Puppet Design for POTATOES OF AUGUST at EMP Collective Oct '14.

Rehearsal Photo

After the closing of "We Are All Strangers Here" I was approached by Carly Bales, Artistic Director of EMP Collective, to be the Puppet Designer for their upcoming production: POTATOES OF AUGUST.

EMP Collective has since won Best Of Baltimore Award for Best Multiuse Space for Arts and Entertainment.  This will be their first show since receiving the award.

EMP COLLECTIVE 307 W. Baltimore St., (410) 244-0785, empcollective.org

Maquette: Potatoes God- Random

Maquette: Potatoes God- Stacked

Armature

Drying in the sun

Couch Potatoes

Thanks to everyone who volunteered to help out!

Making of Ishi's Brain Puppet Show

After returning from my summer with Bread and Puppet, Eamon and I began working on a performance of his comic Ishi's Brain for the November 2012 release of his new book Songs Of The Abyss.  We started working in August and enlisted the help of many friends throughout  the process.  Many long days, nights, and lists later- we performed for over 100 people at Windup Space for Eamon's art opening/book release party in Baltimore.

creating the Shaman mask, working from a maquette based on the comic.

Testing shadow puppets and backgrounds

creating props based on Eamon's comic

Hinging shadow puppets for animation

Ishi's Brain comic, come to life.  Performance at Black Cherry Puppet Theater.

Eamon paints a paper mache mask.

designing the shadow puppet

painting shadow puppets

Ishi

Eamon released his latest self-published minicomic: Ishi's Brain in mid 2011. I really liked the way the main character looked and starting making him as a marionette.

I've been going about making him in a really unconventional way. Instead of making him and then painting him, I've been painting as I go. So far, just the head and torso are done. I think it's just because I'm really excited to see him done!

Ishi's Brain by Eamon Espey Darkly symbolic and eloquently illustrated, this minicomic is based loosely on the story of Ishi, who is believed to be the last Native American to live the majority of his life away from European American culture.

Eamon's comics are available through Secret Acres and Sparkplug Comic Books and in stores.

Giant Papier-mâché Puppet Head

So I've been doing a lot or research lately while planning to go to Bread and Puppet, and am totally inspired and overwhelmed with all the awesome options for making cheap and huge puppets!  Here's my first shot at a giant paper mache puppet head.

I built the armature out of clay I already had from making the heads for human wack-a-mole and stuff in my recycle bin and went to work. It took lots of layers of papier-mâché using newspaper and torn brown paper bags, but I was satisfied with the process. Especially since it is totally nontoxic!

The Making of "Jack and the Beanstalk" Marionette Show

At Black Cherry Puppet Theater, a few of us are working on a new marionette show for our original family shows repertoire. We're adapting it from the rod puppet show "Jack and the Beanstalk" created by our puppeteers Justin Durel and Jennifer Strunge for the 2010 Free Fall Festival. It was a huge success, and featured live banjo music by J Dilisio.

I've been charged with the task of creating a chicken that lays a golden egg.

Lucky for me, Michael had this schematic on the technical design of how the mechanism would work:

I guess the drawing was a little less technical than he remembered. I had a similar issue when I went to look for the original chicken from the rod puppet show.

After acquiring the cardboard puppet used in the first show and the crow from Hansel and Gretel (one of our other shows), I went to work on our little chicken.

I decided to copy some of the joints from the crow because I like it's neck movement. Here is the armature for the chicken with a hallow cavity for the egg to come out:

August 6, 2011: I finished forming the hallow body w/egg cavity from paper mache, so it covers the body armature photographed above. After some sanding, I attached those wings that I carved and voilà!

I began working on some little chicken claws:

And below is the control, specially designed so the chicken can bob it's head and flap it's wings erratically.

August 27th, 2011:

I finished working on the feet and painted the chicken after resolving some issues with the wings getting twisted. I still need to decide on the textile covering for the body and wings.

My next step will be figuring out how to make the egg and release mechanism for the chicken to lay the golden egg. After that will be stringing it. I'm almost done!

Marionette Carving in the Czech Republic

I was one of 12 people from 5 continents accepted into a special course in Czech style marionette carving taught by Miroslav Trejtnar for June 2011. Mirek was trained as a wood carver in high school. After that he worked restoring woodwork in ancient churches. In the early 1980s, he began working in puppetry for Jiří Barta's studio on a famous project "Krysař (the rat catcher)".

The end of which, in all of its bad ass sonic and scenic glory is posted below:



Over the 2 weeks of this program- we designed, carved and painted our marionettes. We then took 3 days and made up a show using all of our wildly different characters. We made props, sound effects, and sets out of things we had at the workshop studio.

Tara Cooper (Austin TX)

Mirek Trejtnar helping me attach joints.

Sam Ritter (New Jersey)

Our other carving teachers included Zdar Šorm and Sota Sakuma, and Dora Bouzková helped with manipulation and performance.

Zdar Šorm

Mirek teaches, Sota and Zdar in background

Dora Bouzková "cleaning the scene" with Kay Yasugi (Australia), Nina Prader (Austria/DC), and Abi Tucker (Australia)

Nina and Pali Diaz (Argentina)

Junko Kanayama (Japan/UK)

We then performed at the workshop endparty and then the next day at the Prague Quadrennial Exhibition of Performance Design and Space, for their Scenofest: Street Stories program.

Leny Pinkava, me, Mirek Trejtnar, Pali Diaz, and Nina Prader

During the evenings, we saw shows at Minor Theater, Divaldo Anpu, La Fabrika, and a small group of us went to the National Marionette Theater independently of the program. After the program, Eamon and I visited The Marionette Museum in Plzen- about two hours from Prague by train.

We also visited the home of Mrs. Varlova who has thousands of puppets ranging from the 1800s to the 1980s in her apartment. They are hung on all the walls in all the rooms, sometimes double and triple rows. Sometimes set up with the actual backdrops from the performances.

Standing: Abi, Tara, Kay, Junko, me, Leny, Nina, and Pali. Seated: Ericka Haverly, Sam, Mrs. Varlova, Peggy Rock

Mrs. Varlova, who's incredible collection began when her husband used the money they'd scraped together under communism to buy a car- on a small set of 4' puppets from the 1800s. She now has probably the largest private collection of marionettes in Prague. In her apartment. Amazing. (They never bought a car.)

This is the most incredible program for the study of traditional marionette carving techniques, costuming, and theater exercises. They also integrate many experiences for learning the history of Czech puppets, animation, theaters, and puppetry, as well as exposure to styles of puppetry and their uses in the current theater scene in Prague. I got so much more than I imagined possible from this experience and I would recommend the Puppets in Prague program to anyone who loves Czech puppets and animation and interested in learning the art of carving a wooden marionette.

Just look how crazy happy I am...


I was impressed both by the teachers and the organization of the program as well as all of the talented women I met while in it. We came from all over the world for our own reasons and with our own stories, and became friends in this experience together. I am interested to see how our lives all go from here.

Video by Kay Yasugi

**** (UPDATE from Lisa ON FEB 2013) Hello!  Thank you for visiting my blog! ****   

Please take a moment to check out my current project, 

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/songs-of-the-abyss-national-tour 

where I have used skills learned at Puppets in Prague, as well as Bread and Puppet.