Also at Flickr today is swestdahl’s photoset of images taken at XPT 2006, Xperimental Puppet Theater, which is on this weekend at the Centre for Performing Arts in Atlanta. There is a brief description of the 8 pieces here, and the XPT blog is giving a nice look at the whole process behind the scenes. I’ve been enjoying putting the two sets of images together, for instance, seeing a puppet behind the scenes, and then in performance.
theatre
Pickled Image: The Chatterbox
Skip the Budgie at Flickr has a cool photoset of action images taken during a performance of the Pickled Image show, The Chatterbox. There is more information, pictures and storyboard illustrations here on their site. They make and use various styles of puppetry and puppets. One of the styles I like is where the puppet has one hand that is actually the puppeteer’s, and one not.
(The image above is from Pickled Image, and shows Billy with Sherlock Holmes, and Billy unaware of Jabberwocky behind him.)
Men of Steel
I was delighted to find Liz Christie’s cool Flickr photoset sequence of Men of Steel in full flight at the recent Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Men of Steel made its debut at Art for Puppet’s Sake, the production that showcased the work of the Victorian College of the Arts inaugural class of postgraduate puppetry students in 2004. It’s wildly raucous and messy: a funny, high energy piece of object theatre, by Hamish Fletcher, Tamara Rewse and Sam Routledge.
Men of Steel refers to the little cookie-cutter puppets whose only language is of cries and grunts and shrieks. They perform a miniature circus act of their own with eggs and various kitchen implements, out of which comes dough, out of which come little dough puppets.
— review in The Age
And there is also the giant cookie cutter and the broccoli forest! I saw Men of Steel at the One Van Puppetry Festival in Blackheath in 2005, and it was also on the bill at the Big West Festival last year.
Liz has some other fine photos. I love her backyard set as well – lorikeets, a beautiful grub, and other stunning macros.
Links updated 2015
Images of FaultyOptic’s Horsehead
This is one of a cool set of images of FaultyOptic’s production, Horsehead, or The Rise & Fall of the Back & Front, taken by Chris Daniel. FaultyOptic is based in London, and is described as ‘haunting visual theatre, automated sets, strange animated figures, cronked inventions and macabre humour’ and ‘surreal adult puppetry at its best.
Anne Frank: Within and Without
In January the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta put on a puppet production called Anne Frank: Within and Without that looks as if it would have been amazing. An article in the New York Times, describes how the writer and director, Bobby Box
“tackles his subject by having two actresses manipulate the doll-like puppets, which look like pose-able mannequins. The actresses, pin-curled and identically costumed in prim knee-length gray wool skirts, white blouses, gray cardigans and Mary Janes, are both introduced to the audience as Anne. Sometimes they seem to be personifications of Anne’s memory or different aspects of her personality. Sometimes they seem like ghostly grown-up versions of an Anne Frank who has been allowed, in death, to age and return to tell her story.
The two performers move the puppets in and around a giant cutaway dollhouse, an exact replica of the annex rooms where Anne and her family hid. Watching grown women play with dolls this way turns out to be surprisingly macabre.
There are examples of the tender-turned-terrible throughout the show, including a cradle that later becomes the cattle car carrying the residents of the annex to their deaths.”
There is also a great slide show of some of the scenes, and puppets in action, linked in the sidebar of the NYT article.
In other accounts the production is described as ‘a celebration of life love and faith’ and ‘a meditation on hope and all that is good in human kind’.
Here are some other links:
JTOnline: Puppets tell Tragic Girl’s Story
SouthernVoice Online: Adult puppet show with two gay principals
aligns Holocaust experience with religious and political extremism that
still exists today.
Bobby Box’s photos in Amsterdam for set design
Productions in the works: notes on the production as it progresses
Access Atlanta: Ann Frank’s hope inspires puppet show (3 pics)
Updated links 2015
Searls Puppetry
Searls Puppetry looks as if they do cool productions. They specialize in object theatre, and have just been recognized by the Jim Henson Foundation with a grant in support of their newest production: OM: objects in motion coming in the northern summer. Collete Searls is a stage director who specializes in puppetry for adult audiences.
