The Magic of Paper

Wheel Of Life from Andre&Markus on Vimeo.

Paper is one of the most versatile and beautiful mediums available to makers, able to create and reproduce entire worlds at the cut of a blade. After years of experience perfecting this craft, The Makerie Studio teamed up with Director André Gidoin to magically bring one of these worlds to life, by creating and filming a hand made paper Zoetrope.

A zoetrope is a device that produces the illusion of motion from a rapid succession of static pictures. Often referred to as the Wheel Of Life, we were inspired to tell the story of one zoetrope in particular, that one night came to life.

WORDLESS!

"Art Spiegelman has almost single-handedly brought comic books out of the toy closet and onto the literature shelves."  - LA Weekly

Celebrated cartoonist Art Spiegelman comes to BAM with WORDLESS!, an innovative hybrid of slides, talk, and musical performance created in collaboration with acclaimed jazz composer Phillip Johnston. Spiegelman leads audiences on a personal tour of the first graphic novels—silent picture stories made by early-20th-century masters like Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, and Milt Gross—accompanied by an all-new score by Johnston, who performs with his sextet. In navigating “the battle between words and pictures,” Spiegelman smashes at the hyphen between high and low art, featuring a new work drawn specifically for this project called “Shaping Thought!”

My friend, Frances Ruth Harris, attended last night's performance, and here is her review:

He presented a history of how the graphic inspirations began. Phillip Johnston, along with other musicians, made up a band (the Phillip Johnston sextet) that accompanied Art Spiegelman's visual slides and presentation. The music was all the way live sizzle! The presentation was entitled WORDLESS! Spiegalman did a lot of talking at various points, and during the graphic moments, he did not always talk. He spent time explaining how the absence of words generates thought. It was wonderful. I also love the BAM Opera House where all this took place. I had seen a ballet there two years ago, and I was lucky enough to get a wonderful seat then so that I enjoyed the orchestra in the pit as well as the ballet on stage. Trish, I'll mail the play bill for you to enjoy. Then you can read a couple of pages on Spiegelman. This evening's show was originally commissioned by the Sydney Opera House for GRAPHIC. And, on February 12th is "Co-Mix: The Artistic Adventures of Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly." Tonight's performance was a chance for Spiegelman -- in addition to all the revealing and captivating history he shared -- to showcase his own life in terms of how others influenced who he has come to be. He did spend most of his time on the history of other graphic artists and how each influenced the other. There's no denying his pleasure -- and the audience's joy -- in his own successes. It's who he is; one can't hide a reality like that! It will be interesting to read what the Times and the Journal have to say about this evening's show.

Speigelman at the podium, shares with the audience using images &  music, and minimal narration

The Usual Suspects: Tom Haney

The latest piece by automaton maker extraordinaire, Tom Haney - "The Usual Suspects".

Tom describes the piece:

Handmade figurative, kinetic sculpture - also known as automata. 

Over 250 hours start to finish. Hand-carved bodies; heads sculpted from polymer clay; scratch-built mechanisms; handmade clothes. 8 cams and levers control all movement. Powered by a 4.8 RPM synchronous gear-motor.

The Collector

Meet Richard Balzer. He collects optical toys, and much more.

How do you convince a generation that’s perfectly content to watch a cat in a shark suit ride a Roomba to be interested in antique animation toys? "The simple answer is, just show them as they were," says Balzer. "Not as static figures, but as animations." This led Balzer to hire Brian Duffy, a young Los Angeles-based animator who began helping Balzer digitize and animate Balzer’s collection of phenakistoscope and zoetrope illustrations.

See more animations on Dick's tumblr!

Doctor Who in the Small

Scene from BBC 2013 Doctor Who Christmas Special:  The Doctor contemplates alien with his sonic screwdriver

Doctor Puppet, created by
Alison Stern

With this being the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, there are many creative projects and performances being inspired by the Doctor.  This includes projects that take the doctor to the small stage, as well as to the world of stop-motion film shorts.

The creativity of the people behind these projects boggles the mind.  Even the official Doctor Who program itself will be featuring a Punch-and-Judy-like puppet story in this year's Christmas Special!

The Burke Dollhouse

6' wide x 5' tall.  Fully functioning electrical lighting, 
and running water in the kitchen and bathroom...

Recently, a very special dollhouse was donated to the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA).

It's special because of its size and complexity.  The rooms were outfitted over many years, and no attention to detail was spared.

