Karagoz goes digital

We knew it would eventually arrive and here it is... the digital iKaragoz for iPhone and Android. A little frightening if you ask me, but anything to keep our puppetry traditions alive.

The Turkish corporation Anakule has developed the first puppet application for mobile devices. Although there are other digital animation apps for smart phones, this is the first in the world dedicated exclusively to puppets. It is very simple to use: puppets move through the accelerometer of the device, so users can animate their characters just by moving the smart phone or tablet.

The relation of humans with their iconic objects or puppets might have a different approach in digital era. Now virtual realities and interfaces create a communication environment that uses ways of perception pretty similar to the ones through which object theatre is understood.  If puppets are a physic link between humans and the unknown, the immortal, now the digital world of electronic devices connects us with an abstract dimension of reality. The object itself is no longer important, it does not matter if we have a paper puppet, a tablet or a smart phone, an iPhone or tablet, the important thing is the reality they can create out of us. The movement of puppeteer’s hand is written into binary code for the device’s internal use and read again to animate the image of a character the audience might recognize. Instead of strings or rods, manipulation is now made through a digital interpretation out of human immediate reality.

Anakule puppet app is, by the moment, based on the characters of shadow theatres from all the world. It makes totally sense: shadows are more abstract than the real figures of the puppet show, they are in the halfway to cinema and animation. Anakule studio may program newer apps with 3D puppets in the future, but by now there are available shadow theatre packs with characters from Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Greece and, of course, Turkey. (Click on country to see more)

iKaragöz have been released in different versions, containing up to 16 different characters. It has been designed by Uğur Doğan. The demos have been made with the contribution of the puppeteer Mehmet Saylan.  Our thanks to Puppetring for this story.

King Kong - remade for 2013

In June 2013, from the producers of 'Walking with Dinosaurs', comes another theatre spectacular from Melbourne, Australia.

Five years in the making, KING KONG will feature a cast of more than 40 actors, singers, dancers and circus performers, and a team of puppeteers who will bring to life one of the most technologically advanced puppets in the world – a one-tonne, six-metre tall silverback gorilla. Four years in the animatronics workshop – creating Kong has, in the understated words of Creature Designer Sonny Tilders “been a serious challenge”. In a way, similar to the challenge Wallis O’Brien faced in 1933 when he worked out how to make an 18-inch steel-framed puppet covered in rabbit fur appear ‘live’ on film interacting with Fay Wray. Just like now, it had never been done before. Watch this space!

Watch out for Couch World!

'Couch World' is the title of a multicultural arts project being produced for Human Right's Day and will run in the city of Melbourne for four days in early December.

For four days of summer, a living art display will pop up as an outdoor ‘living room’ at Signal. Featuring several couches transformed on-site by street, visual and installation artists inspired by young people and their thoughts on human rights. Be ready to experience firsthand traditional street art, environmental art plus video, soundscapes and puppetry. Keep posted for more news closer to the event.

The couches will be created and evolve right before our eyes over these four days, and are open places for public to sit and chat and even join in the couch evolution. Check out performance times where you will travel from couch to couch experiencing a series of short, live art acts by performance artists where each couch is the stage. This event is part of Talk, Walk, Sit and Spray Out, Young Voices and Contemporary Art for Human Rights produced and presented by Multicultural Arts Victoria (MAV).

Outdoor Living Room created for Human Rights 
HUMAN RIGHTS, CONTEMPORARY ART, YOUTH VOICES 
Friday 7- Monday 10 December, Signal, Flinders Walk, Northbank, Melbourne - FREE

Elmo's off the Street

So the rumour finally came true! I really didn't want to be involved in this shocking piece of cheap journalism before, but Sesame Street has officially issued a statement to say that master-puppeteer Kevin Clash, the man behind super-star, Elmo, has resigned from the Street. I am, like most of Elmo's fans, saddened by this news, especially after having seen Elmo's doco very recently and being deeply moved by it.

Without any further details, which you can read up everywhere, I just wanted to take this opportunity to wish both Kevin and Elmo strength and courage on whichever new street they will find themselves!

