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Someone asked me how the movement of the Ningyo-Joruri puppet head that I made during Nori Sawa’s masterclass a few years ago worked , so I’ve drawn a diagram on my iPad to illustrate the mechanism. It makes more sense if you look at in context with my photoset from the class, and perhaps with the original blog post.
Mimi mentioned seeing Dan Hurlin‘s tabletop puppet show Disfarmer when she was in NYC recently. It’s described as
a puppet theater inspired by the life of American portrait photographer Mike Disfarmer (1884-1959). Something of a small town “Boo Radley,” Disfarmer operated a photography studio in Heber Springs, Arkansas, where for years locals and tourists lined up to have their picture made.
In the press kit one gets more of an idea of how Hurlin has interpreted the character, and why he chose the medium of puppetry: because both the photos and puppets are ‘inanimate objects whose inner lives are supplied by the insistence of the audiences imagination’.
I love the detailed movement and expressions in the behind-the-scenes video above, and the way in which you very naturally accept the puppeteer’s hands as the puppet’s at times. And the way the things like the clock just appear when they are needed.
Update:
Here is a cool work-in-progress excerpt which allows you to see the puppet’s construction, to a degree:
Two video clips at YouTube of that cool puppet in Berlin that I blogged about in October!
Still no clue as to who the performer group is.
(photo credit: irlLordy, used with permission – thanks!)
irlLordy took a great sequence (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) of photos of a cool puppet entertaining the queue on the steps of the Reichstag in Berlin recently. I really like the aethetic, and it’s interesting to see a bunraku-style puppet being operated on such long rods. The puppeteers – are there five? – must have a really good understanding between them. Apparently the puppet did matrix-like leaps off someone’s shoulders in slow motion at one point. Please do let me know if you happen to know which puppet troupe this is – I’d love to know!
Tyger from Guilherme Marcondes on Vimeo.
Tyger is a terrific short film directed by Guilherme Marcondes. While William Blake’s poem, The Tyger, was the starting point, it ‘doesn’t attempt to illustrate or pay homage to the original text’. Marcondes interprets the tiger as symbolizing ‘a hint of wonder along with a fear of progress. The tiger is as much dangerous as it is marvellous, and this ambiguity makes us avoid the pure romantic vision of society’.
The story is about relating city to jungle and people to animals, and it is achieved with a wonderful mixture of imagery – a great bunraku-style puppet tiger, used with black light technique; Sao Paulo’s urban landscape as a photographic setting; drawings with a lino-cut quality that morph people into animals, and order into chaos; and animated glowing lines that sprout and twine like jungle vegetation. The music is cool, too.
Joao Grembecki and Cia.Stomboli in Sao Paulo, Brazil, made the tiger, and the puppeteers are Joao Grembecki, Cassiano Reis and Fabio Oliveiro. The full credits are here.
Updated links 2015
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
The bunraku-style puppets I was working on are for production called ‘See Beneath’, being presented by Hidden Corners Theatre, Canberra’s award-winning theatre company of young carers. This is how the puppets turned out:
‘See Beneath’ is a play by and about young people dealing with disability in their families, directed by Robin Davidson and barb barnett, with the assistance of Max Barker. Its written by Rebecca Meston and the cast of Hidden Corners, and plays in Melbourne and Canberra during July. Here are season details:Melbourne: Theatreworks, 14 Acland St, St. Kilda.
13 – 16 July, Wed – Sat @ 7.30pm; Sat matinee @ 2pmCanberra: The Street Theatre Studio, Childers St, Civic
21 – 23 July, Thurs – Sat @ 7.30pm; Sat matinee @ 2pm
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.
They are moving really nicely:
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.
