#stage puppetry

[adarkrainbow]

I will complete my trilogy of Hansel and Gretel stage adaptations of fascinating visuals with this piece. I made several posts about the Royal New Zealand Ballet's adaptation and its homages to Germanic cinema (and obscure carnival traditions). I reblogged something about the Hänsel and Gretel concert of Lindemann-Tägtren and its disturbing, horrifying but also darkly clownesque visuals... And now I bring you the San Diego Opera adaptation of the famed Hansel and Gretel opera, with quite impressive puppetry!

I will copy-paste here the content of an article by Beth Accomando, which can be read in its original form here.

It’s not every day that an opera singer gets to bring a cannibalistic witch to life.

"I lure children into the forest and I cook them into gingerbread cakes and then I eat them. It's delightful," said tenor Joel Sorensen.

But what’s not so delightful is having to wear a big puppetry rig to create a larger-than-life witch onstage.

"I am a puppet," Sorensen explained. "The witch is a puppet, a very large puppet. And I have a colleague, Iain [Gunn], behind me. He bears the bulk of the weight on his back. So I'm basically working with a puppet while trying to sing and convey a character. It's a real challenge."

The challenge for director Brenna Corner in bringing Engelbert Humperdinck's "Hansel and Gretel" to the San Diego Opera stage was how do you bring a fairy tale to life?

"One of the things that I think is really tricky about 'Hansel and Gretel' is size. How do you make two grown-ups look like they're kids and two other grown-ups look like they're adults? And then someone else looks sort of even bigger and more powerful. And quite frankly, the best way I could figure out how to do that was puppets," Corner said.

So anything that was not human became a puppet. Like the witch.

"It's different in that it's not my physicality. So, because I'm manipulating her hands, her arms, and I'm working in tandem with [Gunn] so I can't move as quickly as I might normally or as sharply but facially and vocally, I'm trying to do the same things that I would do if I were performing it without a puppet," Sorensen said.

Now if you are thinking of puppets as something you put on your hand, think again. Imagine actors completely enveloped in layers of fabric with a large sculpted head or face high above their shoulders and an arm span that exceeds 10 feet.

"We had to really kind of blow up the notion of what a puppet is in order to successfully encompass the fusion of opera and puppetry," said Judd Palmer of Old Trout Puppet Workshop in Calgary. "Our inspiration was classic 19th century children's book illustrators like Arthur Rackham or N.C. Wyeth. We wanted the whole thing to feel like it comes out of a book and it becomes the illustrations coming to life like a pop up book."

Palmer designed the puppets for a production in Canada and Iain Gunn of Animal Cracker Conspiracy here in San Diego is now the puppeteer working with Sorensen to play the Witch onstage.

"I get to live inside this character that I'm helping to bring alive," Gunn said. "But she has her own voice standing right in front of me. I don't know how to describe it, but I feel like I am transported inside this imagination. It's like I'm in the 'Time Bandits' or something like that where … we're doing something magical and it's a magical character and the only reason it's alive is because we're in there giving it our all. So it's pretty cool."

The puppets engage the audience in a unique way.

"It's this agreement that the audience makes with the performers," Corner explains. "That we agree not to see the person who's obviously a person and instead we agree to look at what is fabric and some PVC pipe and a plaster-like face, right? But we agree to do that. So what's extraordinary to me about puppetry is that as an audience, we're continually investing our imagination in seeing the thing that the performers want us to see and then as the performers keep investing in that then all of a sudden they go away. They don't exist there anymore and it becomes something else kind of magical."

By not trying to fool the audience and instead asking them to play along in this game of make-believe, the audience becomes a co-conspirator.

Palmer pointed out, "You can see the puppeteer right there in a ridiculous outfit. They're sweating and panting from having to run across the stage and they're waving the puppet around. It lets us all in on the joke in a way but also in the kind of the dream. It makes it evident to everybody in the audience that they are going to have to invest imaginatively in this in the same way as the people on stage are."

It's recommended that you bring a child-like sense of imagination to this show.

"That joy that you had when you were a kid," Corner said. "And you could imagine what would happen if a stick was suddenly a giant scary monster. I think that's what you want to bring to this production because that's what this production creates is the sense of wonder and joy and mystery that's inherent in being a kid."

