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labricoleuseLast Saturday at the Forest Theatre in Chapel Hill, a 20-foot Buddha puppet walked through the beyond-sold-out-capacity crowd and didn’t squish a single theatergoer. Paperhand Puppet Intervention performed their four-part puppet-play, "As the Crow Flies," and your correspondent, luckily, was there.
The show opened with. . .
All photos courtesy of Danielle Latman & Michael Habib
"Man and Machine - The Story of John Henry"
The show opened with a dramatization of the legend of John Henry, which is a particular favorite of mine. I love variations/renditions/retellings of the John Henry story in song (such as "The Day John Henry Died" by the Drive-By Truckers) and I usually cry at the end like a little girl, so I was particularly excited for this one.
The story was told through song--a vocalist sang lyrics that narrated the action. Action took place in two parts of the stage at once--small 2D stick puppets performed actions at the back in a ladscape setting, while masked actors and macropuppets performed variations on the same actions in the foreground (see photo above).
I liked that the fist-elements of the John Henry macropuppet had these large channels for hammers to go into, and the sculpture on his face/head was really nice. I'm guessing, because he was so much larger than the other characters, that either the interior had two puppeteers, one sitting on the other's shoulders, or a single puppeteer wearing the head and shoulder supports mounted on an aluminum backpacking frame.
"King of Fools"
This piece was a fairly standard folktale centering around a nameless village of indeterminate geographical locale, full of simple-rustic types. The program indicated that they took the piece from Russian/Jewish folktales. The villagers all had charming full-head masks and body padding (see above photo). Meandery plot, kind of pointless at first and slow, politically subversive later in terms of what it said about government and iron-fist rule.
The sculpting on the mask faces was really evocative of character; the mask on the far left was particularly well-done, with its brush of thick yarn for the moustache that shook and wiggled when the actor moved around. The shapes reminded me of Snuffy Smith and Barney Google cartoons. I am guessing that the eyes and nostrils are mesh to allow view-windows for the actors to see, because they maneuvered fairly well around the playing space.
"Seeing With New Eyes"
This was the piece de resistance, of the four pieces the most impressive visually, with the 20' Buddha puppet, a 3-person demon puppet, and various other effects! You can get an idea of how frantic the action was in the "Demons besiege the meditating Buddha" section by the fact that the photo is blurry! In addition to the 3-man macropuppet (the Demon King Mara), there were two demonesses on stilts, some one-person masked demons (one of which wore his mask on his hands under a drape, so he had some really freakish-looking movement going on), and several people running by waving banners with words on them like "HUNGERv and "ANGER" and "GREED" and other negative distractions/emotions.
Buddha, operated by (I’m guessing) five puppeteers, managed to remain serene despite being beset by the demon hordes, and a lotus appeared. The lotus was comprised of three performers, each with a petal on each hand and a petal for a hat. When the lotus opened…
...it lit up! And, shortly thereafter, so did Buddha's heart, presumably indicating that he became enlightened.
Inside the Buddha, there were I think three people, two manipulating the feet and one carrying the shoulder and head rig and enlightenment-light. Two more walked alongside manipulating his hands on long bamboo poles. The puppeteers all worked in tandem to maneuver the enlightened Buddha through the crowd and up the central aisle of the amphitheatre! Very impressive.
"The Librarian of Basra" is a dramatization of a true story from the Iraq war told in the context of a triptych shadow play. Unfortunately, I would have liked this better if it could have come earlier in the performance—"Seeing With New Eyes" was clearly the "finale piece," or should have been, but for the fact that the setting sun dictated that this piece, which relied on darkness as a conduit for storytelling, had to come last. For a shadow play, it was fairly well-done, with layers of lights set at varying distances to create layers of shadow. After the performance, there was an awkwardly unlit curtain call—it felt strange applauding for faceless people you could barely see. I wish they’d capitalized on it and done an actual backlit screened shadow-curtain-call instead.
And then, there was an aftershow of women on stilts juggling fire—spinning fire poi and fire batons, hula-ing fire hoops, etc.
To quickly go back to the beginning (or, before the beginning even, rather), I didn’t really enjoy the preshow the night I went. It was a bit too much like a kiddie-singalong show on local TV or something, a lot of somewhat-embarassing enjoinders to wave your hands in sync and the like. I gather the preshows are different every performance, so you might not have this issue if you attend one of the upcoming performances. I'd recommend the one at the Museum of Art in mid-September when Django Haskins and Gabriel Pelli from the Old Ceremony are doing it.
Speaking of music, the orchestra was instrumentally quite good; unfortunately, the vocalists largely, um, sucked. I kept thinking how exponentially more impressive the show would have been with really talented singers. Instead, they were barely passable and sometimes embarrassing. The orchestra was made up of banjo, violin, guitar, bass, keyboard, & loads of various percussion.
All in all, this performance was really cool. It’s particularly impressive given that Paperhand seems to be fairly seat-of-the-pants. I think if you are familiar with macropuppets at all, it’s in some extremely-well-funded context like The Sultan’s Elephant or Broadway’s The Lion King, far outside the financial realm of Paperhand, and no, they aren’t comparable to those uber-engineered pieces, but they’re very well-rendered given the budgetary restrictions the creators must be operating under.
