I love Beaker… Poor guy.

I know exactly how Mr. Puppeteer feels. In fact, there are parts of this conversation that could be a direct transcription of my life.

If you are a logic based person, then skip this film.

Question: If every life form on the planet has nostrils in their necks and six limbs, why do the Na’vi have noses like we do and only four limbs?

Question: Where do the feathers on the bow and arrows come from since we never see a feather creature, ever.

Question: Kiss? What is this thing you call kiss, James Cameron? I mean really, there are HUMAN cultures that don’t have kissing.

I could go on. That said, it’s some damn impressive CGI.

One of the men working in operations came up to me at work last night and said, “Does the phrase, ‘It happened in Narnia,’ mean anything to you?”

I hedged my bets and said, “It might…” because all I could think of was that someone had told him about the white spandex suit I used to have to wear in a production of the show.

The he said, “Do you remember little K— P—?”

My jaw dropped. Really. That’s not a metaphor. When I had last seen him, he had been twelve or thirteen years old playing Edmund. Now, I know that people age and realistically, I recognize that it has been 13 years or so since we worked together, but– but… he was twelve and now he’s an adult peer.

We got home from San Jose yesterday afternoon and I immediately had to get caught up with all the excitement about Harlequin — which oddly, usually would mean that I was talking about a puppet. So I wound up staying up way too late to help with that.

Which meant that today I was lazing in the bathrobe, doing some sketches for a puppet gig (not involving a Harlequin) when the phone rang. It was the Portland Spirit, asking if I could come in and cover a shift. Like, right then.

Off I went to the boat and spent several hours on the water busing dishes. Exciting, yes?

Back home, I returned to drawing and now I am sad because the stuff I’m working on is cool, but it’s for a film so I can’t talk about any of it until later.  I’m not very sad, because this is fairly standard, but I just always feel dull when I have no puppetry to write about.

Oh. My. God. I have never wished to speak French more than I do right now.

Edited to add: Juliette Wade, linguist and SF writer, has just sent me a transcription of the video. Why? Because she is made of awesome.

Transcription/Translation of Hansjürgen Fettig Video

Puppet #1 (standing man):

Well, it’s a marionette with a long rod, and he can move for example like this, he can turn his head, and when he moves his head also the body moves itself, like that, and walking works like this, it’s a [room of air?] and I can hold it here from the bottom, and even, I can make it lean. On this side, I can make it lean. I put it back, here, and he walks with [elegant steps?], he turns his head like that. One can take the arm, with a **pige/tige,

[back view of puppet rod] Here you can turn it, but you can make it better, to make it easier, to move. The legs, they [come off] like that, with a snap, and then you put it back, like that. Right now, you can lean it, you can put your hand underneath, op op op op op, and then you put it back, and you can raise one leg, here, or the other. But it’s a question of exercise [practice]. That [the fabric under the feet], it’s not expensive, you can find it easily. But we’ll take another thing… [music]

Puppet #2 (man’s head):

Here we see the color, how to color, and this here is the side where you start. These are balls of cardboard; here it’s hidden with some paper with wall glue for wallpaper, and here I’ve stuck on using white glue, some sand for birds, very fine, it gives a surface that is good for the camera, or the [veri?], of course, because here you see the mark that it takes on with the camera, for television, that doesn’t work. [turns to the back] And that also no. But if you put that over the top, it gives a surface that is good. And the movements, they are like this. He can lean, you can hold it here and he can turn his head, he makes movements that are sufficient.

Drawing #1:

You have different possibilities for sticking them together.

Puppet #3 (female head):

I’ve taken normal glasses. I have a friend who’s an optician. He gives me the old models that he cant’ sell; it costs me nothing. And this is a head for putting into the figure, and moving. You can do something, what you want. And these are pipes that are cut in half, and I’ve glued it back with cardboard on top, to have a base. And if you look underneath, you can see that these are still geometric things. Also that is geometric [pointing to back of head], it’s part of a half egg. And the other thing [other side] is the other part of this egg, and you can stick hair on top of it. And the pipes make the eyes. With me, you never see eyes. Because eyes that are fixed, with the pupil and all that, they rest in their position. Here you have shadows that work toward the fantasy already. It’s a trick that I –

Puppet #4 (hooded head)

And if you take this one, it’s also very simple. I’ve taken here an egg, I’ve divided it in half, afterward I’ve stuck on top of it a piece of cardboard, and I’ve stuck it back together a little, a little divided, in this direction, it’s not exact. And here you get a line, and if you turn it like that, you get another figure/shape. More or less that. And from the side it’s more or less [friendly?], and from the front like that. The eyes are shadows. I do nothing else.

