Handspring's puppet horses bedazzle London

The renowned South African Handspring Puppet Company's life size puppet horses are causing great stir at the National Theatre in London. If you went to visit South African puppet designer, performer and sculptor Adrian Kohler early last year in his studio in Cape Town, you could watch him sculpting huge horses out of cane and light wood. It was amaising to watch. These enormous Handspring puppets opened at the National Theatre in London late last year.

With arresting life-sized puppets and a full musical score, Tom Morris's and Marianne Elliott's War Horse explores the "untold story" of the many animals whose role in the First World War is so often overlooked. The production juxtaposes human actors with their puppet counterparts, using a backing video screen to display further images to support the story.

This is a must for any puppeteers travelling to London. You can view a short video of the production here!

What Power remains for Dark Crystal?

With the imminent release of the new Henson's 'The Power of the Dark Crystal' - sequel to the 1982 classic 'The Dark Crystal', skeptics like myself are wandering if the puppets of the original naive world of the Gelflings will be replaced by the super chick computer generated characters of the 'Lord of the Rings' films.

On the other hand, the original "The Dark Crystal," is said to have frustrated Jim Henson by the limitations of the technology. Henson, who died in 1990, took to discussing two different "Dark" visions in interviews: the film his imagination had longed for and the version hindered by fishing line and awkward action sequences.

"Puppetry has come a long way since 'The Dark Crystal,' " said CEO Lisa Henson. "When 'The Dark Crystal' was made, it was the first time that all those techniques were really refined to the degree that they could be put in a feature film. Since then, puppetry has come so far that the puppets we're going to use are going to be much more emotive than the originals. In addition to that, we can augment them with digital effects, but very subtly."

So all we can do is sit back and wait to see if they can get the balance right between the charm of the puppets from the original film and the special effects of today!

New Indigenous African Puppetry Films

There is very little knowledge about indigenous African Puppetry in the world today. In the nineteen-eighties and nineties, I filmed a series of puppet theatre performances from Niger and Togo (West Africa) and Kenya (East Africa). I decided to upload these gems for those keen to get a taste of indigenous African Puppetry. There's also a general taste of various African Puppets in another short film. Watch this space for more short films to be edited soon.
You can find these African Puppet films here!

Czech Puppetry Workshop a hit in Australia

I drove down to Mitagong for the weekend to check out Michaela Bartonova's Puppet Carving Workshop. It's about a 90 minute drive south of Sydney. The five day workshop was a great success if you judge it by the beautifully carved puppets that emerged and danced their way on the stage on the final day. It was inspiring to see traditional Czech puppets being carved out of wood, which gives an extraordinary aesthetic. For further info about these carving workshops, click here! Check out the short film above!

A New Year brings Idol Hands?

Happy New Year... First we had American Idol, then Australian Idol, then Teen Idol and now Idol Hands. This is a You Tube competition for creative film makers and puppeteers to film your hands doing amaising creative stuff to win prises worth $20 000. I found this while looking through You Tube films recently, but never found any really impressive puppetry stuff. The idea is to shoot short creative segments with your hands and load them up on You Tube to compete. So why not start your New Year with some inspired creativity and check out the website here! You can find the exact terms and conditions here!