Meet Puppeteer Genna Davidson

Posted on April 12, 2013 by ccbooks

Third in our series of short interviews with the cast of The Amazing and Marvelous Cabinets of Kismet. All photos are by Sarah Gingold.

Genna with King Lamp and Swirl Dancer.

Bio: Genna Davidson is a Washington DC based actress, puppeteer and musician. She graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2008 with a BA in Theatre. In addition to Wit’s End Puppets, she has performed with The Hub Theatre, dog & pony dc, Deviated Theatre, The Bay Theatre Company, as well as workshop productions with the Rude Mechanicals (Austin, TX), 500clown (Chicago) and various local devised-theatre ensembles.

When did you first start working with puppets?

I was nineteen, in college at the University of Maryland. There was a show being done with Bunraku style puppets and they knew no one would have any experience so they held an audition and taught us what to do. It was a very in-depth process, which was nice.

Genna with Nurse and Kismet.

What is the most unusual puppet or puppet show you’ve worked on?

This one! Actually, in high school I didn’t realize it, but I did a puppetry production of Flatland with my best friend at the time. We had to turn a book into an interactive presentation and we had wanted to just release a bunch of butterflies (for A Hundred Years of Solitude) but butterflies were too expensive so we did Flatland instead with cardboard and a basketball. Looking back I realize that they were actually puppets.

Which puppet is your favorite to perform in Cabinets of Kismet?

King Lamp, because I think he’s challenging and I just love the fact that he thinks he’s a king and therefore he is. But he really doesn’t have power over any other puppet. He gets to hitch a ride on another puppet. And he can do cartwheels!

Meet Puppeteer Amy Kellett

Posted on April 10, 2013 by ccbooks

Second in our series of short interviews with the cast of The Amazing and Marvelous Cabinets of Kismet. All photos by Sarah Gingold.

Amy operating the paper puppet Frank.

Bio: Amy is delighted to be puppeteering with Wit’s End Puppets in this production! Some of the other companies/festivals she has performed with as a puppeteer or human in the MD/DC area include The Puppet Co., Source Festival, Landless Theater, Madcap Players and Bay Theatre Company.

When did you first become interested in puppetry?

I don’t know…I guess the first time I really thought about performing puppets was when I auditioned for The Puppet Co. in Glen Echo, MD. It was a big learning experience and my first interaction with people who were professional puppeteers and knew how to build cool things.

Amy and Kismet.

Probably this one. Most of the other stuff I’ve done has been more straightforward. This is the first devised puppet show I’ve ever worked on; other shows have been already written before we started. This is also the first time I’ve ever worked with found object puppets in a show.

Which is your favorite puppet to perform in Cabinets of Kismet?

Bully is my favorite because he can do lots of things with his arms, which are magnets. He can pick up and hold lots of things, which I find useful. He’s also fairly mobile, so he can move lots of places.

Meet Puppeteer Heather Carter

Posted on April 8, 2013 by ccbooks

The first in a series of short interviews with the cast of The Amazing and Marvelous Cabinets of Kismet. All photos are by Sarah Gingold

Heather and Kismet.

Bio: Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for herself, Heather Carter eventually learned to overcome two of those three problems. Preferring to refer to herself not only in the third person but also as a ‘theater-maker’ she works on developing a type of theater that is holistically informed: that is, everybody does everything. A puppet maker, physical theater performer and erstwhile lighting designer and electrician, she loves the spectacle of theater and introducing the improbably and imaginative into Everyday LIfe. Formal training includes: The Center for Movement Theater (DC), Sandglass Puppetry Institute (VT), Commedia Dell-Arte with Antonio Fava (Reggio Emilia, Italy), Shakespeare and Co. (MA), Yale School of Drama (CT) and Marlboro College (VT).

When did you first get interested in puppetry?

Apparently I used to pull the tongue out of a crocheted cow hand-puppet when I was a three year old. Later I went to a college in Vermont where puppetry was a really big deal and I really hated it for my first year and a half there. But then I saw Autumn Portraits, a famous show by my advisor Eric Bass and I finally understood why some stories can only be told by puppets.

Heather and the Lightbulb puppet.

When I was at the Sandglass Institute for puppet training, one of my first practice ensembles had a puppet that looked like a giant blue sun head, some sort of fabric and a plumb line in it. We spent a huge amount of time trying to figure out when the plumb line should drop out of the head and I still don’t know what that show was about, exactly.

Which is your favorite puppet that you perform in Cabinets of Kismet?

Kismet! As I discover more about how the puppet is built and his specific movement qualities, he’s become a very sweet, clumsy, myopic and steadfast creature. He has a lot of character and fidelity, who’s the kind of person I would be friends with.

Anansi Goes to Potomac

Posted on February 4, 2013 by ccbooks

These are some photos from our performance of Anansi’s Appetite at the Potomac Library in Maryland on January 19, 2013. As you can see, we had a great time!

Anansi leaves spider webs of yarn with audience members playing the different animals.

Genna Davidson playing Turtle in the story 'Anansi Goes Fishing.'

Genna Davidson playing the hand puppet character Turtle in the story ‘Anansi Goes Fishing.’

Anansi (performed by Cecilia Cackley) tries to trick Turtle into catching fish for him.

Genna performs Granny Annika in the story 'Anansi and the Dancing Granny.'

Genna Davidson performs Granny Annika in the story ‘Anansi and the Dancing Granny.’

Granny dances away from Anansi, who is singing from up above.

Children at the show try out the puppets for themselves after the performance.

Shadow Family Night

Posted on January 28, 2013 by ccbooks

Don’t miss our performance at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Shadow Family Night this Friday! From 5-8pm in the Kogod Courtyard, the museum will be offering free performances and activities for children and their families. Stop by our table and make a shadow puppet, then stay to see our brand-new shadow puppet show, called Coyote Places the Stars. This new tale was inspired by a story from the Wasco Indian Nation and you can see Genna drawing a few of the puppets below. We hope to see you on Friday at the museum!

Looking Ahead at 2013

Posted on January 3, 2013 by ccbooks

Cabinet for the KISMET set

We have so many exciting projects and events coming up that I’m not even going to try to list them in one post. Instead, I’m going to focus on the two largest: The Amazing and Marvelous Cabinets of Kismet and our upcoming workshops at several D. C. public and charter schools.

We are thrilled to be partnering with the Friends Community School in College Park for a workshop in creating puppets from recycled materials later this week. Later in the spring we will be offering the same workshop, along with the opportunity to write and perform a show with their newly-created puppets, to students at Inspired Teaching Public Charter School and School Within a School at Logan Annex. These workshops will give us the opportunity to share our love of puppetry with several different age groups and encourage students to express themselves creatively through art.

Our work on The Amazing and Marvelous Cabinets of Kismet is continuing at a break-neck pace! Each week we are creating new puppet characters, as well as meeting with designers and our production team to talk about the environment and storyboard of the show. In January, we are looking forward to holding auditions for our puppeteers–we hope to add even more people who are passionate about puppetry and storytelling to our team. Check this page often for more updates and photos of our work!

Wit's End Puppets

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