Remember when you were a kid and grown-ups didn’t let you use knives? Remember how hard it was to cut thick cardboard with those little-kid scissors with the rounded points? I’m so grateful we are grown-ups now (well, sort of) and we can use these instead:
Shaun Tan is an internationally known Australian author and artist of picture books. He has won an Academy Award (Best Animated Short–The Lost Thing) and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, one of the highest achievements in children’s literature. My first introduction to Shaun Tan was the graphic novel The Arrival, which I read when it was published in the U.S. in 2007. I was immediately captivated by the complex details of this wordless story about an immigrant to an unknown land. Tan’s drawings evoke the sepia tones of early 19th century photographs from Ellis Island, but his world contains odd creatures, strange customs and an indecipherable language–eliciting a strong empathy for the plight of everyone who lands in a new country without understanding the language. As I continued to find and read other stories by Tan, I found that they all evoked that same sense of empathy and wonder–wonder at the strangeness and mystery of his unusual landscapes and empathy for his outsider characters.
Tan often focuses on an object or a character that has been lost–the protagonist of The Arrival or the odd teakettle shaped item in The Lost Thing being two primary examples. Other stories such as The Red Tree communicate emotional turmoil in visceral poetic images. Everyone that I have shown this story to has responded to at least one of the spreads by saying “I know that exact feeling!” Tan also works with material that takes characters through some kind of change, either minor or monumental. In the story ‘the nameless holiday’ from Tales from Outer Suburbia, people choose to give up something 
special, while in John Marsden’s post-colonial allegory The Rabbits, a civilization is gradually overcome by invaders. From deserts to massive cities, from magical rooms hidden inside houses to backyards filled with brightly painted missiles, Tan draws the reader into the world of his tales with illustrations comprised of collage, nuanced shading, saturated color and precise drafting. Some stories clearly share visual characteristics–the story ‘Eric’ from Tales from Outer Suburbia uses the same quiet greyscale and tiny details as The Arrival–but the Renaissance influenced spreads from the story ‘no other country’ contrast strongly with the torn paper collages from ‘distant rain.’ No matter what the medium, Tan never fails to elicit compassion for his characters–whether they are an immigrant family or scraps of paper in someone’s pocket.
In a 2011 interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel (you can view it here.) Tan responded to questions with simple illustrations, resulting in some hilarious, succinct responses. I especially like the depiction of Hollywood as a snow globe and Tan’s childhood dream to become either an astronaut or an artist. In the introduction to his most recent publication The Bird King and other sketches, Tan talks about how for him, images “…are not pre-conceived and then drawn, they are conceived as they are drawn. Indeed, drawing is its own form of thinking, in the same way birdsong is ‘thought about’ within a bird’s throat.” This is very similar to how a lot of our work on Kismet has been constructed. We look at materials, arrange and combine them, and start experimenting with movement and interactions. Tan has been our primary inspiration on this project and we look forward to continuing to learn from his work and stories as we create our own.
We had a blast at the TEDx Adams Morgan Women conference this weekend. From functioning as the volunteer hangout table, to luring in adults with questions like “Green nose or pink nose?” to getting OVERRUN with children asking to help, it was amazing. Adams Morgan now has three puppet inhabitants living at the Sitar Arts Center, who you will meet at the end of the post. Here are some photos of our day and the process of creating them. Enjoy!
Heads waiting for features.
Conference participants helping create puppets.
When the adults went to listen to speakers, the kids at the Sitar Center took over.
Our finished Adams Morgan Puppets! From the left, that’s Granny Smith, Professor Columbia and Juliet.
For a really long time, my cutting mats looked like this:
I resisted purchasing anything fancier, reasoning that a piece of cardboard did the job perfectly well. And yes, it is fine for quick cuts. But as we discovered when working on the first workshop of Kismet, cutting large amounts of foam core requires a more consistent cutting surface. So now we have this:
And it is wonderful.
One of my (many) obsessions is children’s picture books, and I’ve been enjoying the various articles posted over at The Horn Book Magazine’s website recently in celebration of Picture Book Month. I had to laugh when I read some short pieces first published nearly fifteen years ago, by artists discussing their favorite medium for illustrating picture books.