Neil's Puppet Dreams

Neil Patrick Harris star of stage, screen and television is now having sex with puppets? What on earth are these guys getting involved in? And Brian Henson, who's looking more and more like his late-dad every day, is involved too?

In a revealing exposé of the inner workings of Neil Patrick Harris' subconscious, the Nerdist Channel presents a gripping behind-the-scenes look at the making and inspiration for Neil's Puppet Dreams. Bearing a rare disorder that results in a dreamscape filled with puppets, Mr. Patrick Harris and those who know him best tell all in this exclusive sneak peek on 27 November on the Nerdist Channel.

Finally Online Courses for 2013

Due to the many requests from readers around the world for workshops over the past few years, Puppetry News is finally starting a series of short online courses and workshops in 2013. To make this possible, we are putting out a short questionnaire to our Puppetry News readers and those interested in puppetry across the planet. We would much appreciate your help in filling in this short survey here, to assist us in correctly targeting our courses. We plan to start off with one or two initial online courses in early 2013 and as this develops, we shall expand our curriculum offered to encompass many different genre of puppetry. If you could complete the questionnaire this week, by Friday 23 November, then we can immediately get to work to make this happen early in the new year. I much appreciate your help in this task!

Animations Online

Animations Online has evolved over many years from the first publication of the British Puppet Centre magazine 'Animations'.  I believe that Penny Francis was its first editor in 1974.  With funding for the Arts drying up in the UK, like everywhere else in the world, the publication slowly evolved into becoming both online and free, which is of great benefit to puppeteers around the world.

Here are some of the articles covered in the latest edition of Animations Online:
Puppetry and Opera was a two day event over 9-10 November 2012, hosted by the Puppet Centre and held at the Barbican and Central School for Speech and Drama.  "Puppetry and opera are self-conscious art forms where the fact of performing is declared. It is their collusion with the viewer, their joint celebration of skill, craft and high artifice, that make puppetry and opera such close companions."

The SPILL Festival of Performance 2012 – established in London in 2007 under the direction of Robert Pacitti and situated in Pacitti’s home town of Ipswich for the first time this year – occasions this comparative meditation about the uses and abuses of objects and performance’s material remains. SPILL is best known for its national platform for emerging artists and companies. SPILL will now come to London during April 2013.

London International Animation Festival in late-October, featured an exciting and intriguing collection of animated films from around the world. It’s the UK’s largest festival of its kind, with 280 films from 30 countries and 10 competitive categories, featuring the whole spectrum of creative animation. Check out this great puppetry publication online here.

Back to the land of Oz

It's been a while since we last journeyed to the Wizard of Oz, with the late Judy Garland in 1939. The new version, Disney's Oz, The Great and Powerful is scheduled for release next year. American master-puppeteer, Phillip Huber has been posting much about his involvement in this upcoming movie recently. He animated the delicate China Doll. For those who don't know the work of Huber, he was the puppeteer who brought the puppets to life in the movie Being John Malkovich in 1999. You can read his interview here. 

You can watch the second trailer on the Disney website here. The film looks a lot like the recent Alice in Wonderland movie that starred Johnny Depp and Mia Wasikowska - there's no skimping on colour or weird landscapes in this movie - and Disney will be hoping it matches that film's $1 billion box office haul. It is directed by Spiderman director Sam Raimi, is due to be released in Australia and internationally on 7 March 2013.

Air Bears & other creatures from the subway

I recently discovered New York street artist, Joshua Allen Harris, while in Indonesia. Joshua creates inflatable puppet-sculptures that get life breathed into them by the air on the streets getting pumped up by the subway below. He uses old shopping bags to create these amaising animation.

His Loch Ness Monster is probably the largest creation he has built to date - check it out here. There are quite a few of his short creature films, which you can watch on Joshua's website here.

The Street Kids of Jakarta

These special children (above) were first discovered on the garbage dumps in Jakarta. They were collecting waste materials and selling them to companies, who used the waste to manufacture all types of bags, wallets, travel tags and computer covers and sell them on to shops and distributors both within Indonesia and internationally.