Exuberant thanks to Michael Habib and photographer Danielle Latman for the wonderful photographs. You can see more of their stuff on their flickr pages, particularly the full set of photos from the show.
The show opened with. . .
All photos courtesy of Danielle Latman & Michael Habib
"Man and Machine - The Story of John Henry"
The show opened with a dramatization of the legend of John Henry, which is a particular favorite of mine. I love variations/renditions/retellings of the John Henry story in song (such as "The Day John Henry Died" by the Drive-By Truckers) and I usually cry at the end like a little girl, so I was particularly excited for this one.
The story was told through song--a vocalist sang lyrics that narrated the action. Action took place in two parts of the stage at once--small 2D stick puppets performed actions at the back in a ladscape setting, while masked actors and macropuppets performed variations on the same actions in the foreground (see photo above).
I liked that the fist-elements of the John Henry macropuppet had these large channels for hammers to go into, and the sculpture on his face/head was really nice. I'm guessing, because he was so much larger than the other characters, that either the interior had two puppeteers, one sitting on the other's shoulders, or a single puppeteer wearing the head and shoulder supports mounted on an aluminum backpacking frame.
"King of Fools"
This piece was a fairly standard folktale centering around a nameless village of indeterminate geographical locale, full of simple-rustic types. The program indicated that they took the piece from Russian/Jewish folktales. The villagers all had charming full-head masks and body padding (see above photo). Meandery plot, kind of pointless at first and slow, politically subversive later in terms of what it said about government and iron-fist rule.
The sculpting on the mask faces was really evocative of character; the mask on the far left was particularly well-done, with its brush of thick yarn for the moustache that shook and wiggled when the actor moved around. The shapes reminded me of Snuffy Smith and Barney Google cartoons. I am guessing that the eyes and nostrils are mesh to allow view-windows for the actors to see, because they maneuvered fairly well around the playing space.
"Seeing With New Eyes"
This was the piece de resistance, of the four pieces the most impressive visually, with the 20' Buddha puppet, a 3-person demon puppet, and various other effects! You can get an idea of how frantic the action was in the "Demons besiege the meditating Buddha" section by the fact that the photo is blurry! In addition to the 3-man macropuppet (the Demon King Mara), there were two demonesses on stilts, some one-person masked demons (one of which wore his mask on his hands under a drape, so he had some really freakish-looking movement going on), and several people running by waving banners with words on them like "HUNGERv and "ANGER" and "GREED" and other negative distractions/emotions.
Buddha, operated by (I’m guessing) five puppeteers, managed to remain serene despite being beset by the demon hordes, and a lotus appeared. The lotus was comprised of three performers, each with a petal on each hand and a petal for a hat. When the lotus opened…
...it lit up! And, shortly thereafter, so did Buddha's heart, presumably indicating that he became enlightened.
Inside the Buddha, there were I think three people, two manipulating the feet and one carrying the shoulder and head rig and enlightenment-light. Two more walked alongside manipulating his hands on long bamboo poles. The puppeteers all worked in tandem to maneuver the enlightened Buddha through the crowd and up the central aisle of the amphitheatre! Very impressive.
"The Librarian of Basra" is a dramatization of a true story from the Iraq war told in the context of a triptych shadow play. Unfortunately, I would have liked this better if it could have come earlier in the performance—"Seeing With New Eyes" was clearly the "finale piece," or should have been, but for the fact that the setting sun dictated that this piece, which relied on darkness as a conduit for storytelling, had to come last. For a shadow play, it was fairly well-done, with layers of lights set at varying distances to create layers of shadow. After the performance, there was an awkwardly unlit curtain call—it felt strange applauding for faceless people you could barely see. I wish they’d capitalized on it and done an actual backlit screened shadow-curtain-call instead.
And then, there was an aftershow of women on stilts juggling fire—spinning fire poi and fire batons, hula-ing fire hoops, etc.
To quickly go back to the beginning (or, before the beginning even, rather), I didn’t really enjoy the preshow the night I went. It was a bit too much like a kiddie-singalong show on local TV or something, a lot of somewhat-embarassing enjoinders to wave your hands in sync and the like. I gather the preshows are different every performance, so you might not have this issue if you attend one of the upcoming performances. I'd recommend the one at the Museum of Art in mid-September when Django Haskins and Gabriel Pelli from the Old Ceremony are doing it.
Speaking of music, the orchestra was instrumentally quite good; unfortunately, the vocalists largely, um, sucked. I kept thinking how exponentially more impressive the show would have been with really talented singers. Instead, they were barely passable and sometimes embarrassing. The orchestra was made up of banjo, violin, guitar, bass, keyboard, & loads of various percussion.
All in all, this performance was really cool. It’s particularly impressive given that Paperhand seems to be fairly seat-of-the-pants. I think if you are familiar with macropuppets at all, it’s in some extremely-well-funded context like The Sultan’s Elephant or Broadway’s The Lion King, far outside the financial realm of Paperhand, and no, they aren’t comparable to those uber-engineered pieces, but they’re very well-rendered given the budgetary restrictions the creators must be operating under.
Exuberant thanks to Michael Habib and photographer Danielle Latman for the wonderful photographs. You can see more of their stuff on their flickr pages, particularly the full set of photos from the show.
