shadow puppets

The (Very) Sad Fish Lady

Posted by hil

Very sad fish lady

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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Kate Bush’s shadow puppet animation

Posted by hil

Kate Bush’s cool shadow puppet animation, Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe, was made to accompany a segment of the track Lake Tahoe on her new album 50 Words For Snow. In a note about the animation on her site she credits Robert Allsopp for the beautiful puppets.

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

Posted by hil

The newly released Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet video game has a shadow puppet aesthetic and beautifully realised alien creatures and environments. Gaming Irresponsibly’s video review and the first 15 minutes of gameplay gives a longer introduction to the fluid, multi-layered, highly detailed imagery and the gorgeous mix of organic and industrial.

Developed by Michael Gange (who previously created Insanely Twisted Shadow Puppets) and Joe Olson, it is described as ‘a side-scrolling adventure that is a fusion of art, classical animation, and captivating gameplay’ and is developed by Shadow Planet Productions (Fuelcell Games and Gagne International).

(Hope it comes to iPad someday!)

Shadow monsters

Posted by hil

Shadow Monsters by Philip Worthington is a wonderful interactive and digital form of shadow puppets, in which the programming generates fantastic and playful extensions to the shadows of participants bodies and hands, and quirky and wild sounds. (There are more YouTube videos).

The Shadow Monsters grew from a brief about technological magic tricks. I was looking at optical illusions and Victorian hand shadows particularly interested me as a starting point. The subtlety with which a character could be created was already very magical and I wondered if there was room to experiment with these techniques. Looking back to my own childhood, I remembered the feeling of casting huge shapes in the light of my father’s slide projector, creating monsters and silly animals. I enjoy working with simple intuitive things; playful feelings that touch us on a very basic level.At the same time I was experimenting with some software for vision recognition so slowly the monsters evolved. At first I made a puppet show with coloured pencils that had hair and eyes… and this slowly grew in complexity until I had a system that could go some of the way to understanding hand posture. The rest is history.

— interview with Design Museum

Looking for a monster

Posted by hil

Looking for a monster

(photo: Sidat de Silva)

Looking for a Monster is based on an original puppet play written by a thirteen year old boy, Hanus Hachenburg in the Terezin concentration camp in 1943, shortly before his transportation to the Auschwitz Death Camp. In 1999, puppeteer Gary Friedman discovered the play in a Jerusalem archive. It was performed for the first time in 2001 and has just been filmed in Sydney for inclusion in Gary’s documentary film about the life of Hanus Hachenburg. Gary has a slideshow of photos taken at the shoot in the sidebar of his blog, Puppetry News, and you can also see individual photos in this gallery.

Incidentally, Gary is running another Puppetry for TV course starting in June.

Wonderful zany shadow puppets

Posted by hil

Take a look at Professor Litmus Lenticular III’s photoset of wonderful zany shadow puppet characters.

Australian hand shadow puppeteers

Posted by hil

The Sydney Morning Herald today talks to Raymond Crowe, a self-described ‘unusualist’ – ventriloquist, magician and hand shadow puppeteer from Adelaide – who, after 26 years in the business, has found at least temporary fame on YouTube with his Helpmann Awards shadow performance of Louise Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World:

Sean Kenan, another Australian hand shadow puppeteer, also has a presence on YouTube, and has recently been invited invited by the Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop to perform at the World Performing Arts Festival in Lahore Pakistan later this year.

Theatre of Image’s Lulie the Iceberg

Posted by hil

Lulie

Kim Carpenter’s highly regarded Theatre of Image has a new production called Lulie the Iceberg, an international collaboration featuring the shadow puppetry of shadow puppet masters from Tokyo’s Kagebushi Theatre Company. You can see a cool behind-the-scenes video of one of their development workshops if you take the ‘teachers’ link on their site. (Sorry, it’s not possible to give a direct link.)

The show is running at the Riverside Theatre Parramatta, 22 February to 3 March, and there are early bird deals and associated exhibitions and demonstrations. More details here at Unima Australia.


Jasper Morello on SBS this Friday!

Posted by hil

The Gothia Gazette is reporting that The Mysterious Geographic Adventures of Jasper Morello, nominated for Best Animated Sort in the Academy Awards, will be screening on SBS on this Friday 10th March at 8.00pm. The DVD of Jasper Morello, including a ‘making of’ featurette and other award winning films by director Anthony Lucas will be in shops on March 15th. Don’t miss it!