And inherent in a story that begins with the magical possibilities of once upon a time…

San Diego Opera’s production of Engelbert Humperdick’s "Hansel and Gretel" opens Saturday and will have three additional performances through Feb. 16 at San Diego Civic Theatre.

[gummi-stims]

Puppet stage finale from bobbakermarionettes on tiktok!

[aevyk-ing]

[atamascolily]

Broke: Live-action version of animated classic.

Woke: Stage play with puppets.

[post-hummus]

Last Summer, I worked as a puppet designer for The Moonlit Princess (Mah Pishooni), a Persian folktale directed by Afsaneh Aayani. The show was held at Rec Room in Houston and was funded by the Houston Arts Alliance. 

To express the amount of time & effort that goes into a production like this is...insurmountable. As someone who is primarily used to working alone, I surprisingly enjoy being part of a crew and the collaborative efforts that help turn an idea into reality. It's an experience that I don't take for granted.

Also, it was my official debut as a puppet designer--that's pretty darn neat! 

Here's to more opportunities to weave something beautiful with a group of passionate people & a unique vision. ♥

(Photography by Lynn Lane)

[world-of-puppets]

PuppetMania: 5 Jaw-dropping Theatre Puppets

[bawdybooster]

The Magician had such a knack for puppetry.

He could bring anything to life under his spell.

His Puppets.

His Assistants.

His Audience.

Night after night, his influence reached to roaring crowds demanding more and more of his talents.

And he gave them exactly what they wanted.

What he wanted.

[scholarastrid]

London Coliseum, Spirited Away stage show, July 2024.

An absolutely amazing show! 10/10, and a must see for Studio Ghibli fans!

[akaikami-cherryblossom]

Mankai stage where everything is the same but we have a puppet of Kamekichi. Do you see my vision.

[sanstropfremir]

TOHO SPIRITED AWAY?? PLS GIVE ME THE DEETS

oh it was soooooooooo good i'm so happy i got a chance to see it!!! gorgeous design all around, there was no standout elements bc everything fit so well together. all the spirits + magical elements were done with traditional (japanese and western) style puppetry, so everything was articulated and manipulated by an operator, which had this really wonderful almost youth theatre vibe. a lot of times with shows that involve puppets, they'll try to make the puppets as advanced as possible to not make them 'childish' (see: war horse), but for something that's based heavily in folklore and IS a children's story, to me the only logical sense is to emphasize that particular angle. the puppets were also incredible, very well made and sooo accurate to the movie??? like impressively accurate. my faves were probably kamaji and haku? kamaji's six extra arms were each operated by a separate person who had one hand operating the elbow and one hand as the actual hand, so all eight hands were able to do everything, which mean there was some REALLY incredible choreography of just. all the stuff that he was doing, but also when he got up and walked it was soooooooo cool. and haku!!! he had two puppets actually, one 'full size' that was a big long foam articulated body that took i think four puppeteers, and there was a tiny haku that they used for the flying scenes that was basically just a little head and a ....idk what the actual technical term is but it was basically just a wind sock as the body on a big long pole so the puppeteer could essentially move him like you would a big ribbon! the scene were he first transforms and flies off was sooo pretty, the actor haku did a lil setup to a GORGEOUS spinning jump and when he landed he ducked down behind some of the chorus members and as he disappeared the tiny ribbon haku shot up from the same spot and started looping around.......... actual magic. also wow the actor playing haku was so pretty. and very tall. which i did not notice until the very end. i would not be suprised if he had ballet training bc tall and he had the ballet dancer chin/head posture. also the actor playing lin (also doublecast as chihiro's mom) was crazy hot. just so unbelievably hot. anyways. speaking of casting: noface as a popping dancer. UNREAL and incredible galaxy brained choice. he had a solo while they did a set change and WOW. spooky and gorgeous and also weirdly welcoming? really excellent job of embodying a sympathetic physicality that made it understandable why chihiro would let him in to the bath house in the first place. also for the curtain call he put the mask on the back of his head and literally did the bows backwards. insane. my ONLY complaint is that i didn't love noface's giant form, but that's mostly because years and years ago i saw a (different) puppet show with a grim reaper character that was very similar to giant noface (the telescoping neck + large body) and i literally thought at the time 'if you were going to do puppet noface that is exactly how you should do it', so 1) expectations 2) i'm pretty sure that version was done using quite a sophisticated extending mechanism, which would be antithetical to the rest of the puppets in the show, and 3) this giant noface was VERY big (probably at least 10-15 feet across? he was at least eight puppeteers with the original actor as the mask) so the logistics would not have worked. regardless. it is a very small complaint that literally no one else would have had unless they had seen the same show that i did in like. 2015. costumes were all unreal, the set was phenomenal; it actually took me WELL over an hour to figure out that the set literally stayed the same the entire time, it was just being rotated (it was on a turntable) and redressed + had a couple balconies flown in. also live orchestra?? in the set??????? i didnt even know they were THERE they had them behind a scrim on an upper level platform in the back and they pulled it up for curtain call and there was like. 15 ppl sitting back there????

