Tuesday, October 6, 1998We’ve now had day two of rehearsal. I say rehearsal loosely, because most of it was spent repairing puppets. In addition to Sungura’s ears, the other challenge we faced today was admitting that one of the puppets is missing. We’d hoped yesterday that it would show up, but no- the small Brer Rabbit puppet is gone. Joe spent the day making a new one. This is a nifty little control. What you are seeing is the armature for a running puppet. It has cables running to two points on the thighs and then down to a toggle. When you rock the toggle, the legs do a lovely running motion. |
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| I did manage to fix Sungura’s ears today. I was quite proud of myself. It was one of those repairs, where the more you fixed, the more broken things you find.
Look! His ears are down. I’m holding the control for the ears in my left hand. |
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| And now, I’ve pulled on the cable and they are up. The head is controled through a bicycle break in my right hand. (I had to fix that too.) If you are interested how I fixed him, you can take a closer look at my repairs. |  |
| We did actually get to run through Brer Rabbit several times today. Joe is working Brer. It’s a six rod puppet. He is holding the main control in his right hand and controlling the other four with his left. It’s not as bad as it sounds, but still tricky. The head and body are both manipulated with a Fettig control in Joe’s right hand, so he has two rods there, but only one control.
The stage is not as tall as Joe, and it slopes so he can’t stand up straight, and there are places where I have to duck to. Not good for our posture, eh? |
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| I’ve got Brer Elephant, who also needed repairs, his head was all wobbly. He’s also a rod puppet, but he has cable controls for his legs, much like the little Brer Puppet. You can kinda see the rocker bar in my right hand. |  |