Updated links 2015
all-mother
There are only 3 days left to catch all-mother, a play presented by barb barnett‘s serious theatre and eRTH Visual and Physical at the Street Theatre in Canberra. I’m seeing the last performance, and looking forward to it.
“all-mother combines rigging and harness technology with puppetry, movement and music to re-imagine and re-tell the Lilith myth. Though hundreds of years old, the story provides unexpected insights into modern issues of human rights, gender, sexuality and the abuse of power.”
In an article in The Canberra Review barb talks about some of the issues she is exploring in the piece.
‘Springing from the question who is the puppeteer and who is the puppet, Barnett says she wanted to examine issues surrounding control. “Lilith stood up for herself – she was a powerful, strong woman,” Barnett said. “I really wanted to examine what happens when you say no and what does it mean to say no? What punishment is there for standing up for yourself?”’
Barb gave a wonderful performance as Lute in ‘scuse me while I kiss the sky (by Adam Hadley) in Catherine Langman’s production Six Pack last year. The evening featured six short works commissioned by The Street Theatre and based around the theme of love, and was the most enjoyable night’s theatre. The other performance that really struck me was that of Aiden Emanuel, the young mechanic in Carburettor (by Christos Tsiolkas).
Updated links 2015
Mummenschanz to tour Australia!
Mummenschanz, the renowned Swiss mime and object theatre group, will perform the world premiere of their new program, 3×11, a 33 year retrospective of their work, at the Sydney Theatre in Walsh Bay on 31st January 2006. The season runs till 11th February, 2006. Afterwards they tour Australia, New Zealand, and South America, where on 12th April they will open at the International Festival in Bogota, Colombia.
Bookings on 9250 1999 or Ticketek 132 849.
I’m wondering if I saw them long ago at the Adelaide Festival of Arts? Did they ever perform there? I know I saw them on The Muppet Show.
Updated links 2015
The Theft of Sita
(Photograph: Julian Crouch)
PuppetVision recently referred to The Modern Shadow where Michelle Zacharia is exploring combining Indonesian Wayang Golek puppetry and video and digital production techniques, and thinking about western influences in Indonesia. It reminded me of a production here called The Theft of Sita which was commissioned by the 2000 Adelaide Festival of Arts and received acclaim both here and overseas. It was a modern retelling of the Ramayana using shadow puppetry, and involved a remarkable collaboration of artists, puppeteers, makers and musicians.
The piece was written and directed by Nigel Jamieson (AU); music composed by the Australian jazz musician Paul Grabowsky (AU) and Balinese gamelon artist I Wayan Gde Yudane; designed by Julian Crouch (UK); and the puppetry directors were Peter J. Wilson (AU) and Balinese master I Made Sidia (who both performed in the show).
This Ramayana begins conventionally, but quickly explodes into a metaphor of the tumultuous events surrounding the overthrow of Suharto. Computer-generated images and photographic projections of demonstrations coexist with giant shadow puppet logging beasts. There are white water rafters and withering paddy fields in Bali. And Langka becomes a futuristic city of gleaming steel and glass towers, and of rubbish tips. Giant screens lift and disappear, perspective shifts from screens at the front to screens at the back of the stage. Shadow puppets emerge on tiny screens in the middle of the space and then shift again.
Robin’s article is worth reading in full, as is Peter Wilson’s account in his book ‘The Space Between: The Art of Puppetry and Visual Theatre in Australia’, where he describes The Theft of Sita as a transformation of the ancient tale into a modern allegory of environmental politics.
Unfortunately I didn’t see The Theft of Sita, but I have seen a TV program that was made about it.
The designer, Julian Crouch, has a gallery showing some of the wonderful shadow puppets and scenes from the show, including the one above. His other galleries have some gems in them, too. Just a couple of examples: a dog, some huge figures, and some rather beautiful arresting star faces.
Update 2015: broken links; also, try a Julian Crouch google image search
