lion king

National Puppetry Summit: John Xintavelonis

Posted by hil

John X

John Xintavelonis, a Tasmanian actor who played the part of Pumbaa the warthog in the Melbourne version of The Lion King gave an entertaining address at the National Puppetry Summit. As well as relating some amusing behind the scenes experiences, he said that although some regarded Disney as the McDonalds of the theatre world because it runs the exact same show using a rigid script in numerous countries around the world, he felt it should be encouraged for several reasons:

It provides big chunks of work for actors/ puppeteers, 10 to 18 months of work or more, on a good wage.

The success of The Lion King will mean that more such work will follow, too. Tarzan is already playing on Broadway and I think The Little Mermaid was also mentioned.

Puppetry enables the story to go live on stage, and to differentiate the look from the animated film versions, so its generating live puppetry as big theatre.

Disney don’t publicly call The Lion King puppetry (they employ actors and singers rather than puppeteers) because they don’t want it labelled as a kids show, so they are actually working towards framing the artform for adults, and getting away from the common preconception that puppetry is only for children.

John also wanted to encourage people to diversify and be prepared to learn other skills. He had started as an actor and diversified into singing and now puppetry, and felt it paid returns.

(My attendance at the puppetry summit was supported by the ACT Government)

Puppetry Daemons in ‘His Dark Materials’

Posted by hil

By all accounts the two-part 6 hour stage adaptation of Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials is absolutely stunning. I think it has had two seasons at the National Theatre in London: one in 2003, and a second that finished earlier this month.

The daemons, physical manifestations of the human soul in the shape of animals that reflect a person’s character, are puppets. They were designed by Michael Curry, who is perhaps best known for the puppets in The Lion King. Stagework has an extensive website on the adaptation, and its possible to see a few of the initial designs there, and glimpses of the puppetry in some of the video clips:

Operating the golden monkey
Lyra meets Mrs Coulter
Cittagazee performance
Captured by bears
Lyra and Iorek (scene in rehearsal)

In both these and the puppets in ‘The Lion King’, I think the magic lies in how the overall shape and actions of the creatures are suggested. Often the puppeteers are built into the shape in unexpected ways, and they use their whole bodies to make the animal move. In ‘The Lion King’, for instance, the puppeteers playing the hyenas held the hyena heads low down and at arms length, while their own heads provided the high shoulder line that is so distinctive in a hyena’s overall shape. Likewise, the polar bears in ‘His Dark Materials’, are defined by a puppeteer holding a head mask in one hand and a great clawed paw in the other, with just the suggestion of great shoulders in what looks like a flexible curved line between the two, and a powerful lumbering gait.

Bridge to the stars, which looks as if its the natural online home for ‘His Dark Materials’ fans, has a section on the stage adaptation, including a guide to the Stagework site, images and reviews.