PuppetryLab.com

2 days. 10 speakers. 20 performing groups. 22 workshops. 750 puppeteers. Who-knows-how-many-hundreds of puppets. 1 fabulous weekend!

I have just returned home from the 2007 Chicago Regional Puppetry Festival, and what a time I had there! As always, I came away with some great new ideas and many new friends. Here’s a quick photo recap of the event:

This year’s competition brought amazing creativity and clever techniques. The caterpillar above is made from painted foam balls that have been laced onto a rope and attached onto two controller rods. This is just one of four caterpillars that performed a wonderful blacklight number by the “No Strings Attached” team of Dubuque, IA.

Puppeteer/builder Kristoffer Neumann built these amazing, near life-sized puppets for his Buffalo Grove, IL team to perform the story-song “Christmas Dinner”. The heads were first sculpted so molds could be made for the poured foam material. The puppets are controlled bunraku style, and the heads have openings for mouth manipulation.

Here’s a close-up look at how the “Puppet Patrol” team of Ripon, WI made a puppet-sized bed prop out of PVC piping.

“The Outrageous Puppeterian Crew” of Oswego, IL performed a western-themed song complete with singing cactus made from foam board and elastic hair bands for mouths. (A much simpler concept than my own singing cactus puppets!)

Here’s a fun performance… it was done in blacklight and used a great combination of above water action (see the little guy in the boat…?) as well as underwater activity and scenery. The oysters with singing pearls and the jellyfish were just a few of the things going on down there. (Hmm… that reminds me of some other Jellyfish… ;-)By the way, I didn’t write down the info for the team that performed this song, so if you can help me, I’d appreciate it!

Saturday afternoon featured an incredible performance (as always) by the P.O.W.E.R. Company team from Glen Ellyn, IL, under the direction of Christy Watkins. Here are some highlights:

The performance opened with a wonderful dowel rod interpretation of the traditional Christmas carol, “Joy to the World” done in a contemporary urban gospel style.

The next number was called “It’s Not About Me” and featured the biblical story of Jonah and used traditional big-mouth puppets, a live actor, blacklight, regular light, and shadow puppetry. Amazing!

During one song, Robin Hood throws his shadow away and it appears on the wall behind him. In this beautifully choreographed number, actors on both sides of the screen executed near-flawless performances as the characters interacted with each other–sometimes mirroring, sometimes arguing, and one time swordfighting!

Then all three screens behind the Robin Hood character lit upto reveal two more shadows and ALL FOUR characters mirrored each other as they danced in unison. Wow.

The finale number is difficult to explain and was hard to capture in photos. The team performed a song in “reverse blacklight” where black silhouettes were placed in front of fluorescent boards to give an effect similar to shadow puppetry. In this picture you see three orange pieces that form a big circle… that circle is at least 6 feet in diameter. The black continent shapes are not fixed on the circle, but slid into place at the right time. The team used this same idea to create many other, more intricate silhouette pictures that displayed American history from the civil war to 9/11 and beyond. It was absolutely breathtaking. I wish you all could have seen it.

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