Have you ever had this nagging thing that you knew was wrong, but you couldn’t figure out what? For the last two years, I’ve known that the props work wasn’t satisfying, but I didn’t realize how much I missed the world of puppetry until coming down here this weekend. Some of it was performing, but […]
Orlando International Puppetry Festival Read More »
Rehearsal tonight went fairly smoothly. I’m fortunate to have a pretty good kinetic memory, which means I learn blocking quickly. I compensate for this by having almost no memory for names and a poor one for faces. Luckily! I don’t need either of those when learning a new show. Even accounting for the kinetic memory,
Shadow Puppet rehearsals Read More »
Breaking news! I’ll be in Orlando at the International Orlando Puppet Festival, curated by Heather Henson on July 25th. I’m performing in Tiger Tales by Chinese Theatre Works. The whole festival looks amazing and I’m sorry to be there for only one weekend.
So, I was watching this video about Disney’s Imagineers making an animatronic figure of Obama for the Disney Hall of Presidents. When Obama is recording his speech to the microphone, I couldn’t help but watch his hands and think that it was terrible puppetry technique. And this is the real man. If it were a
You can tell I’m a puppeteer because… Read More »
. . Hey come down to the KGB bar tonight at 7:00 pm for the KGB Fantastic Fiction reading series to hear Brian Francis Slattery and me read. As an added enticement, I’m including a very short monologue with a puppet. Brian is bringing a bass, a violinist and fiction! Should be fun tonight.
KGB fantastic fiction — tonight! Read More »
While we’re talking about amazing shadow puppetry, this is another company that I saw for the first time at the San Fransisco puppetry festival back in 1993. Larry Reed’s Shadowlight does really ground breaking work involving using full human figures and multiple projectors to play with scale. This is a sample of their Monkey King
In 1993 I went to the National Puppetry Festival in San Fransisco and saw the Shadow Theatre Budrugana from Georgia. (That’s the country of Georgia, not the state.) Now, I’d seen shadows before, but this was a troupe of hand shadow puppeteers. Everything in their shows was produced by shadows of human hands. Nothing I’ve
The Shadow Theatre Budrugana from Georgia Read More »
Wow! Puppeteers Unite just uncovered a bit of early Muppets which I never knew existed. The Orson Welles Show was an unsold television talk show pilot. It has never been broadcast or released. Filming began in September 1978 and the project was completed around February 1979. It ran 74 minutes and was intended for a
Muppets on The Orson Welles Show Read More »
Jim Henson September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990 Puppeteers Unite has a collection of clips from his memorial service.
Ooo! I just received this video promo of the previous Puppet Playlist at The Tank. This was the one focused on Tom Waits. We did a found object piece with dinnerware.
Tom Waits Puppet Playlist Read More »
Yesterday was one of those wacky days where all of my jobs collided. I had stuff to write, props to shop for and, of course, a show. Jodi and I were performing as part of The Puppet Playlist, which explores the music of one performer through puppets and cover tunes. Last time it was Tom
The blind man and the dancing bear. Read More »
I needed to make two puppets, a “dancing bear” and a blind man, for a show that Jodi Eichelberger and I are doing at the Puppet Playlist. To begin with, I did a drawing to get relative scale of the things I was building. I’ll usually be a lot tighter with drawings than this, but
Making a dancing bear’s head Read More »
I’ve seen this popping up at every puppetmaker’s website because it’s all so right. I’m also curious if any of these things sound familiar to my non-puppet making readers. The reason it’s one of my pet peeves isn’t so much that people don’t bother reading the info available here before contacting me; it’s that when
How to commission a puppet maker Read More »
I clicked over to Handspring Puppet Company because I wanted to see more about Warhorse. What do you know? There’s a link to a 40 minute presentation about how the horses were developed, including a solid 10 minute demo of Joey the horse. You watch the puppeteers get into the figure and then they just
Long Video of War Horse Read More »