Royal de Luxe: The elephant and the small giantess

Posted by hil

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

Foam construction puppet tutorial at Bear Town

Posted by hil

I’ve been enjoying PuppetVision Blog for a while now. Based in Toronto, Canada, it casts its net much wider, and looks at video and film puppetry.

PuppetVision’s blogger, Andrew, is also creating Bear Town, a web-based puppetry project. Part of the ‘behind the scenes’ information there is a step-by-step series of articles documenting the making of Tumbles B.Bear. There’s a useful tutorial about a soft foam puppet construction method nicknamed ‘the wedge method’, (free pattern) where a series of wedges is used to a make hollow ball of varying shape, as well as information about how Tumbles’ arms, hands and mouth are made.

Updated 2015: some links broken, some renewed

Rough cut bunraku puppets

Posted by hil

I’m making some bunraku-style puppets at the moment. They are about 60cm tall. I’ve just got to the stage where they are more-or-less complete in construction and movement, but still rough in finish. This is a stage I love – there is something very aesthetically pleasing about it – and I think it would be really interesting to use them unfinished in a play. I always almost regret having to finish them.

Bunraku-style puppets-3

They are moving really nicely:

Bunraku-style puppets-1

A few other pics of them below: the woman, the man, bending. Now I have to paint their faces, forearms and hands and the woman’s leg and foot; and dress them.

Month of Softies: May Flowers

Posted by hil

The theme for Month of Softies this month was ‘May Flowers’. My first thought was of daffodils, as I remember loving how they came up all over the place in lawns in the chilly spring in York and Cambridge; and I thought I might try to make Talitha, the brave daffodil princess from the book ‘The Mouldy’ by William Mayne, and illustrated by Nicola Bayley:

talitha

Then I decided to consider Australian May flowers. There isn’t much flowering here in May, except some irises which usually flower in July, but this year are muddled by our late winter and drought. But there are a few winter-flowering eucalypt trees, so I started planning a red gumnut flower fairy. I thought the stamens could make a kind of drop skirt, or hat fringe, but in the end decided that I liked the flower just as a flower.

Red flowering gum-2

Its quite big; including the leaves it measures just over 40cm (16in). For the stamens I used lycra, an idea that I had previously found worked well for making small octopus tentacles! I like the soft colours, too. There are few more pictures:

 

‘The Lost Thing’ to become a short film

Posted by hil

LtboyHaving made puppets for a theatre production of Shaun Tan’s ‘The Lost Thing’ last year, I was excited to find out that Passion Pictures is making a short CG film of the book. It will be fun to keep an eye on their gallery of pictures of work in progress over the next months. Among the images there at the moment are drawings of some of the utopian lost things. There were only five utopian lost things in the theatre production, so it will be great if we get to see more of them brought to life in the film. There are also images of a sculpture of the boy by Ron Mueck Mueck, that will be used for mapping the boy from all angles into the CG program. How cool is that!

Snuff Puppets: Nyet Nyet’s Picnic

Posted by hil

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

UNIMA 2008 Logo Competition

Posted by hil

The deadline for the Unima 2008 logo competition has been extended to accommodate Tafe and other educational institution courses. The due date is now July 22nd, 2005. Details are otherwise as outlined here. Go to it!

The Unima congress and festival is held every four years, and in 2008 it is being held in Perth, WA. This is exciting, as it is the first time it is being held in the southern hemisphere. It encompasses a ten day international festival of puppetry, a conference, and the Congress of UNIMA where the Executives and Councillors from throughout the world meet to discuss organizational and artform issues.

If you are not familiar with Unima, it stands for ‘Union Internationale de la Marionnette, and it’s ‘an international organisation bringing together people from around the world to contribute to the development of the art of puppetry, and to use it in the pursuit of human values such as peace and mutual understanding between peoples’. Here’s the Australian branch site.

Making of Nature Band Parade Puppets

Posted by hil

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.

Kamon&#233

Posted by hil

Kamone1Oh yeah, the World EXPO also has a pavilion mascot, a platypus called Kamoné. She was designed by Melbourne-based illustrator, artist, toy designer and storyteller Nathan Jurevicius, best known for his Scarygirl series of toys, comics and products.

The drawings are pretty cool and there are various versions of her: dancing, just herself, in a long dress, playing soccer, with ipod and backpack, with tote and pencil, as an artist? (interestingly this isn’t used – maybe its not clear enough), and as a scientist.

There is also a bodysuit puppet of her. There are numerous pictures in the Australian Pavilion image gallery, such as this one of her supervising the unloading of the platypus exhibit (minus her gloves). And here Kamoné is at Tokyo Station, meeting her friends the official Aichi Expo mascots, Kiccoro and Morizo, a forest child and a forest grandfather.

One other thing. There is nice flash graphic at EXPO2005, though its a pity you have to scroll down to get both images.