You can see it full screen if you watch it at YouTube. Gary Friedman has a small clip and description of a secret performance of Terra Prenyada (The Pregnant Earth) by the master puppeteer and Spanish artist, Joan Baixas, at Unima 2008. No wonder he is buying more puppets today. The tech world seems to take itself fairly seriously much of the time, and I think Feldman may have a tiger by the tail with his entertaining and cutting take (though I’m sure it’s also going to be unkind and is already feeding into personality feuds). I am intrigued to see who is willing to be interviewed, their differing comfort levels, and of course the power that resides in the way a puppet can ask questions and go places that a real interviewer can’t.
There are precious few of us that follow both. I’m not sure if it’s so funny if you don’t follow the tech scene, but it’s interesting to see such a connection drawn between the tech world and the online puppetry world. (Update May 09 : not quick enough – he still can’t lip sync.) At first I was nitpicking the lip syncing, but Feldman is a quick study, and seems a natural for what works dramatically.
As Steve Gillmor says in NewsGang Live (04.02.08, about the 45 -55 min mark), it’s the kind of thing you feel guilty about laughing at, but you can’t stop yourself. You can read about it at Techcrunch or Karoli’s Bang the Drum, and here Feldman explains his initial impetus.īut it’s funny. Feldman has caused mischief and grief by taking the piss, and nicking the real Shel’s domain. Extract from Theatre and Change in South Africa 1992 interview with William Kentridgeĭespite my own mixed feelings, I’m expecting Loren Feldman’s Shel Israel parody to become the hottest puppet video show around while it lasts.Adrienne Sichel, 2008: Stirring Puppets.1998 NYT: Puppeteers with a hand, in the Aparthied protests.There’s just a chance I might around to catch it!Īrticles I enjoyed reading about Handspring: Incidentally, Handspring is hoping to bring out a DVD of Woyzeck, including the animations, and there is to be a new season of Warhorse in London later in 2008. Warhorse is the first production where Handspring has moved away from performing their own work, and Adrian commented there were advantages in being solely a maker at times, rather than being a maker/puppeteer. Kohler has developed the style much further, too, since building the rhino, as you can see if you look at the horses in Warhorse. I loved the rhino most, because it has so much character, and moves in such a life-like way, while being impressionistic in style. The red bulb is it’s bladder! (not to be confused with the 2 red chairs in the background). There is a universal joint in it’s sternum. The rhino, showing the rods and mechs on the operator’s side. The mysterious newspaper death-like character:Īdrian Kohler with the Miner, explaining how the implements in his hand can be changed: Margaret (?), Andries, with the accordion, and Maria with her baby: Their latest production, Warhorse, would have been too big to tour, and fortunately, to their surprise, the Munich City Museum was happy to lend the puppets back for the gig at Unima 2008. He explained how after touring Woyzeck extensively for some years, the company saw selling the puppets as the only way to move on to doing new work. Adrian is the master puppet maker and designer. They are bunraku-style puppets, with beautifully expressive carved (and hollowed out) wooden heads and hands. He is doing fine in reality, but in contrast, as he gets increasingly anxious about doing it perfectly, the animation shows great smudges and spills amassing into a chaos that ends in, among other things, a plane crashing and burning. For instance, in one scene, Woyzeck is worrying about setting his master’s table. They provided not only physical settings to the action and shadow puppets, but at times gave excruciating visual metaphors for what characters were thinking and feeling. One was the power of director William Kentridge’s back-projected animations which formed part of the backdrop to the set. Two aspects of the show intrigued me in particular. First staged 16 years ago, it tells the story of Woyzeck, a man of sensibility and principle, who is brought down by jealousy but his struggle is informed in every way by the hardships of the migrant labour system under apartheid in the South Africa of the 1950’s. The play itself had been a festival highlight for me. On the last day of Unima 2008 Gary introduced me to his friends Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones, who co-founded and continue to run Handspring Puppet Company, and I was lucky enough to go backstage to see the puppets from Woyzeck on the Highveld.
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