Drawing #2:

And it’s that, a cut piece, like that, a pipe that passes over, and you see here inside, what it’s like on the inside.

Back to Puppet #4: [showing the back] It’s a little **contreblaque? for the part, and the rest, I can take for the second, for the next figure that I’m going to make. And it’s still geometric shapes. With a large in place. There’s a large, a smaller. The smaller, it’s flat, and rounded. One more time rounded, but larger. Which is to say that you always have to change roundness, size, to have difference.

Puppet #5 (old woman’s head):

And here I’ve made the base (a little) in white. And this gives me just a sign where I can stick the hairdo. With some fabric or something that can pass …[unintelligible]… and here you absolutely have to keep the shape.

Drawing #3:

And if you look at the construction. You have a half-egg here, a half-egg over there, they’re placed on a total egg, directly on top. Here it’s a half-ball; this is an irregular half of an egg, and here I have a piece of tube. It’s a nose that I had around, I recovered it to make this… [music]

Puppet #6 (workings showing):

So these are plastic materials, they’re tubes of plastic, you can take it down, and this, this supports the shoulders. The shoulders are suspended also with thingies like this, inside. Now, to drive. You take that in your hand, you go like that. You turn, as you wish, it turns [the same?] if you like, and you take it like that, you lean it as you wish, and the shoulders move. The arms are suspended from here, and it’s simple to do. But me I prefer the other, it’s simpler.

[Other voice] How is it attached, here?

Here? [he shows it close up] In fact it’s easy to show, this is just for the shoulders, and the head is held up by this. I try to – there you go. You pull it out, you pull the manipulation, it’s a little tight, and there you go. Here you have the system, it’s for hanging curtains, in a van for example, it’s a spiral of metal [asi?], a wire [asi?], and it’s for stabilizing things that move. This part [drawing] is held up, here in the middle, and there, you have a prefabricated **caraban, it moves like this.

[showing puppet] If I hold it here, it makes movements like that. And the whole thing turns inside the figure.

Puppet #7 (headless workings):

I wanted to find the means to move the entire body. It works like that. And from the front, it’s like this. If I turn it over there, and here like that, I can turn just here the shoulders, and I can make contramovement, and it’s all snapped. Snapped here, snapped there, buttoned here, and in the middle I’ve got another thing that keeps the position. But the length, you have to try. That, you can’t know in advance. Each figure, it’s a different thing, for the distances. But this is old, the legs aren’t the best, they’re a little primitive. Anyway, I make them better, but it shows the system very very well.

End.

I always use the married version of the honorific when I’m filling out forms but it’s exceedingly rare to actually have someone call me “Mrs. Kowal.”  It feels a little like I’m pretending to be a grownup.

All of this is percolating around in my head because Rob and I are celebrating our eighth anniversary this week. November 17th, 2009 we got married in Chattanooga, TN. I am as deeply in love with my husband as I was on our wedding day.

To celebrate eight years of being Mrs. Kowal, I’m disconnecting from the outside world.  No phone, no internet.  Just Mr. Kowal and me.

The Wild Things are an amazing combination of body suit with animatronic faces, that were later enhanced with cgi.  It is, I have to say, utterly seamless.  The team of people who created each character deserves a big hand for really compelling performances.

When the credits rolled they had each of the Wild Things listed with their voice performer and their suit performer, which made me very happy.  Too often, the puppeteers get ignored altogether or lumped into a group at the end.  The lumping is sometimes unavoidable because complex puppets are frequently team efforts and it’s hard to sort out who did what.  So it was nice to see a film that acknowledged the fact that the guys in the suits are on set all the time, while the voice performers have more limited contact with the rest of the cast.  Not to downplay their performance, by any stretch, ’cause bad voicing can ruin good puppetry.

