HowlRound: There is very little that frustrates me more than seemingly minor alterations at the request of a client. If you've ever worked a design job, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's that terrifying moment near the end of a contract when your client is giving the last notes and there is always one thing. One modification. One innocuous request only matched in its apparent frivolity by the time and effort it takes to accomplish. Paradoxically, it is this aspect of my work that I love the most.
5 comments:
This is such a strange article. It takes a job that some people may think is either not a real profession or a job someone takes as a means of someday getting a better occupation. I never even considered or realized that being a puppet maker was something that a person could enjoy so much. But the way the author describes the work he does just makes it all the more heartwarming that he is doing what he loves. A great deal of the work he describes having to do seems very tedious and it seems that in order to solve a problem, more and more problems can be created. Having this be what you choose to do can make life very frustrating in the just the same way that working in drama design and production can be frustrating. From the outside it can seem tedious and annoying to design something that will be destroyed maybe a couple of weeks or months after it was built, and similarly to puppet design, having to make small and seemingly meaningless changes to your design a couple of days before opening. But the same way the author of this article loves his job so much he really enjoys and takes pride in all the parts of his job that may seem annoying or unnecessary, that is what most of us in the school of drama see or hopefully see within our own future professions. And that is how you can truly tell that what you are doing is the right thing to do
I don't know about what others attitude towards puppet world but in my county puppet is one of the very serious and mysterious industry. You can’t just sign up for class to take puppetry lessons, you may need to be chosen by the teachers, and it’s a lifetime commitment. Puppet makers and performers got trained professionally since very young age.
Anyways, I used to watch a video of a puppet play 2 years ago in our colloquium class and it’s very fascinating. We can see when facial expression happens although the puppet can’t change facial expression himself, those are helps from lighting and other elements together with puppet performer team. One puppet requires 5 people to control. We saw all the behind the scenes and that was absolutely breathtaking. Yet, it’s a puppet. Like what the author said, some actions are still limited because it’s a freaking doll. Making still figure and making a moving puppets require different things as what he may trying to say. Trying to bridge the gap between design and technical parts, which I believe this happens all the time; a conversation between scenic designers and TDs, or between costume designers and costume production team, puppet designers and puppet maker is another kind of departmental conversation… Of is this a requirement from props or scenic designer to a puppet makers? Then that’s interesting and yes may be better to try to bridge the gap and have someone explains about it.
Meeting the needs of the designer and often the performer is large part of what my job is when working as a draper. Being able to create garments that meets those needs and watching it all come together one of my favorite aspects of my job. Watching the performer put on the costume and see how it changes their demeanor and mannerisms is amazing. As a maker, we are thinking abut all the practical aspects of the garment, which can at times fight against the designers wishes. There is an internal struggle makers can have, when it is necessary to make the choice that may not be the best for the garment, but is the best for the design or performers. The quote “I’m not just a builder; I’m also part of a network of artists working together to remind audiences and us that magic does exist.” That sentence, i feel, is why many of us work in this industry, to create a world, or a costume, or a prop that takes someone out of where they are, and causes them to follow you into the world that has been created.
Puppetry has always interested me. How one can make something inanimate come alive makes theatre have no bounds. I never realized how the puppets that are made could hurt the puppeteers operating them. I do not think that a minor alteration to the look of a puppet is worth pain to the performers. The puppeteers should be able to focus on bringing their puppet to life rather than their own pain. A few years ago, I saw the show War Horse, where the main character is, in fact, a horse. To have a horse on stage, the designers decided to have the it be a puppet.The three puppeteers who were going to operate the puppet studied the way horses moved for months so they could be as accurate as possible. The end result was a magnificent shaping of wire that transformed into a living, breathing horse on stage in front of my eyes.
The last show that I worked on at University of Toledo was a puppet show. Aside from the puppet designer also being the puppet builder, director, playwright, and webmaster for the show, there were a lot of problems. I have no problems with designers also being designers also building their shows, but at least they have a design. In this particular case, the designer didn’t have a set design for the puppets because she was also building them. This led to a lot of last minute manipulation, work that had to be redone, anger, and frustration. I mostly tried to stay out of the way, but seeing as she was using my shop to build her puppets, this wasn’t really possible. Even with my limited knowledge of puppets, I can completely understand how some of these small details and/or changes can make a large difference to the build. In my case, these seemingly small details made even larger problems because nothing was designed and everything was improvised construction. A few small changes might have meant that an entire puppet had to be rebuilt. All of these things taken into account, the audience only sees the final product and doesn’t know (or understand) the struggles that went into making the puppets. This article only reaffirms what I already knew. I will keep this in mind the next time I have to do a show with puppets.
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