It dawns on me that I’ve never shared any images from the puppet work I’ve been doing over at Live Arts. It’s a very different challenge coming up with puppetry solutions for live theater than it is for these odd web videos. For one thing, I’m designing for people who may never have operated a puppet of any kind. Also, these things need to withstand abuse. And, there’s no budget. So it has to be cheap, sturdy, and simple enough for anyone to use.
Basically, impossible.
But it’s actually worked out quite well. Here’s a few shots from GYPSY, which happened some time in the past, I don’t actually have any memory of exactly when anymore. It was in the last eight months, to be sure. It would take consulting some sort of temporal grid system in order to discover the exact point in the past when it was. If only such a system existed…
Anyway. Photos, with commentary All photos by the fantastic Will Kerner. Click em a few times and they should get bigger.
That’s Chowsie the dog. Like most of the puppets in the show, Chowsie is made entirely out of paper and tape, painted roughly. Chowsie got a lot of lipstick on her head during the run of the show, which I thought added something.
Chowsie had to be passed around from actor to actor during the course of each scene, usually starting with Mama Rose and ending with one of the kids. In this first scene, she was handled by four or five people in as many minutes. The handbag Chowsie lives in was essential to making this possible. In the background, you can see some fake kids.
Kids and animals. That’s why I was brought on for this show; GYPSY’s first act is filled with kids and animals. Live Arts didn’t want to fill the theater with actual kids and animals. So I made them. For most of the kids, we used simple bib-style puppets with velcro quick-releases, since the adults playing the parts needed to be adults ten seconds later. These went through several design concepts before finally being thrown together at literally the last moment with scrap cloth and hot glue. The paint marker detailing was still drying on opening night. Ah, the theater.
Animals. Look closely, you can see a dog, a lamb, and a monkey. We cut two cats, several dogs, and a bird from the scene.
A close-up of the lamb. The lamb has to run around the stage a lot. Knowing how hard it is to train someone to do marionettes, I opted to attach springy wires to the shoes of the actress, wired to the legs. As she shuffled, the lamb wobbled around, leaving the operator’s hands free to move the head.
…and then get the lamb into position for a song. The wire rods slid out of the shoes and became handles to move the lamb into position. Man, I wish I’d gotten video of that lamb.
A cow. The script calls for a full cow suit, as well as recurring use of the cow head throughout the show. I knew the costume change would never happen, and the actress’ face while performing the cow was too priceless to cover up, so we went more… abstract. The cow’s mouth was articulated, so it could smile and moo. In the background, a tiny masking tape ventriloquist dummy that was requested at the eleventh hour. Perhaps one of my favorite props from the show. That and the udder. Which I believe has been turned into a chandelier.
It was a hard show. But ultimately a fun show to have worked on.