puppetry

Giant Tony Abbott puppet: Liar, liar, pants on fire!

Posted by hil
At the rally
Liar, liar, pants on fire! Giant Abbott puppet at Bust the Budget, Parliament House, Canberra, 6 July 2014

Over the last few weeks I’ve been involved with the making of a giant 3 metre tall protest puppet of the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, with the theme of Liar, liar, pants on fire. Matthew Armstrong, who came up with the concept, brought together the skills of a number of Canberra artists to make, assemble and perform the puppet within a pretty short timeframe. Thanks, too, to Dario Vacirca and Mark Timberlake from KneeHigh, now Open Space,  in Adelaide who hired us the frame and advised us on various aspects.

The Abbott puppet debuted at the Bust the Budget anti-austerity rally on an icy cold day at Parliament House, Canberra, on 6th July. Matthew is now improving the puppet in a number of ways, ready for more appearances.

I made the head of the puppet from foam sheeting. Here are some photos of the process.

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Stephen Mottram’s The Seed Carriers

Posted by hil

I was excited to find this video about Stephen Mottram’s strange and beautiful show The Seed Carriers via Siân Kidd on Twitter last night. It’s amazing puppetry that I would love to see live one day.  I was also interested in his comments about it being essentially live animation on stage, and distinctly related to installation art.

Goanna puppet

Posted by hil

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I’ve been making some puppets for Biami, the creation story of the Wiradjuri people, by Duncan Smith and Maitland Schnaars, which will be performed  for the Kids, Creatures and 100 Harlequins – Centenary Children’s Week Celebration on 25 & 26 October in Glebe Park. (It’s part of the Centenary of Canberra project.)  Today I finished the goanna!

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The (Very) Sad Fish Lady

Posted by hil

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The (very) Sad Fish Lady, now on at the Street Theatre until 5th Oct, is delightful. It’s written and directed by Joy McDonald, and is a fusion of stories from her family about their immigration from the little Greek island of Castellorizo, just off the Turkish coast, to Australia, plus a bit of magic. It’s told with a mixture of puppets – marionettes (Joy toured Australia as a puppeteer with the Marionette Theatre of Australia’s Tintookies), shadow puppets in the style of the Greek Karagiozis tradition, and rod puppets. Its unusual to see marionettes these days, and they have a great charm to them.

The play has a unique quality to it, in the sense that the story and the characters are not stereotypical in any sense – this is a real breathe of fresh air!  I think this is partly what Frank McKone is referring to when he describes it as folk art theatre. It’s also outright funny in places, and has great music by David Pereira. Imogen Keen was the set designer and Joy made the puppets. My involvement was making the little rock house the VS Fish Lady lives in.

There’s also an accompanying exhibition of the puppets, storyboard and process at Craft ACT until 19 Oct. I took the following photos there:

Mr Moustaki.

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The (very) Sad Fish Lady.

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Some of the characters (in shadow puppet form) who visit the fish lady to have their fortunes told.

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The shadow puppets from behind the screen.

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Drawings of the (very) Sad Fish Lady’s epiphany. There is now a picture book of The (very) Sad Fish Lady.

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The Rhyme of the Ancient Merino

Posted by hil

It’s great to see the complete realisation of Dave Jones’s The Rhyme of the Ancient Merino.

At sail on a sea of wheat, the Ancient Merino and his aging theatre troupe struggle to eke out an existence in a hostile environment. When a the threat of modern technology looms they must adapt or fade into obscurity.

The animation is an allegory for the story of ‘the 50 year history of the Arapiles Community Theatre, and the recent influx of new arrivals and the changes that has brought about’ in the small regional town of Natimuk, Victoria. Traditionally a service hub for the surrounding farming country, Natimuk is also the closest town to Mount Arapiles, a mecca for rock climbers, so it is an interesting mix of farming people, climbers and an arts community. In October it will again be the centre for the Nati Frinj.

I love the puppets in this; they’re life size and  made from bits of old farm machinery. And I like the little details like the snails.

Erth’s The Dream of the Thylacine

Posted by hil

This is a great behind-the-scenes video for Erth‘s The Dream of the Thylacine which will run at Carriageworks in Sydney 25 Sept to 5 October. In particular it shows super talented puppet maker Bryony Anderson talking in some detail about how she thought about the project, and her process in building the thylacine puppet, down to how and why she came to make the fur from potato sacks!

Also take a look at this amazing spider made by Bryony and friends, using only stuff from the dump.

On borrowed time…

Posted by hil

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With Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s leadership looking pretty rocky at the moment, I thought I better jump in and post these photos of finger puppets of her and Opposition Leader Tony Abbot before she isn’t Prime Minister any more! They were made for the Women’s Health Magazine late last year and appeared in the January 2013 issue, illustrating a fluff article about Aussie excellence, in this case how good Australian politicians are at insulting each other in parliament.

The magazine first contracted me to make finger puppets of then PM Kevin Rudd and OL Tony Abbot and their deputies in June 2010, but almost the next day Rudd was rolled by Julia Gillard. Don’t want to be gazumped again!

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There are few more photos of the puppets in my photoset at Flickr. Of course I had some fun doing silly things like this with them before they were shipped. Do I hear a resounding ‘ewww!’?

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Handspring

Posted by hil

My heart did a little flip when I first saw the jellyfish puppet and the large hand and head in this  trailer for the Bristol Old Vic/Handspring Puppet Company’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I love Handspring’s puppets! In the following BBC video you can see some more of the puppets in greater detail if you can put up with the corny interviewer, while some reactions to the play are being storified here. The production is currently on until 4 May, and will also be at the Spoleto Festival USA starting 23 May.

Mushrooms and monsters

Posted by hil

Last April I made these four muppet characters for a student film project. I never saw the resulting video, so I can’t say how it went! The Mushroom King technically isn’t really a muppet; instead he was made to dangle on a string, and his mouth is moved remotely using a bike cable.

I’m trying out the WordPress gallery here. It annoys me that you cant’t see the tentacle monster’s one eye in the thumbnail, but once you click on the thumbnails the gallery viewer itself is quite cool. Time will tell if I persist with using the galleries!