{"id":61,"date":"2004-10-16T23:12:57","date_gmt":"2004-10-16T23:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/?p=61"},"modified":"2015-07-11T13:51:09","modified_gmt":"2015-07-11T02:51:09","slug":"old-parliament-houses-big-heads-puppets-at-floriade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/2004\/10\/16\/old-parliament-houses-big-heads-puppets-at-floriade\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Parliament House’s ‘Big Heads’ Puppets at Floriade"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Floriade<\/a> has been on for the last month in Canberra, and tomorrow is the last day. I went in last weekend hoping to see the Old Parliament House Big Heads. These are much-larger-than-life-sized body-suit puppets of parliamentarians from days gone by. Their usual home is Old Parliament House<\/a>, which is now a parliamentary museum, where they stroll around bringing the past to life.<\/p>\n

Last year I got photos of the original three Big Heads in the Scarecrow Drive at Floriade, having an encounter with The Fool Factory<\/a>‘s alien, Solar Flare<\/a>:<\/p>\n

An altercation between Solar Flare and Andrew Fisher and Alfred Deakin.<\/a>
\nSolar Flare and Andrew Fisher shake hands.<\/a>
\nSir Edmund Barton takes liberties with my John Howard Scarecrow<\/a><\/p>\n

This year there are two new Big Heads, Doc Evatt and Bob Menzies<\/a>. While they have been made by the same company, eRTH<\/a>, these ones have a less stylised look about them, and are more realistically modelled on the historical figures they represent. I think they are really cool. I love the demeanor of Doc Evatt, and his brown suit is just right.<\/p>\n

eRTH is a Sydney company that does innovative large-scale theatrical performances which include ‘giant puppets, huge inflatables, acrobatics, aerial and flying creatures, stilt-walking costumes and pyrotechnics’. I would have loved to see their Gargoyles<\/a> clambering over the outside of buildings, or The Neds<\/a> ranging through city streets. At Floriade this year, they were also present as the Waterheads<\/a>, four people with their heads in tanks of coloured water, strolling through the beds of flowers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Floriade has been on for the last month in Canberra, and tomorrow is the last day. I went in last weekend hoping to see the Old Parliament House Big Heads. These are much-larger-than-life-sized body-suit puppets of parliamentarians from days gone by. Their usual home is Old Parliament House, which is now a parliamentary museum, where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[48,34,7,4,14,15],"tags":[148,150,143,1378,149,151,147,1358,1355,1365,152,1366],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canberra","category-performance-art","category-politics","category-puppetry","category-puppets","category-street-theatre","tag-big-heads","tag-bob-menzies","tag-bodysuits","tag-canberra","tag-doc-evatt","tag-erth","tag-floriade","tag-politics","tag-puppetry","tag-puppets","tag-solar-flare","tag-street-theatre"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paZhI-Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3131,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/3131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritsdancing.com\/sdblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}