It’s just a pet peeve because there are times when a puppeteer or matchmove artist works for months on a show and then isn’t credited.

So.

I was excited and the credits had rolled too fast for me to really catch the names of the suit performers. I headed to IMDB.

Which does not list the suit performers for the characters.

WTF? Who made that decision?

I finally found the list of the cast over at FanCast, which does credit them and they deserve kudos for giving truly expressive body language to the characters.

• Vincent Crowley as Carol Suit Performer
• Sonny Gerasimowicz as Alexander Suit Performer
• Nick Farnell as Judith Suit Performer
• Sam Longley as Ira Suit Performer
• Angus Sampson as The Bull Suit Performer
• Mark McCracken as The Bull Additional Suit Performer
• John Leary as Douglas Suit Performer
• Alice Parkinson as KW Suit Performer
• Garon Michael as KW Additional Suit Performer

Well done, all of you.

I mean, what are they doing with the Giantness of the puppets besides being Giant?  I’ve always felt like the form of the creation should reflect the story being told and that the story is the kernel of the design. Here it seems backwards. It feels as though someone decided to make Big Puppets but then has them do ordinary things which become exceptional only because of their scale.

IMAX also doesn’t do anything for me, generally, with the one exception being a documentary about the Grand Canyon. There the scale of the screen absolutely gave more to the story of the Grand Canyon than a smaller screen would have. Star Trek? Yawn.

Big puppets?  If they were telling a story that reflected their size, I’d be excited. Of course, I think the same is true of writing. Is it so much to want people to think about the story first and then figure out the best way to tell it?

Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler and Dan Wells are very engaging hosts and made me feel quite welcome. For the first episode, Brandon asked me if there was anything I particularly wanted to talk about.  I said that lately I’ve been talking about how puppetry intersects with my fiction.  So we spent fifteen minutes talking about the four principles of puppetry.

They’ve just posted the podcast, so go give it a listen.

Then, if you are curious, you can go read the Puppetry Manipulation Clinic handout I have over on my puppetry website.

via Props

The Whole World and You by Tally Hall, directed by Frankie Cordero

We had dinner last night with twelve puppeteers, only three of whom spoke English as a native language. It was this great wide ranging conversation about art and connection.

Today we performed twice, which went well. I got to see the short film series Heather Henson curates, Handmade Puppet Dreams which I’ve been wanting to see for a couple of years now. Here’s one of the pieces, Incubus by Lyon Hill.

Before you watch this, you need to know that these are puppets and are being performed in real time. I tell you this, because otherwise it looks like animation or photoshop. No. Puppets.

See! Totally inspiring.

Afterwards we went out to dinner and I just…I’ve really missed this. Puppeteers talk about their in ways that writers don’t. I mean, we’ll sit around and say, “I’m thinking about doing this one man show…” and everyone will join in this collaborative discussion without (most people) without ever trampling on the other person’s vision. I love writing, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve missed collaboration.

Anyway, it was a wonderful weekend.

Even accounting for the kinetic memory, I’m finding Tiger Tales spectacularly easy to learn because someone else is doing all the voices, so all I have to do is focus on the manipulation. Also, because it’s a shadow puppet show, using an overhead projector, I only have to learn my blocking in two dimensions. My puppets, with one exception, always enter from stage left.

The challenge comes once they are on stage because, well, somone else is doing all the voices. While that relieves me from the pressure of learning lines, it also means that I have to pay ferocious amounts of attention to the inflections of his voice and try to match my movement to his. Add to that the fact that my puppets can only move in two dimensions and I have to use that narrow range to express emotion. Some of the figures have no moving parts at all, so it’s all about the angle and rhythm of their movement.

So this show, which on the surface looks so easy to learn, actually presents interesting challenges to perform well.

If you are near Orlando on Saturday, I hope you come see a show and say hello afterwards. And now, I need to go finish packing.

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.

And this is the real man.

