The Stage: "Islington’s Little Angel Theatre is to launch the first adult puppetry festival to take place in London in more than 25 years.
The ten-day Suspense festival will feature masterclasses, lectures and performances by 24 companies, including UK organisations Faulty Optic, Green Ginger and Horse + Bamboo Theatre, and international groups TAMTAM Objektentheater and Inkfish."
9 comments:
I'm so excited to see puppetry gaining popularity in England and America. I know many cultures make great use of puppets for not just children but adults as well - many Asian countries and South American countries make wonderful use of puppets. Its a beautiful art form and a totally different form of acting. Avenue Q did wonderful things for puppetry and hopefully this festival will help puppetry to become more mainstream. It doesn't just have to be for kids!
The two devices I have gained immense respect for throughout my time at CMU are masks and puppets. Puppets can convey such a myriad of things, solve so many problems, they are incredibly undervalued in America. I'm very glad that this author thinks they're having a renaissance. Not only do they deserve a place in the theater community, but they can do such important things for education about the world around us and how to treat people. Education which we need.
This sounds awesome! I would love to go to a puppetry festival. In pre-college I had so much fun making puppets with Kenny and I start the stagecraft mini for costumes this week and am so excited.
I must say that when I read this title I was a little worried that "adult" puppet festival meant something more of an adult nature with puppets but I am glad to find out it doesn't. (So I don't sound like silly, I read the title to Sonia and she thought the same thing.) I also agree with Mary in that puppets do not have to just be fro kids. They are fun and just because we are older doesn't mean we can't play with puppets anymore. I myself have a ventriloquist dummy at home. He is awesome.
Puppetry is such an interesting art form and I'm glad that's becoming more widely used in the theatrical world. I've seen a few shows that made use of puppets, the biggest and most famous being Avenue Q, and I thought they were very well made and well used conceptually in the productions. Puppetry provides a wonderful challenge for designers and the constructors of the puppets, as well as presenting a challenge for the performers who must incorporate them into their performances. I hope I can work on a show that calls for puppetry in the future.
Recently there have been several articles on this blog about puppets so it may be true that puppets are going through a renaissance. Puppets are a great example of an element of theatre that is very old and specific but continues to be reinvented and modified to make it useful in many modern productions.As mentioned here puppets can be "sophisticated, irrational, grotesque and potent” and they are definitely not valued as much in american theatre as they are in other cultures.We just finished reading Chushingura in foundations and I was amazed to learn about the incredible dedication, lifetime of training and passage of traditions that it takes to become a puppet master. However the results are, as mentioned in this article , not only potent and sophisticated but breathtaking.
Puppetry is one thing I wished we at the SOD got to explore more. It's completely different from what most of us are used to, but it can be a really effective and intriguing form of story-telling. Plus, the craft that goes into puppetry is astounding. In Foundations, we recently discussed Japanese bunraku and watched a few video clips of bunraku performances. The training and dedication that goes into bunraku puppetry is extremely impressive on an artistic and technical level.
Puppetry is the one facet of theatre that I wish I could get further into in my time here at CMU. Shadow puppetry has always interested me as a storytelling element, and as a piece of Asian history and culture. Now that larger than life sized puppets are taking huge roles, I hope that I can get a chance to do a seminar like this and learn more about the art. This education is invaluable, and even fun for those that choose to participate.
I love how puppetry is becoming more and more accepted as a theater art. If someone had tried this 10 years ago, they would have been told to go on Sesame Street or something. I can't imagine a show, or series of shows, coming out and being so well accepted as they are now. I really think Avenue Q opened up the doors for this revolution. A few weeks ago, there was another article here about a puppet festival in Germany too. Anyway, I'm really excited for all these developments! I wish I were in the North end to go see this show! I do have to wonder what "masterclass" puppets are though.
It's really awesome to see puppets making a comeback in the era of computer graphics. While puppets are still used on shows like Sesame Street, it's been a while since anything like The Muppet Show existed, which is really unfortunate since thats just one example of how you can make a show that appeals to almost all age groups by using something like puppets to downgrade or in some cases upgrade the humor. Shows like Avenue Q just wouldn't have been as good without the puppets, and I was hoping that given the general success of Avenue Q there would be more work with puppets to some. Seems like that hope may not be such a long shot now.
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