One can look into each corner of a room, and discover something new upon every viewing.  The house is truly a work of miniature art.





The dollhouse was donated by Mary Livingston [Griggs] Burke, who passed away in 2012. It was built in the early 20th century, and had been added to over the decades by the original owner and her daughter. The family foundation donated the dollhouse to the MIA in 2013.

Ms. Burke, a distinguished art collector,  made known her intention to donate her Japanese art collection upon her death to the MIA.  The dollhouse may have been a fortunate after thought that the MIA inherited along with it.

Michelle Mausi, the author of
Tales of the Tchotcke Family 

One of the staff at the MIA began taking snapshots of the rooms as well as the miniature figurine characters that inhabit them, captioning each image with a fictional narrative.

The figurines became the Tchotcke family.  They had individual names, back stories, and narratives for their particular scenes.

You'll want to check the stories out here and here.

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens: UPDATE

The last time I posted about this project was about a year ago.  The man behind it, Steve Arnott, contacted me today and wanted me to know that an updated video demonstrating more of the digital animation, soundtrack, and narration was now available to view.  The video above is that sample.  It shows great promise, and has many fascinating and magical scenes. The narration is done by Roy Trumble, from his reading of J.M. Barrie's earlier, shorter work about Pan...

The film is making good progress. Steve did some film work in Norway last month, where they are enthusiastic about the project - part of the film may be produced there.

Arnott knows his subject well, and has written about its history and influence.

To find out more about the film's history, and what the goals of the film project are, go here.

As I find out more information, it will be posted here.  Stay tuned!

London Puppetry Festival: October 25th to November 3rd

Going on RIGHT NOW is the Suspense 2013 London Puppetry Festival! Check out the video to see clips of the shows and workshops being offered, as well as excerpts from some of the shows and the performers who create these amazing worlds for us to enjoy...

2013 Paper Theatre Festival in Harderwijk

Held this past May, here are highlights showing some of the performers, theatres, and actual clips of performances...

PuppetVision: The Movie

PuppetVision: The Movie is a documentary about puppets, puppeteers and puppetry around the world.  The mastermind behind the project is Andrew Young:

We want to use fantastic interviews, combined with performance footage, rare film clips, and original puppetry sequences to create a fun, accessible documentary that takes you on a globe trotting journey to meet these incredible artists and explore the wonderful work that they do. We want to take the art of puppetry apart, show you how it works and surprise you with what you find.

This update on Andrew's blog shares even more details and photos, the latest news on the project.

PuppetVision: The Movie is being funded by donations.  Please visit the project's fundraiser site and give whatever you can - every penny is much appreciated!  And, there are incentives for various contribution amounts.

Classic Paper

Homer’s cornerstone of literature is vividly told with beautiful illustration and masterful puppetry. Cinematic projection and cunning tricks transform a suitcase full of cut-out paper puppets into an array of living characters and striking landscapes. A silent film is created before your eyes, set to a captivating live score from exceptional musicians.

If you live near Brighton, you're in luck!

The Paper Cinema will be putting on performances next week of their amazing adaption of the Odyssey.

Don't miss it!

Moby Dick on a Stick!

My friend Karen had an "obsession" discussion at her library (where she works as a librarian) recently, revolving around Melville's MOBY-DICK.

She used some of the art from Matt Kish's Moby-Dick in Pictures to create stick puppets for the program.

Karen led an informal discussion with the participants, in an attempt to answer questions about larger subjects. Questions contemplated were: What does the novel tell us about obsession? [Ahab’s obsessive desire to kill Moby Dick drives much of the novel’s story-line...] What methods does he use to get the crew on board with his personal obsession? And, what do those methods tell us about larger subjects, such as the nature of leadership, tyranny, and democracy?


The video below is a fascinating short film documenting Matt Kish's own obsession with Moby-Dick, and how that obsession compelled him to create a sketch, drawing, or painting every day for a year, that eventually became his book. His art inspired Karen so much, she used several for her project!


Inside the Whale from Southpaw Filmworks on Vimeo.

Slava Polunin's SnowShow

GSW10 Performance on Video: Bradley Manning

Filmed June 15, 2013, 10pm. The latest episode of Great Small Works' signature production, "The Toy Theater of Terror as Usual", focuses on the trials and tribulations of Bradley Manning, and freedom of information. Performed at Great Small Works 10th International Toy Theater Festival, St. Ann's Warehouse, Brooklyn.

