Puppet Rampage Diaries!

For those of us who can't be there (sigh), or for those that are and just want to remember, be sure and check out the Puppet Rampage Festival video diaries and blog! Sounds like they are having a blast in Minnesota this weekend!

Automatic Organs

Remember the sawdust? The cotton candy? And remember the carousel organ?

Hear it again...

Video Highlights from Fishmarket

Digitized Magic Lantern Slideshows

Thanks to the Victorian Peeper, I learned that there has been a project to digitize some magic lantern shows put online.

Turn off your lights, and you'll almost be able to imagine what it was like to see a magic lantern show over a century ago...

Rampage Performer

Cashore Marionettes are one of the many amazing performers at Puppet Rampage this year...

Latest Toy Theatre Newsletter

Harry O. has a new toy theatre newsletter out, and a very special - and moving, might I add - section called 1963...

More Amazing Photos from Fishmarket!

More amazing photos from the recent festival (courtesy Rainer and Marliss Sennewald)

If you would like to try translating to another language, try this...

Query Request

three_musketeers
Originally uploaded by morganthemoth

Kent from San Francisco wrote to say...

I came across your site while looking for more information about Peter Baldwin. I was just recently in London where I spent a rainy afternoon in Pollock's Toy Museum, and in Dusseldorff where I saw a marionette performance of Krabat. I've learned so much on your site about Dante, The Seven Deadly Sins in marionette form...I will be returning often.

On a related note, on a recent art-scavenging mission I came across a complete punch-out set for "The Three Musketeers" drawn by an artist named Hillenbrand (no copyright date, but the sets say "Hillenbrand '43"). I'm wondering if you know anything about this artist. I had thought of using it in an art piece, but I may just create a facsimile, as I wouldn't want to alter anything of historical significance if it is historically significant. If it's a dime-a-dozen, I won't worry and I'll make art with impunity.

There is a stamp on the inside cover that says:

Diggon-Hibben Ltd.
Victoria, BC

best regards,

Kent

Fishmarket Post-Festival UPDATE

The website for the recent International Toy Theatre Festival at Fishmarket has just been updated!

Fishmarket Festival Highlights

From Harry O.: The first pictures of the International Toy Theatre Festival at Fishmarket are online.

Seven Deadly Sins, Puppet Style

Erik Sanko is a very talented artist, who happens to have a passion for puppets...well, marionettes to be exact. His latest production, The Fortune Teller, played in New York to enthusiastic audiences.

I REALLY love the video below where they show more of the 'behind the scenes'!

Robert Poulter NEW Website

Thanks to tip from Gigi Sandberg, I learned today of a new website put up by the amazing Robert Poulter. Be sure and check it out!

TT Film Well Received at Festivals

Dante's Inferno is making the rounds on the film festival circuit, and doing quite well. I can hardly wait until it is released on DVD!

When it comes to punishment, though, nothing takes the place of the classics. What served T.S. Eliot well enough also inspires director Sean Meredith in DANTE’S INFERNO (2007; Brattle March 23 at 7:30 pm, with Meredith). Updated in setting if charmingly retro in technique — a crude but effective Victorian cardboard puppet theater — Inferno remains faithful to the original while cleverly revising it for the present day. Here Dante finds himself in the middle of his life hung over and in despair, broke and with a non-functioning cellphone, passed out in an alley. Virgil emerges from the shadows with a mission to redeem him for the sake of the deceased and beloved Beatrice, and off they go into a 2-D hell of a distinctly 21st-century cast.

Dante himself had no qualms about settling political grudges in his epic, and Meredith also indulges in an agenda, though it’s not so easy to peg. Ronald Reagan and even a pre-mortem Dick Cheney figure among the damned, but so too does JFK (lust got him), and the religious right will be glad to know that there’s a special place in Hell for gays, at least in Meredith’s version. Although its slapstick sometimes overshadows its ingenuity, there’s enough of the divinely comic in this Inferno to justify a pair of sequels. - Peter Keough [Boston Phoenix]

Puppet Rampage 2007

An amazing festival and it'll be right down the road from me - I had darn well better find a way to get there!


More performances than a person could take all in.

...and there will be a strong toy theatre presence.

From Harry Oudekerk...

So I guess it is time for an update on the international Toy Theatre Festival in Harderwijk, The Netherlands.

Harderwijk is an old fishing town on the border of the former Suydersea. The town is almost 800 years old and the oldest part is the region called the "Vischmarktbuurt". Quaint old houses, a monumental gate which also "still" functions as a lighthouse, citywalls, an old, former, synagoque, and nice rstaurants in various price brackets.