If it were a puppet, I’d smack the puppeteer and tell them that the gestures were meaningless and to stop them.

via The White House.

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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.

This is a sample of their Monkey King

At the SF Puppetry Festival I volunteered to help with whatever was needed and was lucky enough to be assigned to the Shadowlight production of In Xanandu. This mostly meant I was a runner if they needed anything, but the upshot as that I got to watch the show from backstage. As a young puppeteer, this had a huge impact on me. This photo is of Miranda and Ferdinand from the production of Tempest we did at McCarter theater. I think you can see the influence.

If it interests you, here’s Part 1 of a two part documentary about their work, including behind the scenes shots.

I have a clip of one of their shows on video tape from that festival and used it while teaching for years. Everytime someone posts a YouTube clip of a hand shadow puppeteer, I do a search to see if Theatre Budrugana has anything online.

Today they did.

This is a scene from one of their other shows. Look at the fluidity of the bear and the water that the duck is in.

This is an overview with a lot of different clips, plus some backstage photos. Notice how the hands look like random shapes until you see the shadow on the screen? It’s astounding work. (The second clip is from the show that I had on video. I still want to see the whole thing of that again.)

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 90 minute commercial time slot.

Shot partly before a live audience, Welles interviewed Burt Reynolds (taking several questions from the audience,) Jim Henson and Frank Oz performed Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear.

Part of what makes this totally fascinating is that the puppeteers are in full view of the audience and only masked by shadows.

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.

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 Waits, this time it was The Magnetic Fields.

Working with the song “How Fucking Romantic,” Jodi keyed off the syncopated snapping and came up with the idea that his character was blind. The snapping became the sound of the cane tapping on the ground.  The phrase, “treat me like a dancing bear” caught my attention and we wound up with a love story between a blind man and the world’s cutest bear.

Our portion of the show was only four minutes long, but hard, hard, hard.  We’re singing acapella but had to match the tapping to the 5/8 time of the original piece.  This meant that any variations in movement were actively wrong.

I am rhythmically challenged.

I have a good kinetic memory, but am absolutely incapable of counting 123, 12345, 123, 12345 and doing anything else. This meant that we had to just drill it so I could get the beat into my body.

Bizarrely, the shows sold out on Thursday and we had a standby list forty people long.  They managed to get in about twenty of those folks but had to turn another forty some away. Crazy.

The show went fairly well but the second show went better. The worst thing about doing these quick things is that there’s no time to get into a groove and respond to the audience.  That connection between performer and audience is half the show.

There’s a saying, “What’s the difference between a puppet show and playing with dolls?”

“An audience.”

It was nice to have an audience last night.  I do miss that immediate feedback with writing.

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 since we’re only performing this show twice, I’m working fairly loose through the whole process.

I’m using the same paperfolding technique that I used when I made the Coraline dolls. The process involves folding the paper and taping it as I figure out the shape. You can see here that it’s too large and I don’t have the angles quite right.

I marked the areas that I wanted to change, then cut the face apart to make a flat pattern. Each V cut out of the pattern represents a dart in the paper.  I cut the pattern in half so that when I trace it I can flip it to get a more symmetrical shape on the next round.  I saved the side that was closest to what I want the final to look like.

My next draft is closer, but still off. Again I mark the areas I want to change.

Cut it apart into a pattern and try again.

The third draft is close enough that I decide to glue it together as my “final.” If I were doing this for a client, I’d probably continue tweaking it to match the drawing more closely since the drawing is what the client would be expecting. Since it’s just me, I’m calling it good enough.

On the interior of the head, I paste paper bandages across each of the seams so that it takes on a fairly smooth exterior.

And here’s what my bear looks like from the front. I’ll post photos of the finished critter later.

via Puppeteers Unite.

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 they do contact me, they do so with annoyingly ambigiousity. So with these past experiences in mind, I’d like to “submit for your approval” some basic etiquette guidelines for when you contact a puppet maker about a commission.

I think it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: when approaching a puppet maker, do at least try to read the info on their site/publicity materials first.

via How to commission a puppet maker.

Go now. Joey’s puppeteers come onstage at about the 19 minute mark.

