Eric Testroete, a 3d artist in Vancouver, made this awesome papercraft self-portrait head mask for Halloween last year. If you scroll along at his site you can see the making process. Wouldn’t it be cool to use heads like this in theatre?
puppetry
Hand shadow wallpaper design
I rather like these wallpaper designs from Paper Boy Wallpaper. The hand shadow puppet one comes in inverse colouring, too.
Two puppet-related iPhone apps
Small Wonders’ Battle of Puppets is described in a detailed review in the Your Local Guardian as ‘a quirky, inventive, beautifully styled and thoroughly likeable castle defence game’. Likewise, most reviews I have seen have been favourable. It’s certainly a cute idea to frame the game as a puppet show. I quickly lost interest in the game itself, though lets face it, I’m not particularly adept or interested in that kind of game.
I think I might have more fun with Elmo’s Monster Maker:
Erth’s magnificent tiger puppet
(Photo credit: anthonyung. Thanks for the CC licence. Click to enlarge)
This magnificent tiger puppet was one of the highlights of the recent Chinese New Year Twilight Parade celebrations in Sydney. Videos at the ABC, and on YouTube show it in action, and e_yew at Flickr has a close-up of the tiger’s head.
According to Street Corner:
The 3.5 metre tall City of Sydney float is operated by nine puppeteers and has an audio system in its belly to make it roar and purr.
Constructed from found and recycled materials, the float celebrates the Year of the Metal Tiger and is a symbol of City of Sydney’s commitment to sustainability.
The Metal Tiger was built by renowned prop maker Erth and its parts include vacuum cleaners, take-away food containers, aluminium cans, bicycle parts, grid iron and hockey guards, pool noodles, old speaker boxes, kitchenware, hub caps and motorbike components.
The float will be adorned with 100m of LED bud lighting, 90 metres of rope light, and tips the scales at approximately 300kg.
Australian puppetry links and news
Towards the end of last year I added an Australian puppetry links page here. It’s listed above with the other site navigation tabs. It is a little more than links because there are brief notes with some of the entries. I also started up @OzPuppetry, a Twitter account for Australian puppetry news, which you can see running real-time updates in the widget in the sidebar to the left.
What prompted me to do both was the frustration I felt when I received an out-of-the-blue email asking my thoughts on the ‘puppetry industry, or lack thereof’, in Australia. Although in many ways I’m only on the periphery of the industry, I was aware of lots of exciting and diverse puppetry at the time, as I tried to convey (pdf). So I decided to write down publicly what I did know as links, and to track news as I saw it on Twitter.
But I should say straight up that I don’t know how long I’ll keep doing either. At the moment I’m enjoying it, but I don’t intend to tie myself to it if my interest wanes. Also, with many of the puppetry community here taking to FaceBook for notifications and networking, perhaps it is only a matter of time before it becomes redundant?
Interview with CTC’s Sonny Tilders
ABC’s Radio National Artworks program has a great interview with Sonny Tilders who is the creative director at Creature Technology Company in Melbourne, the company that produced the amazing arena show Walking with Dinosaurs Live, and is now making a giant King Kong for the stage. Exciting stuff.
Terrapin puppet sale
(Disclaimer: I have no idea which puppets will be for sale, so please don’t assume the puppets in the photos here are in the sale)
Terrapin Theatre Company in Hobart is selling off many puppets from its 35 year history and that of its predecessor, Tasmanian Puppet Theatre.
The puppets will be on sale on Wednesday 25 November from 4pm to 5pm at 23 Wellington Street, North Hobart. They are priced from $10 to $180, with the majority of older puppets at $25. CASH ONLY payment required on the day. Please don’t bring kids with you as there is as there is little room and it is semi-industrial.
When I was at the 2nd National Puppetry Summit in Hobart in 2006 there was a window display of a wide variety of puppets from Terrapin from over the years. This puppet with its huge head and little body was my favourite. It was made by Greg Methe for the 1997 production The Fork.
I also loved these platypus, quoll, and Tasmanian tiger puppets that were made by Axel Axelrad. I took a number of photos of other puppets in the display, a few of them are here.
New adaptation of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival coming to the Sydney Festival
Red Leap Theatre from New Zealand will be bringing a new theatre adaptation of Shaun Tan‘s book The Arrival to the Sydney Festival in January. I love the look of what I can see in this video of highlights, in particular the aesthetic feel and muted colours, the puppets and the imagery.
(photo credit: Robin Kerr)
(photo credit: John McDermott)
I saw the adaptation of The Arrival by Spare Parts Pupppet Theatre at the Unima 2008 Puppetry Festival in Fremantle. It has gone on to win a number of awards, and recently had a season at the World Puppetry Festival in Charleville Mezieres, France. I felt the strength of that production was in the projected animations and digital imagery, and that the story line and emotional content had been simplified for a very young audience. I hope Red Leap’s production will be able to tap further into the richness and drama that the book holds.
Previously: Shaun Tan
Royal de Luxe’s giants celebrate reunion in Berlin
(photo credit: Verieihnix, thank you)
Celebrations are taking place in Berlin this weekend for the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the re-unification of Germany. At the centre of the celebrations is a 4-day performance by Royal de Luxe‘s giant street theatre puppets, featuring their little giantess, and her giant uncle, the deep-sea diver.
Earlier this year in June the diver debuted in Nantes in La géante du Titanic et le scaphandrier, but in Berlin the back story, already one of separation and reunion, has been redrawn as an allegory for the divisions of Germany:
Berlin was once a swamp inhabited by giants. One day, land and sea monsters tore the city in two and the Big Giant and Little Giantess were separated. The Little Giantess fell into a long sleep. When she awakes, she finds a large old mailbag containing letters between East and West Berlin, and sets out to deliver them. After each searching the streets of the city, the two giants are reunited and symbolically return tens of thousands of letters once intercepted by former East Germany’s Stasi secret police to people watching their procession through the city.
Photos and videos are starting to appear at Flickr and YouTube, and many others will follow, but here are some links to items that have grabbed my attention so far:
- Official site: Risesen-in-Berlin: The Berlin Re-Union
- @dieriesenkommen on Twitter
- Promo with nice footage from Nantes
- Four videos of the Giantess
- Video of diver surfacing and a close up of the puppeteers
- Reuters video: Giants re-enact German Re-unification
- ABC News video: good summary in video, includes reunion between giants
- Die KlieneRiesen: photo by Gofio of the reunion, Brandenburg Gates
- Royal de Luxe Central photo pool at Flickr
- Search ‘Riesen berlin’ at Flickr, or YouTube
I’ve posted a lot about Royal de Luxe and their influence on the genre of giant puppets over the last few years and you can search here to go to those posts.
