Andrew at PuppetVision is has started a map of the locations of puppeteers and puppet builders around the world using the new Frappr! mapping service. It’s a cool idea. If you are a puppeteer or maker, check out the details, and add yourself to the map.
Especially if you are in Australasia – I’m feeling a bit lonesome out here all on my own!
(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
Michael Gagne recently released a first series of short director’s cuts animations, Insanely Twisted Shadow Puppets, that he created for Nickelodeon’s 2005 Halloween. For example, Nightmare is great. There is a short production diary, too. These are done in Flash, and looking at them it’s easy to see why puppetry and animation are so closely inter-related.
(via PuppetVision)
This is a cool idea: Michael Paulus has a gallery which takes a look at the skeletal systems of cartoon characters. The distortions are interesting. For example, Betty Boop has no lower jaw!
(Via Drawn!)
Updated links 2015
The moniker for the new adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is likely to be ‘the Kiera Knightley version’, but I am going to campaign for ‘the one with the pig’ until someone does a Wishbone-type adaptation with Babe animatronic technology (starring the pig) or puppet pigs (move over Miss Piggy, I don’t want a Muppet version!). I’m amused by the fuss the pig is causing – ‘It shouldn’t be in the house’ – ‘How many times must I explain it’s not in the house’ – ‘It’s too rural and makes the Bennets seem too poor’ – because I suspect the distaste probably stems more from the implication intended by juxtaposing the stud pig with Mrs Bennet gloatingly sending Jane over to Bingley at Netherfield:
iW: Then you have this pig walk by and he has enormous balls.
JW: That’s not something we thought of before we saw the pig. Then when we met the pig, we were incredibly impressed by him. I’m rather interested in the fact that a family like the Bennets would only own female pigs. They’d hire the male pig to come in and, as they call it, cover the sows, at a fee. I kind of liked the parallels between human and animal procreation.
This rather puts new life into a rather jaundiced cartoon I did a few years ago:
The only other Austen cartoon I made was this one of Charlotte shrewdly eyeing off Mr Collins:
Of course you could add cartoon bubbles to the pictures in the Jane Austen Colouring Book.
Here is a fabulous game of ping pong, Matrix style. According to Puppetry Films‘, it appeared on a Japanese Game Show to help celebrate the opening of the Matrix. Isn’t puppetry amazing?
Updated links 2015
At the moment I am painting two traffic control boxes in the Urban Services project ‘Colour-in Canberra’. The first one, The Suburban Duck, is on the corner of Yamba Drive and Kitchener St in Garran, just across the road from the Canberra Hospital. It tells a story from my back garden: about how foxes are an ever present danger to ducks in the suburbs, while crows have the place staked out and steal their eggs given half a chance. Its been really enjoyable painting out in the sun on and off the last few weeks.
A bunch of local tertiary students had an installation of dovecots at Floriade this year. I was really happy with this photo of one of the dovecots.
It reminds me of that lovely William Carlos Williams poem, ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Or even Dylan’s ‘Buckets of Rain’:
Little red wagon
Little red bike
I ain’t no monkey but I know what I like.
I like the way you love me strong and slow,
I’m takin’ you with me, honey baby,
When I go.
I also liked seeing these ones as different faces. It would be fun to animate them!
Making the most of Floriade’s Rock & Roll theme were The Extremes:
And this captured some of my feeling about Floriade:
The Fool Factory‘s Rock & Roll Rascals, Big Bad Ted and Long Tall Sally rock it up during this year’s Floriade in Canberra. I made Ted’s winklepickers and Sal’s legs and shoes.