National Theatre : Vidcast Episodes : War Horse: Handspring Puppet Company.

It goes something like this.  Rob had carpal tunnel surgery on Monday and came home with a Giant Block of Foam strapped to his arm.  I found this amusing.  So did John Scalzi, who linked to it.

It got INSANE amounts of traffic.

And this is where things get interesting.  As if they weren’t already.  One of the 16,000 people who clicked through to see the GBoF works for the National Pork Producer’s Council. You think you can see where this is going, but I promise you that it is even less believable than that.

One of their big events is the Legislative Action Conference and they have a full-body puppet of Petunia Pig to do a meet and greet.  Madhu Caesar, the program director for the NPPC had a problem. Their puppeteer had just been sent to the hospital with a broken leg and the Conference is today.  She was frantically looking for a replacement and a chance link about a Giant Block of Foam and Bacon dropped her onto my site where she noticed the link to my puppetry reel.

Would I be willing to come to D.C. on short notice?  Sure!  I like D.C. and I like body puppets.

And then she dropped the kicker, “Of course it will depend on if we can get your security clearance fast enough.”

“Um…why?”

“The president will be there.”

My jaw dropped. Literally. I didn’t think that really happened.

Fortunately, my brother worked for the state department and I’ve apparently already got a file. Who knew surveillance could be handy?

So I’m going to get to meet Obama, while dressed as a giant pig.

Edited to add: For those folks stumbling across this after the day, this was my April Fool’s post for this year.

The monsters, if you don’t already know, are giant puppet suits that the actors wore, and I was one of three Refurb (refurbishment) techs on the film. Each day the monsters crashed through the bush, rolled down hills, waded into water or beat each other up, so each night, the standbys on set sent home the monsters who had been damaged by the day’s work where we would fix them up, put bandaids on their cuts and scrapes and send them back to set.

via Puppeteers Unite

So, I’m looking for suggestions on what to take him to.

Puppets can do things that actors can’t as well as having limitations that actors don’t.  In the course of the conversation, I talked about the importance of finding a playwright who understands, or is willing to learn, about writing for puppet theater.

Frequently, a show is largely non-verbal.  The question came up: How do you script a non-verbal show?

In response, I wrote:

Heh.

Okay, so that thing I said earlier about that I don’t write for stage?  My one play was non-verbal and was awarded an UNIMA Citation.  The reason I bring it up now is that several years ago, we did an experiment with MUM Puppet Theater and shipped them our script and puppets.  By all accounts, the show had the same impact on the audience as our original play did.

The way I did it was that I scripted the characters’ intentions AND their actions. My feeling is that body language is a non-verbal expression of what a character is thinking and feeling. So writing, “Character picks up rock” tells you what happens, but the way you pick up a rock if you’re planning on killing someone is different from if you think it’s pretty. It might be body language, but it is still language.

Since I can’t attach things to posts on puptcrit, I told everyone that I’d post it here.  Sorry non-puppet folks, for dropping you into the middle of a larger conversation.

Here is the 1993 script for “Old Man Who Made Trees Blossom.”

I spoke for about half an hour on the intersection between puppetry and SF in the larger context — both are the red-headed stepchildren of their respective fields — and about how puppetry informs the way I approach writing. Then I told puppet war stories and did a Q & A. One of the discussions was about different types of puppets and I referenced Vietnamese Water Puppets. I also offered to provide links, so here we go.

The two big puppetry organizations are Puppeteers of America and UNIMA-USA.

Thanks again to PSFS for having me out and particularly to Lee and Diane for being such good hosts.

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just a reminder that I’m the guest at the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society’s March 13th meeting. Come by at 8:00 at the Rotunda, (directions) on 4014 Walnut Street.

I’ll be talking about the intersection of puppetry and SF.

This week I take a screaming whirlwind through the different forms of puppetry and cgi that go into making the creatures of fantasy.

Go on over and ask questions about puppets.

YesButNoButYes: Elmo Meets Ricky Gervais.