GSW10 Review: Miniature Theatre, Grand Ideas

When William Shakespeare wrote, 'All the world is a stage,' he probably meant a bigger stage than you can find in the world of Toy Theater, a tabletop universe, usually no more than a meter wide, where big things happen - from Hamlet, to political satire, broad-brush comedy, dreamscapes and everything in between. VOA’s Adam Phillips went behind the scenes at a New York toy theater company.

Politicizing Puppets: GSW10 Review

A well-done review of the recent GSW10!

Politicizing Puppets at St. Ann's Warehouse
By Emma Wiseman

Great Small Works’ International Toy Theater Festival is in its 10th year of celebrating miniature puppet works of all kinds.  The last two weeks saw the festival transform St. Ann’s Warehouse in DUMBO, Brooklyn into a family circus-style labyrinth festooned with hand-painted banners, dividing the space into several individual makeshift theaters supplementing St. Ann’s usual venue.

The festival program describes toy theater as “a do-it–yourself storytelling form which can be elaborate yet simple, grand yet inexpensive, full of deep critical thinking yet accessible to all.”  A toy theater piece is typically self-contained within its own mini proscenium and in general is characterized by its small size. In an age of CGI and 3D printing, there is a certain nostalgia and familiarity to be found in all styles of puppetry, though perhaps more so in toy theater, evoking as it does childhood living rooms, scissors and tape, and the excitement of putting on a show for the grownups.

St. Ann’s transformed by the arrival of Great Small Works’ 10th International Toy Theater Festival

The work on display at the festival, which closed on Sunday and included both live shows and a “Temporary Toy Theater Museum,” arrived from all over the country and from several cities around the world.  While all could be categorized under the umbrella of “toy theater,” many of the pieces took that concept and exploded it, incorporating other puppetry and performance styles. While I wasn’t able to see all of the performances, I did catch several wonderful pieces and some pretty stunning examples of just how effective this medium can be.

Detail from Annie Silverman, “The Great Danes,” part of the Temporary Toy Theater Museum

Erik Ruin and Maryann Colella of Providence, Rhode Island presented One Touch of Nature Makes the Whole World Kin, an exploration of several different disasters — notably the San Francisco earthquake and fires — and the coming-together of affected communities in response to these events. The construction of the piece was in classic toy theater style with a stand-alone proscenium arch piece, made instantly eye catching by a bold, almost Art Deco looking image of two figures holding hands. Ruin is a prolific printmaker with a striking visual style that pervades One Touch… Rather than individual figures moving through the space, the puppets of this piece are large fragments of landscapes, all done in complex lines that reminded me of woodcuts.  These pieces are hung from the top of the proscenium and fit together in a dense collage, capturing both the crowds of a city or town as well as the chaos of a major disaster.  Both performers narrate the story, with Ms. Colella helpfully pointing out individual figures and images within the dense artwork.

One Touch… stood out to me among the other shows in its particular program, all of which shared the theme of “Disaster!” Great Small Works, the presenting company for the festival, grew out of a collaboration with Bread and Puppet Theater, and as such has an activist vein running through much of their work.  Whether it is their influence over the art form or that there is something about toy theater, and puppetry in general, that complements political dissent, some of the Disaster pieces made me want to call out “I’m sorry!” Overt, talk-y messages about the dangers of global warming and the evils of government were washing over the audience like a Superstorm surge. I believe fervently in the importance of theater to a larger political discussion, but the nuances of that is a conversation for another day.  Suffice to say that One Touch of Nature Makes the Whole World Kin, by taking a historical view and by making well-executed performance its first priority, was a compelling breath of fresh air in a program hot with indignation.

Hand painted signs welcoming people to the Festival

Claire Dolan came to the Toy Theater Festival from rural Vermont, where she works as a nurse, she explained in a disarmingly un-theatrical way at the beginning of her piece. She also brought her neighbors along to help her tell a “very simple story.” Elephant has a narrative woven from Dolan’s personal experiences in Shanghai, her changing relationship with her mother in the last weeks of a mentally debilitating illness, and actual facts about elephants.  Specifically, the piece explores the nature of memory: in Shanghai entire neighborhoods have been razed to make way for more modern buildings, which in turn are torn down in favor of fake historical buildings for tourists; tribes of elephants mourn over the dead body of a companion and then return much later to the same place to actually cradle the bones with their trunks; a mother ceases to recognize her own daughter.  I was utterly charmed and transported by the work, which, while in reality being far from simple, was presented in a clear and measured way by performers with a sincerity that I actually think receiving a BFA can often kill.  Ms. Dolan was also appearing as a representative ofThe Museum of Everyday Life, for which she serves as the Chief Operating Philosopher.

