Australian hand shadow puppeteers

Posted by hil

The Sydney Morning Herald today talks to Raymond Crowe, a self-described ‘unusualist’ – ventriloquist, magician and hand shadow puppeteer from Adelaide – who, after 26 years in the business, has found at least temporary fame on YouTube with his Helpmann Awards shadow performance of Louise Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World:

Sean Kenan, another Australian hand shadow puppeteer, also has a presence on YouTube, and has recently been invited invited by the Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop to perform at the World Performing Arts Festival in Lahore Pakistan later this year.

UNIMA 2008: registrations open, looking cool

Posted by hil

Unima2008

Aha! The new UNIMA 2008 website has been launched, and registrations are open for a wonderful time next April in Perth! Looks like there are going to be some fabulous international puppetry acts, performances from many Australian puppet companies, exhibitions, master classes, carnival day, and an attempt to set a new world record for the largest number of puppets on display in the Million Puppets Project (you can send a puppet, even if you can’t get to Perth). Appropriately, given the festival theme of ‘journeys’, a bunch of intrepid puppet companies are making the journey to Perth overland from the eastern states in the Puppet Caravan road trip, giving performances and workshops along the way.

There are a range of Festival Explorer Packages and if you get in early and book one now, you can take advantage of early registration prices. This exclusive priority booking period ends at midnight Monday Oct 1, Australian Western Standard Time: (GMT+8.00), so go to it!

I’m hoping to go, not certain yet.


Unima 2008
Unima Australia
Spare Parts Puppet Theatre
Million Puppets Project
Million Puppets Project on MySpace
The Puppet Caravan
The Puppet Caravan on MySpace

Kicking up my heels

Posted by hil

Amophoid

Playing around after discovering the wonderful drawings of Jim Woodring.

Amenoid2

Amophoids3

Stronger and smarter

Posted by hil

Chris Sarra is enlightening.

He says the proposed government ‘management’ of the welfare payments of indigenous parents whose children are repeatedly absent from school doesn’t address the heart of the matter: that schools must be places that the kids want to go to, that address their and their communty’s needs, and provide them with top quality education to become stronger and smarter. For Australia to do less by our indigenous kids is a form of racism. In all the depressing commentary around the Howard government’s indigenous intervention, this interview is the wisest opinion I have heard.

Crow time

Posted by hil

Crow

A crow was casting a hopeful eye at our ducks yesterday, and said I thought it was too early for it to be expecting any eggs yet, with spring still some weeks away. This morning, there was the first egg of the season. Crows are most amazing! I brought the egg inside and then managed to drop it on the floor.

Cool cuttlefish and blenny puppets

Posted by hil

Cuttlefish

Raggy Rat has made a couple of beautiful marine-themed puppets for Portland’s Seafest: a cuttlefish and a tompot blenny.

Blenny

There are some great photos and commentary on the making process here. I love the mixing of different types of fabric, and the wool in particular reminds me of Mimi‘s use of wools. I’m looking forward to seeing photos taken at the festival, too. (And look at this cool jellyfish cake!). Thanks for letting me post your photos, Cat!

A strange girl

Posted by hil

My friend Lynda would like to know seven strange things about me… Thanks, Lynda.

  • I disliked dolls as a child, but loved teddy bears and other animal toys. My favourite was a panda I was given when I was about 4. I was fluent in Panda talk. Another favourite was a little German-made bear that I was given to keep in my pocket on the plane when my family moved from South Africa to Australia when I was seven. (I don’t think he is a Stieff bear, because I don’t remember him ever having a stud in his ear, but he is a dead-ringer for Peter Bull’s bear, Theodore, that sold for a fortune in 1995.)
    Edward Bear
  • When I was little I used to save up my pocket money for 10 weeks to buy little felt mice from a tiny shop called The Acorn in the Adelaide Hills. They had tartan clothing, and you could get girl and boy mice. Later I started to make them for myself, and I had a whole family of them, all with alliterative names like Miranda Mouse. I also made them things like tiny books, bags and babies. I still have some, and I still make them occasionally. There are notes on the photo if you follow its link through to Flickr.
    Felt mice

  • When I was about 12 I went through a phase of carving rabbits in the ends of matchsticks.
  • Another early foray in craft was making miniature gonks in football colours for friends at school. Gonks were a 60’s fad, essentially humpty dumpties with big hands and feet, and a fuzzy tuft of hair.
    Gonks

  • At about the same age I started making soft toys from patterns in women’s magazines, only I often made them straight from the miniature pattern on the page, rather than scaling them up
  • We have a couple of treasured crocheted blankets made by grannies in the family, but on the whole I dislike crocheted objects. Amigurumi drive me nuts. I don’t know why.
  • I find it very difficult to tag people; not sure why. (I also have a telephone thing, have to push myself to telephone at times). So if any of my blogging friends would like to take up the meme and run with it, please do, and let me know in comments here.

Austen graphic novels

Posted by hil

Ppcomic

Liz Wong, painter and a freelance illustrator, is making a graphic novel of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It should be fun to see how it progresses. I looked around to see if there have been other Austen graphic novels, and yes there are. Anne Timmons’ Northanger Abbey is included in Gothic Classics: Graphic Classics Volume 14. Here is a sample drawing. And a manga style version of P&P, illustrated by Tintin Pantoja is due to be published in about September 2007. If you take the Sequential Art link on her site you can see her version of the first proposal.

In addition to the decisions on how to break up the page, what to zero in on, how to convey action, and what interpretations are being made through image rather than word, I was interested – but not surprised! – to see the influence of Andrew Davies’ 1996 adaptation of P&P.