Yes. Lambchop’s puppeteer, that beloved ventriloquist children’s entertainer wrote “Star Trek” The Lights of Zetar

This is the show that boldly goes…

Edited to add: The picture is photoshopped. The idea amused me, but I’ve just had three people respond as if it were real. Shari Lewis evidently lobbied for the role but was not cast. Lambchop never appeared on the Enterprise.

One night only.

Jodi Eichelberger and I are performing an original piece, “Dinner Conversation” as part of Puppet Playlist, this Thursday at 7:30 pm at The Tank, in NYC.

Puppet Playlist takes talented puppeteers and brilliant musicians and slams them together into an evening of live theater to stir the senses.

Our first Playlist will feature works of puppetry set to the rasping, crooning, stomping and shouting of Tom Waits. Between sets, hear  new interpretations of Waits’ music — on cello, electric guitar and more. A chance to see some of New York’s most interesting puppet artists and musicians at play.

Performers (and their work) have been seen all over New York and throughout the world, on Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, at HERE Arts Center, Shakespeare in the Park, the Metropolitan Opera, FringeNYC, Lincoln Center, with Jim Henson Productions, and on both American and International TV (yes, that includes Sesame Street).

Featuring pieces by: Eric Wright, Melissa Creighton, Jean-Marie
Keevans, Jon Stancato (Stolen Chair), Andrew Broaddus, Jon  Levin, Maja Rajenovich, and Mary Robinette Kowal & Jodi Eichelberger.

Musical performances by: Anna Leuchtenberger, Leah Siegel, Emily Hope Price, The Relatives and Irv Irving.

$5 suggested donation at the door

http://www.thetanknyc.org/theater

I hope to see you there. Let me know if you’re coming so I can look for you after the show.

“Yeah.” I continued to fold laundry as we chatted,because this was pretty simple stuff.  “A box of unlubricated condoms, KY jelly, food coloring, saran wrap and a little stage blood.”

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone and then she said, “Oh. I thought this would be a longer conversation.”  Another beat of silence. “I take it you’ve done entrails?”

“Oh, yeah.” I tucked the last pair of socks into the drawer.  “Had to do a disemboweling for a show.  Fun stuff.”

The crows now.  That’s going  to be  a much longer conversation.

I had a rehearsal this morning for a show that Jodi and I are doing on March 12th. It’s a very short piece which involves me being a dish, a fork and a bowl.  Jodi plays a spoon, a knife and a plate. The tension and high drama!  Actually, I think it’s a good little piece and I’ll post a link to the show information later.

I went straight from that rehearsal to a production meeting for a different show where I’m building some crows and a box of entrails.  Really, I have the best job.

But then as I was looking through the site, I came upon this.

On Saturday the 7th of February 2009 The Township of Marysville and the surrounding area was ravaged by bushfires and is still in a state of emergency. Firstly I would like to say that Bruno and his family are safe and well.

Unfortunately the family home and the gallery have been destroyed. The sculpture garden has sustained severe damage, but hopefully a good portion of the sculptures will be able to be salvaged.

I feel as if I just learned that there was a real fairyland and it’s been razed.

via Puppeteers Unite.

Here are the much delayed and often promised pictures of the finish work on the lamb. As you might remember, I had to make significant changes to the taxidermy form. Once that was finished, I began covering the lamb with lambskin. I looked for a good fake fur version, but could only find them in black. Even from a distance, the fur is frequently the thing that gives the animal away, so I often wind up using real furn. This isn’t a pelt, mind you, so it isn’t shaped like a lamb. This means that I have to piece it together on the taxidermy form. Here I’m working on the leg and pinning the fur in place with thumbtacks while the glue dries.

As I work my way around the head, you can see both the foam taxidermy form and the way I’m piecing the skin together.

Once it is in place, I have to press the skin into the seam of the mouth. To orient you, the two divets above my fingers are the lamb’s nose. I widened the mouth area in the foam to allow space for the thickness of the skin. I’m using small nail to force the skin into place.

Here’s the lamb’s face with the fur in place, but untrimmed.

I’ve trimmed the fur, but not yet installed the eyes or finished painting it.

And here it is, completed and in the position that the director wanted it to be in for the show.