I was completely surprised at the parallels I found between Elephant and Beth Nixon’s Lava Fossil, which was presented in a different program.  For one thing, both pieces were inspired at least in part by the death of a parent. Nixon presented her story using several suitcases containing pop-up sets, taking a traditional toy theater format and running with it. She talked about the death of her father and mused on the nature of time, and a dead person’s place in it. Her childhood dentist also made an appearance, as did some passionate dinosaurs, Pompeii victims and several different types of volcanoes.

Amanda Villalobos, “Sister Adorers in the Cardboard Convent” at the Temporary Toy Theater Museum

I was struck by the way in which both Ms. Dolan and Ms. Nixon constructed their stories: juxtaposing seemingly unrelated topics and coaxing out significance, breaking down an idea into layers of meaning and sifting through. Puppetry is particularly powerful when it is used in this way; not simply as a visual aid but a method by which ideas can be furthered and explored. Furthermore, I think that creating artistic work out of personal pain is a complicated affair that can often slip down a theater-as-therapy path, and I was very moved by each of these pieces, both of which were incredibly well thought out and artfully composed while remaining intensely individual.

Zach Dorn, from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, performed Five Excruciatingly Ordinary Toy Theater Shows, one or two in between each of the other live performances in his program. Each brief, hilarious piece came from a diary entry in a “particularly boring notebook” that Mr. Dorn found among his belongings. One of my favorites was entitled World of Poop. His cartoon-y sets and figures were very small, and he used a handheld camera to direct the audience’s attention.  Mr. Dorn’s work brought smallness to the forefront, as did Kevin P. Hale’s Poe-Dunk, which examined the life and works of Edgar Allen Poe with puppets stuck to matches and matchbook-sized sets.  In these situations especially, a screen above the stage that provided rock concert-like close ups of the work via a live feed camera was invaluable, though for most pieces in the festival it was still a helpful perspective.

View of one scene from Janie Geiser’s “The Reptile Under the Flowers”

Janie Geiser’s The Reptile Under the Flowers was presented in one of the festival’s makeshift individual theaters to which audience members were admitted eight at a time, every fifteen minutes. The piece comprises twelve scenes, each of which lives in its own stand-alone light box-theater and describes part of one family’s history. It was the miniature Sleep No More of the Toy Theater Festival.  Some of the scenes only allowed for two audience members at a time to peer through eye-holes, creating a unique and intimate viewing experience.

I found the Toy Theater Festival to be thoroughly enjoyable in the way that a difficult yoga class is. The theater was a million degrees, some shows were harder to sit through than others, and I started to recognize the diehards who were coming back day after day. In terms of the scope and breadth of the work there is really nothing like it to be found in New York, and for $10-$15 it’s the most cost-effective way to experience the great St. Ann’s Warehouse.

Masterpieces in Miniature: Bonsai

The man behind this miniature masterpiece is Takanori Aiba. "If you explore any small part of my works, you find amazing stories and some unique characters..." His attention to detail is incredible; he creates interiors of his buildings as well as exteriors. And it is all the more impressive since the details are all done in miniature.

A Village in Miniature

I adore this kitchen with cupboard doors done as a miniature town in old Europe, a kitchen done in a miniature theme!

I wish I had the talent, skill, and patience to tackle painting my kitchen as a toy theatre collection, but alas, no.

But what a fun, beautiful idea...

GSW10: Greatest Smallest Parade Floats

Two floats from the "Greatest Smallest Parade" that were on display at Temporary Toy Theatre Museum

Tess Elliott reports in with photos taken during the just-finished 10th International Toy Theatre Festival.  Tess will be sharing her final reports from the festival in the next few days.  She was extremely busy this year not only taking in the shows and documenting them for this blog, but also volunteering at the festival.  See her photos of some of the small floats that took part in the opening day parade...

Howard Brothers Model circus at Ringling Museum

Howard Brothers Model circus at Ringling Museum, a gallery by jatcod24sci on Flickr.

Incredible workmanship in the miniature, you must see these well-done, close-up photographs of a life's work. Begun in the 1940s, one man has created an entire big top circus in all its amazing detail!