Short residence available for puppeteer in Montreal

An opportunity is on offer for a foreign puppeteer to become artist-in-residence and create a new childrens' puppetry production in Montreal, Canada from 25 April to 15 May 2010. The scholarship will favour a puppeteer, having had more than five years professional experience, wishing to work in collaboration with artists in Quebec. They must have a working knowledge of French. The closing date for entries in 1 November 2009. If you are interested, you should contact Myriane Demers at the Petits Bonheurs Festival here or download the information from their website here!

Where the Wild Ones are built

Why was I the last person to find out that newly released adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic 1963 children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are was filmed in the beautiful, rugged landscape of southern Australia.

What I also didn't know was that the Jim Henson Creature Shop created elaborate full-body Wild-Things suits of otherworldly, grotesque beauty. Computer imagery was only brought in as a final veneer, to animate the creatures’ faces. But to see Henson’s monsters romp around with Max on screen is to feel the heft of their bodies and the heat of their breath.

However you feel about Spike Jonze’s treatment of Where the Wild Things Are, you can’t be anything but dazzled by the way he and his team brought Maurice Sendak’s beasts to life. Often choosing the path of most resistance—the film took six years to make, after all—director Spike Jonze opted not to rely solely on computer graphics to render the Wild Things. However advanced C.G.I. technology has become, it simply wouldn’t have looked substantial enough to recreate those terrible teeth and those terrible claws. Spike Jonze directed his first movie, Being John Malkovich, in 1999. I can't wait to see it!
You can read the full article here!

International Workshop Tour 2010

A workshop to catalyze your next creative breakthrough & explode into a space of free flowing ideas and expanded vision!

Our Short Workshops (Three hours to two-days)

From April to June 2010, Brain Gym® specialist, and Occupational Therapist, Sharon Gelber will once again join forces with master-puppeteer, Gary Friedman, in an international workshop tour of creative performance and play for high schools, universities and the creative public throughout Europe, North America and the Middle East.

In each of the following workshops, Brain Gym® exercises will activate the brain and senses to prime the body for creative processing:

1. A World of Paper Workshop
The workshop takes a practical hands-on and experiential format, where participants express themselves and communicate through the medium of paper. The students are provided with themes to develop improvisational performance pieces in-which the paper becomes the co-performer. We cater for student, adult and corporate groups.

In a full-day workshop, participants have the opportunity to tell stories from their own life experiences which then get 'played-back' to them by their fellow performers using the paper characters. This is based on the genre of "playback theatre".

2. Object Improvisation Workshop
The participants work in groups to explore the hidden possibilities of every day objects. Different suggested themes and topics allow the objects to be brought to life, as they become ‘living - breathing’ characters on the stage.

3. Hand and Ball Exercises – Basic Puppet Manipulation
The naked hand forms the basis of the puppet. This soon becomes a basic hand or glove puppet, when a plain white ball is added. The hand and ball exercises are later developed into short scenarios and performed by the participants, both individually, then in groups.
For dates, schedules and more information, stay posted or send us an email here!

World Puppetry Festival report from Charleville-Mezieres

The 15th edition of The World Puppetry Festival 2009 which ran from 18 to 27 September has just closed up shop for another three years. Set in the beautiful Ardennes region of France, about two hours north-east of Paris, Charleville was crowned the world capital of puppet theatre since the first world festival in 1961. It was started by the late- Jacques Felix, director of the French puppetry troupe Les Petite Comedians des Chiffons.

Indeed, besides the Festival, since 1981, the town has been home to the Institut International de la Marionnette, a permanent place of training, creation and exploring of new ideas and to ESNAM (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette), which since 1987, has taken students from all over the world. UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionnette) has also had its headquarters in Charleville-Mézières since 1980.

You can watch many puppet festival reports on the France 3 Website (in French)!

UNIMA honours the three great induviduals

UNIMA, founded in Prague on 20th May 1929, is the oldest theater organi- sation in the world. It celebrates its 80th anniversary through the year 2009. Since 1980 the registered office of UNIMA is in Charleville-Mezières, thanks to the great personality Jacques Felix who was its secretary general for 20 years and whose contribution to this organization is incomparable.

Several events will mark the 80th Anniversary occasion in Charleville-Mezières: we shall posthumously honour Jacques Felix at the square named after him, the World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts will be launched, the inauguration of an exhibition from UNIMA archives, a homage to three well- known figures, my own great professors from puppetry school in Charleville, in the early eighties. who have contributed a great deal to UNIMA: Margareta Niculescu, Henryk Jurkowski and Michael Meschke. Margareta, Henryk Michael and the late- Jan (Honsa) Dvorak, I salute you!
(Photo courtesy: Compagnie Arketal)

Sand Animation takes Ukraine by storm

Ukraine sand animation artist, twenty-four year old Kseniya Simonova, has won both the hearts and Ukraine's Got Talent 2009 competition and has spread her work as a viral video propelling Simonova to overnight world acclaim. In the short film piece above, Simonova takes us back to the war-torn Europe of 1944, when the concentration camps killed off many millions of its inhabitants. She recounts Germany conquering Ukraine in the second world war. She brings calm, then conflict. A couple on a bench become a woman's face; a peaceful walkway becomes a conflagration; a weeping widow morphs into an obelisk for an unknown soldier. Simonova looks like some vengeful Old Testament deity as she destroys then recreates her scenes - with deft strokes, sprinkles and sweeps she keeps the narrative going. She moves the judges to tears as she subtitles the final scene "you are always near".
You can also see some of Simonova's other work on You Tube here and here!

Political Satire ZANEWS launches as web channel in South Africa

After months of hype following the South African Broadcast Corporation banning the puppet satire ZANEWS, the programme has found its niche on the web. ZANEWS is based on the British Satirical Television series of the eighties 'Spitting Image' which later became adopted by many other countries around the globe. In May this year, I wrote an article on Puppetry News about 'Z News' as it was called then. I also mentioned a similar series just launched on Kenya Television, 'The XYZ Show', which is the same political puppetry in East Africa.

ZANEWS is now webcasting a daily show, so it's an enormous amount of work they've got themselves in for. They have recently found a commercial sponsor which I'm sure is the driving force which helped them get launched. So check out their work on the web here!