Chris Raschka titles his piece ‘My Next Medium‘ and declares “My favorite medium, my ideal medium, is the one I haven’t used yet.” Oh how well I know that feeling. People often ask me about my favorite kind of puppet. Marionette? Hand and rod? Shadow or table-top? And like Raschka, I’m always tempted to say “Whichever one I haven’t tried yet.” Raschka goes on to say “Or maybe it’s the one I’m contemplating using, toying with using, in my next book Lordy! I think to myself, Lordy!, in my next book, I’m going to CUT LOOSE! In my next book. With my next medium.” There is endless magic in the possibilities of the future.
After participating in FIGMENT DC (see blog post here), I started thinking a lot more about how puppets could encourage people to participate in artistic events. FIGMENT really set up an environment where people felt comfortable with being ‘artistic’–whether that meant contributing to a public mural or joining in a brief square dance. I was curious about what other spaces and events where Wit’s End Puppets could encourage people to contribute ideas about puppets and puppetry.
Through FIGMENT, we were put in touch with the organizers of TEDx Adams Morgan Women, a locally based TED conference that echoes themes explored at the TEDx Women conference, but through the prism of the Adams Morgan neighborhood. If you’re unfamiliar with TED, you can go here for more information–the site is a fantastic treasure trove of ideas and inspiration, well worth your time.
The conference is about exploring the ‘space between us’ and the memories we have of Adams Morgan and the different communities of people who live there. We were asked to come up with a collective art project that could take place at the beginning of the day and we thought it would be fun to encourage some crowd-sourced puppet creating, as well as some fun wordplay. As people coming to the conference arrive to check-in, we’ll have a table set up with all different kinds of materials where they can help create some new puppet inhabitants for Adams Morgan, as well as contribute words to several Mad Lib type monologues. The finished puppets will perform the monologues later in the day.
If you are in the area and interested in participating in the conference, go here to register. We will report back with portraits of the finished puppets after Saturday!
One of the reasons I love puppetry is that you can accomplish so much with so little. Puppets can be made from literally anything–wood, fabric, plastic bottles or carrot sticks! It is entertainment that does not have to be expensive and that is one reason why we believe that puppets are an art form for all people of all ages. The spirit of “work with what you’ve got” was on display at the Crafty Bastards craft fair in DC this past weekend, where one corner of the lot was set aside for children to play with cardboard boxes. Who needs technology to be distracted for a few hours?
I often feel like I don’t have a very sophisticated process as a puppet builder. I have been working for the past week on brainstorming object puppets for the first half of Cabinets of Kismet and it mostly consists of me picking pieces up and turning the over and trying to imagine them coming to life. So many of our previous shows have featured humans and animals that I find I have to work hard to overcome some automatic assumptions. For instance, I keep having to persuade my brain that not every puppet has to have a face or two arms or two legs. These are object creatures and they are unique in their world.
A mouth made of a zipper?
I like the shape but I think it needs color.
This is the first in a series of posts about the various and often unexpected places we find materials to make our puppets. Enjoy!
A recent trip to New York City took me to Brooklyn, where I discovered a gold mine of objects, ready to be recycled into puppets. Film Biz Recycling is located west of Prospect Park, in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn.
Film Biz Recycling is a non-profit organization that diverts set materials from films to local charities. It also operates a prop shop and creative reuse center, which is where I spent most of an afternoon looking through all of their fun items. Along with furniture and large times which are for sale and for rent, there are shelves of small props such as telephones and typewriters, clocks and suitcases.
At the back of the store is a long wall filled with boxes, each with a neat label. “Thanksgiving in a box,” “Restaurant in a box” “Beauty Salon in a box” are just some of the ones offered, and they are filled with all kinds of small items, which you can buy for just one or two dollars. I found old kitchen tools, hair curlers, and wooden spools, which will hopefully turn up in some of the object puppets we are creating for Kismet. If you ever find yourself with an afternoon to kill in Brooklyn, stop by Film Biz Recycling to find something unique for your home or maybe your next theater project!
Hurricanes are good for something: Getting lots of little evil chores done while the wind and rain make it a bad idea to venture outdoors. I used the enforced leisure time to organize our ribbon boxes, which looked as though Hurricane Sandy had already been through them:
Several hours, and a LOT of cardboard pieces later, we have nice, neat boxes! Hopefully now it won’t take forever to find the perfect piece of trim for a puppet outfit.
Wit's End Puppets 