This is the background for the first of, we hope, a long series of toy theatre festivals.

The festival will be held from Wednesday May 16 in the evening till Friday May 18 late in the afternoon. This is around Ascension Day.

What makes this festival special, are not only the guests, but the enormous enthusiasm with which the neighbourhood adopted the idea of the festival and gave it its support.

The old synagogue will be our "livingroom". Here tickets will be sold, and meals served for the performers. Other guests can drink coffee and such here but are adviced to have their meals at one of the 4 restaurants around the Vischmarkt square that will offer special festival arrangements. Two theatres will be performing on the first and second floor of the synagogue and Dirk Reimers will be selling stuff from his toy theatre shop. In the gate properly called the "Vischpoort" or "Fishgate" there will be an exhibition of theatres from the collection of the famous Ab Vissers a toy theatre collector and performer of long, international, standing. He will be selling too! For children there will be a toy theatre workshop. If you want to come and stay for a few days I can still offer some double bedrooms with breakfast in a nice hotel at the waterside for the duration of the festival at €180.

Advance tickets will be sold from May 1st at €4 per show, 4 tickets at once will cost you €15. Tickets for the whole festival, 12 shows, will be €37.50. During the festival single tickets will be €4 and €4.50 for respectively for children up to 12 and adults.

For more information, take a look at the English website...

Enthusiast: Ab Vissers

Thanks to Harry Oudekerk, I have found out about an amazing toy theatre enthusiast named Ab Vissers.

Anyone that puts a permanent toy theatre for performance in their home is alright with me!

Film Director & His Toy Theatre

A tiny toy theater, measuring not more than 3 feet high, 2 feet wide and 18 inches deep, has been discovered at the D. W. Griffith studios at Mamaroneck, N. Y. The Purpose of the little play house reveals the infinite care observed in the preparations of the Griffith Photoplays such as "Way Down East."

- From D. W.'s Toy Theater, The Washington Post (1877-1954), Dec 4, 1921

Update from Pollock's Toy Museum

From Paul J. Weighell at Pollock's Toy Museum comes this update...

Just a quick message to the main Pollocks addicts!

The new website is now up and running. It will no doubt change and grow! The plan is to add a shop and sell Hugo's and Steve's output if they wish, as well as Pollock's stuff and hopefully all things TT. I have already added a links page to Hugo and Trish and other good sites. If you have a TT links page then perhaps you might update it to point to the new site not the old one?

Steve has finished the Cinderella DVD and it's good and I hope Hugo won't mind me mentioning that he is working on a release of Waterloo to add to his other fine titles.

Believe it or not, 2 new cellars have been found under the building!! They go out right under the road in front of the shop and they are quite large and very very wet. But, they will make a good spot for me to set up a few fish tanks and bubbling apparatus to chemically treat the printing plates and remove the corrosion. Hugo may have offered to photograph / scan the results... Rumours that I will be making a TT Frankenstein down there are sheer nonsense (not enough electricity for one thing...)

The new TT clubroom at the top of the museum is coming on and all the sheets and so on are already up there. Non-TT stuff has been banished! Dolls and Bears have been seen escaping to good homes as more space for TT is found in other rooms as well. The aim is to have all the TT stuff on display in the general museum and then the the club room has space for fixing up theatres, sorting sheets and so on. It may even be used again for holding performances as that was what is was used for in the 60s.

Guilty Pleasures

What can I say...I adore Peter O'Toole, and this made me laugh my *ss off...and, and...it's puppets!!

From Professor Will...

From Professor Will comes this fascinating information on toy theatre special effects, a result of a recent thread about the subject on the Toy Theatre Yahoo Group:

Lycopodium is a club moss spore; if you can identify the moss, you can collect it in the woods at the right time of year. It produces a flash because it's so fine that it "burns" when blown into in the air and ignited by a flame or spark (like a flour explosion). There are no oils involved. Finely powdered resin will do the same but is more dangerous (and smelly) Colored "fires" were frequently coarse resin combined with metal salts. They are technically a firework and appropriate regulations apply.

"Flash" paper, cotton, silk, etc. are forms of nitro cellulose, best acquired for a reputable magic supplier. Must be kept dry. They burn at a very low temperature (unlike magnesium!) Safest igniter is a model airplane glow plug hooked up to 12 volt battery. There's a slight delay which needs to be compensated for in performance. Small igniters that work with a 9 volt battery are available.

I found information about something called a flambol which is "...an apparatus, which is used to make a fire from a flambol with on a stage of a theatre." I have no idea how practial it might be, but thought I'd pass it on here for those that might be interested. This also sounds like a LOT of fun for those scientifically-minded - think of the possibilities!