Kismet Photos

Posted on May 13, 2013 by ccbooks

Only one weekend left to see The Amazing and Marvelous Cabinets of Kismet! We recommend buying tickets online–we have a relatively small number of seats and would hate to have you miss out. I’m excited to be able to share some of our beautiful production photos today, taken by C. Stanley Photography!

Kismet, discovering that his world has been destroyed.

Puppeteer Amie Root, with Lightbulb Head.

Matt Reckeweg and Genna Davidson, with Kismet and Jellybird.

Puppeteers Amy Kellett, Cecilia Cackley and Genna Davidson, with Nurse, Zoom and King Lamp.

Marvelous Marionettes

Posted on May 3, 2013 by ccbooks

For a very long time, marionettes were the one form of puppetry I was a bit scared of. So many strings, so wobbly and hard to control. They felt like the most complicated kind of puppet out there and I wasn’t sure I could construct one adequately, let alone perform it. In spite of that, quite a few of our characters in the Paper World section of The Amazing and Marvelous Cabinets of Kismet are marionettes or variations of marionettes. Here are some photos of the different controls and how they work.

This is the control for Gecko. It moves his back legs and one of his front legs.

This is the control for the Loopy. It’s a variation on a 19th century control that I found a picture of in a book. The bottom piece unhooks to move the two “arms” of the puppet, while the top piece anchors the rest.

One marionette is complicated enough. Putting together four of them makes some things easier and some things harder. You sacrifice individual movement when you put multiple puppets on the same control, but it’s worth it to get the effect of the group moving together. Genna came up with the design for this control, of a whole school of Paperfish.

April Grab Bag

Posted on April 24, 2013 by ccbooks

I fell down the rabbit hole of the TED website recently, with the result that this month’s grab bag is a mix of TED videos. Some are directly related to puppetry, others are more tangential. But they all made me think, wonder, and get excited about being a working artist in the world today. Enjoy!

1. I was intrigued by the descriptions of arts festivals in this talk by producer David Binder; I was reminded of Ping Chong’s series Undesirable Elements as well as the upcoming Figment. And I REALLY want to get a closer look at those giant puppets!

2. In conversation the other day, a puppeteer friend and I were discussing how many people now immediately think of War Horse when you mention puppets. Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler of Handspring Puppet Company talk about their amazing creations for that show in this talk.

3. Amanda Palmer is a musician, but she used to work as a living statue, a form of street performance that I’ve always loved. In this talk, she explains the art of asking and value of connecting with an audience. Lots of food for thought.

4. Traditional Chinese hand puppetry performed by Chen Xi Huang, with an amazing fighting sequence.

http://talentsearch.ted.com/video/Chen-Xi-Huang-The-ancient-art-o;TEDShanghai

5. This I think was the first TED talk (actually, TEDx talk) I ever saw, by one of the design editors at National Geographic, Oliver Uberti. I remember thinking that his comment that many of his projects “have a high risk of being terrible” sounded a lot like building a puppet. He also sounds like he’s had similar awkward conversations with employees of hardware stores who don’t quite understand what you’re trying to do!

http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxNASA-Oliver-Uberti-Smash-Th;search%3Aoliver%20uberti

These are five TED videos that intrigued me, but there are many, many more that I love and that I’m sure you will love. If you have some free time, check out the site and watch some videos. I’m sure you’ll find some interesting ideas!

Kismet Rehearsal Videos

Posted on April 17, 2013 by ccbooks

Our puppets Kismet and Mophead taking a break on the set.

We’re heading into our last few rehearsals before tech starts later this week. New faces, new movements and even some new puppets! We have loaded our cabinets, drawers and lots and lots of paper into the Mead Theater Lab at Flashpoint and are figuring out how Kismet’s story fits into this space. Looking back over the past months of rehearsal, here are a few (very tiny) videos of our experiments and ideas from this crazy journey.

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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