Here, while I’m writing, you can watch Eleanor Powell tapdance with her dog.

Back in 1985, Leonard Nimoy hosted a show on Nicklodeon called Lights, Camera, Action. In this clip he talks about homemade special effects.

via Props

I’m home from Orlando although I desperately wanted to stay longer. While I pack boxes for the Big Move, here’s another of my favorites from the Handmade Puppet Dreams series.

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

Thank you all for your thoughts today. They were greatly, greatly appreciated. Rob was able to come in and we spent some time with Maggie before we had her put to sleep. We were sitting on a couch with her in Rob’s lap, so she definitely knew she was loved. Laptime was her favorite thing. Next week, we’re taking her to upstate NY our friends’ home.

The hardest thing right now is expecting to see her around the apartment. Such a small creature and such a big impression.

Meanwhile, I thought you’d like to see these two videos of her. She’s only seventeen in them but was this feisty up until a few weeks ago.

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

via The White House.

This musical theater homage to the internet makes me chuckle.

You know how much I like paper, right? Check out this amazing paper animation by Javan Ivey. Each frame is cut from a notecard and layered on top of the ones behind it. Breathtaking.

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 seen since has rivaled them.

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.)

What an amazingly prescient vision in this moving picture show.

via Eric James Stone

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 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.

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.

Speaking of paper folding, check out this creation of Matthew Shlian. Very, very nicely done.

via Paper Forest: Matthew Shlian amazing paper engineering videos!.

Knowing my interesting in movement, my mother-in-law just sent me this video of 21 dancers, all deaf. I watched this the first time accidentally without sound. I had the speakers turned off but just thought it was silent on purpose. No, there’s music, but watching it without is a heck of a lot more compelling because you realize the incredible amount of rehearsal they must have gone through to be this synchronized.

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 vanish. God, this is beautiful work.

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

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