Most of the puppetry at this festival was found on the street or outside. Here is a page with two different outdoor pieces from different parts of the city.
Tag Archives: street performance
Puppet Postcard #1
Flashback time! Back in January, Cecilia was part of a delegation sent by Theater Communications Group to the Santiago a Mil theater festival in Santiago de Chile. As usual, Cecilia kept an illustrated journal of her travels, including encounters with puppets. These first two are from Mendoza, Argentina, where she spent a weekend catching up with Gabriela Cespedes and hanging out watching caja lambe-lambe shows in the plaza.
May Grab Bag
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A roundup of articles and more that we highlighted on Twitter this month
Czech style marionette carved by Cecilia in one of Mirek’s classes. See #1
1. A great article with even more awesome photos about our friend Mirek Trejtnar who runs the Puppets in Prague marionette-building workshops. Read it if you’ve ever been curious about how to make a marionette.
2. Some advice from Jim Henson, rendered in brilliant comic form by Gavin Aung Than. Read it for inspiration–we keep it handy in the studio for when motivation is needed!
3. Genna discovered this article about an artist performing with puppets in the New York subway. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone perform with a puppet in the DC metro–have you?
4. An article and video from Sandglass Theater of Vermont about their recent experiences performing in Cuba. Their work is a huge inspiration to us and well worth a look.
5. NPR has a weekly podcast called Pop Culture Happy Hour and recently one of the discussion topics was fairy tales. It’s not exactly the kind of stories we’re working with for Malevolent Creatures but still interesting and fun to listen to.
April Grab Bag
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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!
Wit's End Puppets 