French Frog by Telopea Park School. Appropriately, Telopea is a bi-lingual English/French public school.
Bunyip, by Hindmarsh Student Group (?)
Mermaid, by Braidwood Preschool Association. Their use of tin lids for scales is very effective, just as good as the CDs that many others used, for instance in the following one.
Fish, by Waniassa (?) Learning Support Unit
Refugees and Asylum Seekers don’t want a Red Carpet Welcome, by Amnesty International. I’d like to think they were prompted by my Howard last year.
Person in the Bath, by Radford College
Dragon, by the O’Connor Co-operative School. A long rhapsody in plastic!

Old Parliament House’s ‘Big Heads’ Puppets at Floriade

Floriade has been on for the last month in Canberra, and tomorrow is the last day. I went in last weekend hoping to see the Old Parliament House Big Heads. These are much-larger-than-life-sized body-suit puppets of parliamentarians from days gone by. Their usual home is Old Parliament House, which is now a parliamentary museum, where they stroll around bringing the past to life.

Last year I got photos of the original three Big Heads in the Scarecrow Drive at Floriade, having an encounter with The Fool Factory‘s alien, Solar Flare:

An altercation between Solar Flare and Andrew Fisher and Alfred Deakin.
Solar Flare and Andrew Fisher shake hands.
Sir Edmund Barton takes liberties with my John Howard Scarecrow

This year there are two new Big Heads, Doc Evatt and Bob Menzies. While they have been made by the same company, eRTH, these ones have a less stylised look about them, and are more realistically modelled on the historical figures they represent. I think they are really cool. I love the demeanor of Doc Evatt, and his brown suit is just right.

eRTH is a Sydney company that does innovative large-scale theatrical performances which include ‘giant puppets, huge inflatables, acrobatics, aerial and flying creatures, stilt-walking costumes and pyrotechnics’. I would have loved to see their Gargoyles clambering over the outside of buildings, or The Neds ranging through city streets. At Floriade this year, they were also present as the Waterheads, four people with their heads in tanks of coloured water, strolling through the beds of flowers.