Hi Everybody -
Well, lots going on, I've been busy as heck. A couple weeks ago, I got to work with a fantastic puppeteer named Sarah Wright. Her parents started the Little Angel Puppet Theatre here in London, so puppetry is pretty much her first language. She was very encouraging and inspiring, and told me about a volunteer opportunity at the Little Angel. I got to help them get ready for a show, painting props and decorating some puppets. Sarah was giving a talk the next night, and invited me to the afterparty. I got to meet a lot of prominent local puppeteers, including Ronnie La Drew. We had a great time chatting and laughing at the restaurant. Puppeteers are a naughty bunch, I'm finding!
Got to go to the Norwich Puppet Festival, which was utterly delightful. Took a really sweet train ride through the countryside to get there. Norwich itself is a lovely town, lots of old stone cathedrals and castle-y bits. The theatre is actually housed in a converted Medieval church - it's quite a beautiful space. The best thing I saw there was a production of Faust with itty-bitty 3' tall marionettes. They were gorgeous! Here's a little info on the festival -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk/content/articles/2007/10/22/theatre_puppet_festival_2007_feature.shtml Anyway, then I got to work with Handspring Puppet Theatre, who did the puppets for War Horse. Their work is gorgeous - here's a link to their website -
http://www.handspringpuppet.co.za/ and here's a video from War Horse -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trIFlkJBFhw Anyway, we made a nine-foot-tall Buddha puppet with them out of bamboo. All of it was just tied together, there was no glue or nails involved. We put it together in 3 days, and at the end, we got to walk it around, wearing stilts. Two other puppeteers besides the stiltwalker worked the arms, with long poles. Then the Handspring guys (who were a joy to work with) brought us backstage to show us the big horsies they made for War Horse. We got to see the puppeteers rehearsing, so these huge bamboo horses were off trotting around the room - they moved just like real ones, it was unbelievable. As sculptures, they were gorgeous, as puppets, they were genius!
Then, we put together our first collaborative puppet show. It was a devised piece, meaning we made it up as we went along, ha ha. Really, we had no script, but we did hash out a story between us, and decided who the characters were and what they meant and thought and did. We incorporated movement, object manipulation, a two-dimensional boy puppet made from cardboard and manipulated like a Bunraku figure, a little three-dimensional birdie puppet, and a window made from colored films to depict a scene outside. I got some blurry, badly lit photos of it, but will have to post later.
Now, we're working on a new piece, which I wrote the script for. It's been a challenge and a delight working together with other puppeteers on this - staying open to other people's brilliant ideas, while trying to communicate the core of my original intent. Anyway, it does feel really good to translate the images and ideas inside me into something that has some artistic merit (hopefully.)
We will be staging this piece, as well as our first one, at a festival. This will be my first public puppet performance in London, so I'm pretty excited about it. It will be staged in a gallery. We're piggybacking on a talk that will be given by one of the War Horse guys, so hopefully there will be lots of puppety people in attendance.
Halloween was super fun, crazy crazy. Pustra and Vile-een invited me to help them with their act that night... They have re-named me 'Revolta Husk.' I was thinking about who she might be, and decided that Revolta is Pustra's maid, who gets paid in toenail pate rather than money. Her job is to shovel out Vile-een's cage, once a month. Anyway, so Revolta was their zombie flower girl at their zombie wedding ceremony that night. She got to throw dead leaves at the people who wouldn't get out of the way of the wedding procession, and accost the fellow who caught Vile-een's bouquet of dead flowers with a fork. I guess Revolta steals all their silverware, because how else is she going to make a living. Anyway, here's the video -
http://www.youtube.com/v/h1KKFQ9fJ4c&rel=1&border=0 (the bad dancing is due to my rigor-mortis that evening.) I've attached a couple of pictures of this as well.
The pic with Pustra that looks like it was taken in the woods was actually at this abandoned grown-over graveyard - they were making a promo video for their halloween performance. I helped them by throwing leaves in their hair and making their wooden puppet Monseuir Kak do perverted things. (It was Monseuir Kak's idea, not mine, really!)
Anyway, hope you all are well! Drop me a line if you feel like it. I'm meeting some great folks, making some new friends, but I'm still pretty homesick here. It's sometimes really hard to be in a new country without being surrounded by a network of people who care about me. Miss you all!
Love,
Raven