Ironically, during previews, the lamb was cut from the show. This happens sometimes with new plays, but it always amuses me when it does, because it is inevitably the most expensive prop.

This week, readers, allow me to introduce Lance Woolen, a career puppeteer and one of Coraline’s puppet builders. He’s giving us a look at the immense amount of work involved in translating Neil Gaiman’s book to the silver screen.

via Go on by and read what Lance has to say. It’s good stuff, I promise.

To begin, I need to take the rods of the taxidermy lamb form that I’ve ordered. These are intended to make it easy to mount the lamb on a board, but I won’t be doing anything like that. It will be laying in the back seat of a car, partially in a bag.

Next, I notch the foam at the shoulder to give me room to bend the front leg. I want the lamb to be lying down instead of standing, so I have to reshape it slightly.

Including cutting it in half so I can rotate the hips. In a real animal, the spine would follow suit, but here we just use a hack saw and some good old fashioned bamboo skewers. I’ve also cut off one of the hind legs so I can reposition it.

Because this won’t need to move ever, I just taped it into place while the glue is setting. It’s like a cheap version of papier mache. I also used a rasp and a knife to take the hard edges off where I cut the lamb.

And here is the lamb assembled, with head, and ready to be covered with its skin.

I believe this show had what we call a high pee-factor. Perhaps the child is watching security theater.

Via Puppet Buzz

Joel Johnson: Sir, I was really trying to avoid using this term [security theater] at all. But are you actually saying that security theater is an important aspect of actual security?

Secretary Chertoff: No. I don’t think it’s theater because I think the person who says this is kind of unrealistic and is kind of trying to be provocative. I don’t think they’re doing things for no reason to make sense, but I think understanding that visible security has a role to play is important. It is a deterrent.

Joel Johnson: Well, sure. But theater also means…theater has a purpose, too, to express a meaning.

Secretary Chertoff: Yeah. I mean, the problem is, I think the term is not meant to be…it’s meant to be pejorative. It’s meant to suggest that it’s like a puppet show.

I know it’s narrow and job specific thing to be annoyed about, but really? Do you have to pick on the puppet shows?

Sometimes when dealing with props I can’t find the real thing or even a replica of it, so I just have to make it. In this case, we needed a Pictish helmet as one of the apparitions in MacBeth. The halloween stores had loads of helmets, but were strangely lacking in anything Pictish. Spartan on the other hand… those were everywhere. So I picked up the helmet in the photo for $9.00. It’s cheap vacuformed plastic and only vaguely the right shape.

The nice thing about this type of material is that it cuts easily. I began be trimming it into the shape that I needed, which was pretty easy to do with a pair of scissors

Next up, I used basic braid to create the decorative flourishes from my reference photo. The spiral patterns I did with a judicious use of hot glue as a design element.

Meanwhile, inside the helmet, I ran a hoop of armature wire to stiffen it and get rid of the woogedy-woogedy movement. Seriously, if you’re a warrior, you don’t want your helmet quivering.

To finish it off, I spray painted the whole thing bronze and then spattered it with a little black to give it a patina of age. Ah… I love it when a plan comes together.

Reverse Shadow Theatre from gabor papp on Vimeo.

There are many ways to measure California’s tanking economy: an 8.2 percent unemployment rate; a multibillion-dollar state budget gap; threatened endowments of the city’s museums, causing some cultural institutions to nearly default on mortgages; and the continued weakening of the Hollywood studio system. But the meltdown of the marionettes may say it all.

The article talks about Bob Baker Marionette Theater, which is one of the institutions of puppetry. It’s been in continuous operation since 1961 and I know so many puppeteers who got their start there. The theater is not just meaningful for puppeteers. John Scalzi says, “I remember going to that theater when I was in 4th and 5th grade.”

The puppet community has been talking about the financial trouble the theater is in for some time now. So I’m going to include some information that’s not in the article. That’s how you can make a donation to help keep this theater open for another five decades.

Tax deductible donations can be made to “The Academy of Puppetry and Allied Arts.” Send your check to 1345 West First Street, Los Angeles, CA 90026 or call 213-250-9995 to make a donation by credit card.