The British International School (BIS) discovered the kids and raised funds to build a school for them. (See the article here). Many of the children, some of which are orphans who live around the dump, now attend school and I was asked to conduct a special creativity workshop for them, while working at the BIS in Jakarta. These youngsters who ranged in age from about six to twelve, were highly talented and like all children, they loved to play. We began with simple Brain Gym® exercises to get them focused and into 'creative' mode and soon we were constructing simple paper puppets and performing short scenes from stories which they chose.

 I rarely get to do such pure work in Australia and the experience of working with raw talent, such as this, was an absolute treat for me. It was an inspiration to witness these kids emerging from their hard lives for a while into a beautiful creative world.

Australian puppeteer takes on the H-Bomb

'Opening Shot' is a mini- documentary film competition, recently launched by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Sydney film makers Jay Court (director); Andrew Arbuthnot (producer) and Wendy Hanna (writer) hired the talented puppet artist, Kay Yasuki to create and manipulate the three puppet characters telling their stories. If using a condom is tricky to bring up when your date starts to get hot and heavy, try dropping the 'H-Bomb' - admitting you have genital herpes. Now try doing this with puppets!
You can watch the episode on the H-Bomb here! There is also a short 'Behind the Scenes' doco on the page right.
(Editors note: I am sorry that the above films are on the ABC's website and are therefore only viewable in Australia, but I have located the 'Behind the Scenes' on You Tube here and another extract here.)

Wayang Kulit in Yogyakarta

Yogyakarta in Central Java, is located to the East of Jakarta. The train journey took the entire day, but it was relaxing and I had already booked a return flight back to Jakarta where I would connect to Bangkok and Melbourne.

The Wayang Kulit (traditional Javanese shadow puppetry) performance was held at the Sonobudoyo Museum in Yogja. The Ramayana is divided into eight episodes, one performed each weekday evening.
The night I was there, they performed the second episode 'Hanoman's Mission'. It was quite a surreal experience with an audience of only half-a-dozen, but a cast of almost twenty performers, including twelve in the Gamelan orchestra, a choir of five women and the Dalang (puppeteer) performing the Kulit characters.

The action in Wayang Kulit is very slow and unless you are absolutely passionate about the art of traditional puppetry and have the whole night to relax and enjoy the spectacle, don't go! Most of the small audience ended up leaving before the end, but the tiny few who stayed really enjoyed this ancient traditional theatre. I also made a short film of the work, which is yet to be edited, so stay tuned.

While in Yogja, I was also lucky enough to attend a masked Ramayana Ballet, which was performed at the Prambanan Temple at night, which made a spectacular backdrop, being the largest Hindu temple of ancient Java.

Back in the Land of Oz

I am back! I humbly apologise to all of you out there for my extended absence from the Puppetry News Blog. It's a long story which I shall try to précis right now. It all began by planning another workshop - performance tour in SE Asia in October. This was soon followed by a family crisis in Jerusalem. So with tickets, suitcases and MacBook Pro in hand, we left Australia in early September - Israel bound.

To cut a long story short, soon after reaching Jerusalem, my MacBook slipped off the arm of a chair where I was working and my delicate hard drive suddenly died. I now had no laptop and there was no official Apple Store in Israel to repair it. I was instructed to take the computer into a Mac reseller in Jerusalem. Three weeks later, the day before we were leaving for Bangkok, I got the laptop back and after running it for fifteen minutes, it croaked again. So I was bound for a series of workshops in Jakarta, with no laptop or music. 

I managed to get onto You Tube and downloaded enough music for the workshops and got them onto a CD. (Anyone remember those?) We finally arrived in Bangkok, where we all split up. My wife, our boys and my MacBook returned to Melbourne and I flew onto Jakarta, where a new adventure awaited me... I was invited to present workshops and performance at the ISTA Festival for Asian schools, which was held at the British International School in Jakarta.

During this time, I was also introduced to a very exciting recycling XS Project in Jakarta. The project makes use of street kids, who collect the garbage, separate the contents and sell it on to the NGO, who go on and produce bags, wallets and the like for both Indonesian and international sales. Besides visiting and filming the project, I was invited to give a special Creativity Workshop to the street kids, one of the highlights of my visit. I shall write more about this and my discoveries in Indonesia a little later, so keep your eyes open for more...