I recently had a chance to sit down with the wonderful Wil Wheaton in an interview put together by Audible. Wil and I had a fantastic time talking about audiobook narration, writing, and acting. You may listen to the interview in its entirety here: Timestamps 0:00 – Introductions for Mary Robinette Kowal and Wil Wheaton […]
An Interview with Wil Wheaton about Audiobook Narration, Writing, and Acting Read More »
Rob and I had to go out of town this weekend and I was struck by how many of the places we visited had a touring memory attached to them. I played in elementary schools all over the place and we were very much in my old stomping grounds this weekend. At one point, we needed
Touring memories and yet not a tour Read More »
I did arrive safely at World Fantasy three hours after I’d planned to get here. The storm system that delayed our arrival in Minneapolis was an inland hurricane. The bizarre side benefit of this is that it meant that my connecting flight was also delayed so I was merely late and didn’t have to get
At World Fantasy 2010: Thursday Read More »
Hey! A reminder that I’m reading tomorrow night (Wednesday, August 18th) at the KGB Fantastic Fiction series with the wonderful Laura Anne Gilman. The official press release is below. One thing that it doesn’t mention is that I’ll be performing The Broken Bridge, which is the shadow play that occurs in Chapter 10 of Shades
Reminder: Reading at KGB Wednesday night! Read More »
I was talking with a friend of mine and he said that my blog read like “Mary’s Greatest Hits,” because I never talk about the things that go wrong. This surprised me since most of my best puppetry stories are of shows that go horribly, horribly wrong. But he’s right. When I talk about television
Things that go horribly, horribly wrong OR The worst show I ever did Read More »
I was working on updating my portfolio today and chatting with someone who didn’t know that I built things. Puppeteer, yes. But the fact that, in my case, the word puppeteer also includes designing and building, in addition to performing, was new information. So, I thought I’d share my portfolio with you.
Updating my portfolio Read More »
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 »
Writing Chapter 3 went fairly smoothly, but when I got to Chapter 5 I realized that I’d made a geography error in Chapter 4. To fix that involved going back and laying in some small details in the first two chapters and rewriting the last two pages of Chapter 3 in order to lead in
Writing Chapter 3 of Glamour in Glass 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 »
I spent two hours today to drive six miles to Hoboken, pick up a chair, and drive back into the city. If I never have to drive in New York again, it will be too soon. Besides that today consisted of meetings, and then another meeting, followed by another meeting, plus some puppet building and
Hoboken, meetings, and driving Read More »
I taught a puppetry class on Friday and am reminded, as always, at how much better 1st graders are at following directions than adults. In general, I find that adults tend to think that they know how to do something or can figure it out on their own and will jump ahead without waiting for
Thoughts on the difference between teaching kids and adults Read More »
Mark Hamill talks about the dificulties of working with Yoda. via PuppetVision
Mark Hamill and Yoda Read More »
The producer and the director of “There Will Come Soft Rains” — which you should go see — asked me to build a new head for the dog in the show. We discussed budget and at one point the producer asked if I needed money up front for materials. I laughed. “There is no materials
Dog head for “There Will Come Soft Rains” Read More »
By this point, I think everyone probably heard about Jay Lake’s colon cancer news. The man is a cancer survivor the likes of which the world has never seen. When I heard the diagnosis, I emailed him asking if there was anything I could do for him from New York. Oh yes. Yes, there was.
Building Jay Lake’s colon Read More »