ok but if i had to pick ONE thing that was my favourite, it would be that ALL the living things were played by someone alive. i know that sounds obvious, especialy for like. the dancing vases and the frog and the soot sprites, but even the PLANTS were puppets in their own way. like the hydrangea bushes that chihiro hides in at the beginning and the flower field that she and haku run through were done with chorus members wearing these beautiful flower head/chest/arm pieces. even the stone guardians at the tunnel at the beginning of the play were actors. it really underscored the magic of everything to have all the life be actually alive.

[anthonyspage]

🎭🕰🎩☕️🐱♣️♦️♥️🌺🐇⏰👩♠️💂‍♂️♥️💂‍♂️

[liamthemarowak]

Sam is Hosting a Puppet Show, and Liam and Jack are Interested.

Liam The Marowak and Jack The Cubone Belongs to me

Sam The Mini Yeti Belongs to jacobdsproductions on Deviantart

Pokemon Belongs to Nintendo and Game Freak

[aevyk-ing]

[4K] Untrainable - How to Train a Dragon STAGE SHOW - Universal Studios ...

[thegoreartiest]

The Action Murder -S2 TD AU

1st victim: Heather kasuga

Rule #1 follow the dance

Body found by : Gwen

Ur_missingcupid -TikTok account

[icelynia]

I LOVE ALL OF THIS AND HIGHLY SUPPORT!

I also want to draw attention to Sight and Sound Theaters! They do basically the same thing with puppets, but also use live animals and it’s all for musical theater!

This was the whale puppet they used for Jonah! It flew over the audience and this was in ~2010? It was massive!

Sorry that’s it’s a TikTok, but it’s the most complete version I could find. This is the Goliath puppet/animatronic they used in David! They also had 4 others that were Goliath’s brothers, but I could not find clips of them. Imagine using something like this for Polyphemus?!

Here is a behind the scenes about an Elephant animatronic they used in Queen Esther!

All of these are so impressive and that’s not all. They also have moving ships and sets.

Here’s a video about the boats in Jesus! Something like this could totally work for EPIC as we all know how important boats are for this story. They’ve done this for multiple different kinds of boats of all shapes and sizes. While that one in the video is a fishing boat and not that big, I think the ship from Jonah would be perfect!

This also showcases the moving sets a bit. So cool!

Here is the LED screen that they have used for both David and Daniel! It was super immersive and I could see it being useful to adding the other ships and large enemies in!

Sorry for how long this is. I just love sharing about Sight and Sound and what they have been able to do. They are super underrated and unknown outside of Christian circles (even inside of some of them). All of this shows what’s possible for Musical Live Theater if you (have a good enough budget) and a creative crew who puts their minds to work! Imagine putting things like this to work in EPIC?! It would so…well…EPIC!!

Even if you are not a Christian, please listen/watch clips of the original musicals they put on. They are high quality and are musicals based on the stories of the Bible. They can be treated like any other musical (say like Hadestown and Fiddler).

The ones I would recommend as the best would be Queen Esther, David, Daniel, and Moses.

See, every time Jorge mentions Cirque du Soleil being a possible inspiration for a live stage version, I get excited all over again by the possibility of puppetry. The show Awakening is a great example of what can be done with large puppets, both remotely controlled, and those moved by humans!! I think that style of puppetry would be amazing in Epic, particularly for all the creatures such as Polyphemus, Scylla, and maybe even some of the gods. And the fight between Circe and Odysseus too!!!

(shown below are two examples of Puppets from Awakening that I adore, and whose technology I can 100% see being in Epic!!!!)