Read yesterday’s post here. Follow with Flickr pics (you’re really going to need this!!) here.

Day Six: Green Tea and Puppets, Puppets, more Puppets

Today was a ‘rest’ day, in that there were no workshops, discussions, or other events. Instead, for one whole day, Perth was treated to a Puppet Carnival. This involved free shows all day long, the counting and exhiibition of the Million Puppet Project (UPDATE 30 July 2009: the site is no longer available), as well as a parade and in the morning, a performance by Indigenous Australians to welcome everyone to their land.

Before I went to the carnival though, I had organised to meet up with some people from Theatre Australia (Luke Heath, Graeme Johnson - Taurean - Graeme’s wife Sue, and Grant Malcolm), and we all had coffee - or in my case, green tea - and discussed the local theatre scene, as well as that in Melbourne. It was wonderful to finally put faces to names, and everyone is wonderfully friendly. Graeme and/or his wife are planning on taking me to see a local show - that’s not puppet related.

Before we met Grant, we waited at the Perth Concert Hall and were treated to a short performance by female and male Indigenous dancers, some puppets, and a fire-lighting ceremony (they lit a tree), which cleansed and welcomed everyone to the site.

Once I got back to the Hall, I spent a few minutes watching kids blowing large bubbles, and then went through to look at the Million Puppets. For those unaware, UNIMA was trying to collect one million puppets to break the world record and be put in the Guiness Book of Records. So they had on display as many as they could fit. Two levels of the very cramped Hall and some of the auditorium, was crammed with puppets. Most were in boxes, displays, and shelves, with the larger parade puppets on stands. There was an exhibit in the centre of Jiri Zmitko, a marionette maker, and his puppets. In the centre of a large display, he had a small workshop, and spent some of the day carving some of his puppets for everyone to see. Everything was interesting to look at, although when I was there it was so packed it was hard to walk around. I saw the entire exhibition through my viewfinder. I tried to take photos of every puppet I could, but obviously that would be unrealistic.

Going into the auditorium section of the exhibition was the best: a small walkway lead into a room which was gorgesouly lit. Several puppets that were intriguing were singled out and given a ‘lightbox’ type of display, but that’s not what strikes you when you enter. The entire room is overwhelmed by a practically floor to ceiling (remember, this is in a theatre, so ceiling is probably 10 metres up) series of puppet-threaded strings. I tried to take photos of it, but it was so big, most of them are three-part photos. Also, one of the lightbox things was beautiful, with strings of Christmas lights punctuating a wall-to-floor-to-ceiling display of more puppets than I could count. Do check my Flickr set, because there are more than 190 photos of today, most of which are the puppets on display. There were glove puppets, sock puppets, shadow puppets, costume puppets, rods and marionettes… everything you could think of. (The results of the try at the record will be given below)

Once I’d looked through them all - disappointingly not seeing the puppet that I had sent to the project - I went outside to line up for my first show of the day, on the way checking out some puppet merchandise from a WA puppet maker (Link to come!). In a tent, I was to see Allenby’s Famous Flea Circus by Murphy’s Puppets - the guys who gave me the travel grant to come to Perth. (This one’s for you Nikole!) Read the review here. I lined up for twenty minutes, hoping to get into the 1.00pm showing - there was a line for ages, and no matter what time of day it was, there always seemed to be a line outside the tent. I missed the 1pm showing, so waited in line for another 20 min. for the next one.

Once that show was over, I had just enough time to go over to the Auditorium (the other side of the Puppet Project), where a performance was being held by a Japanese troupe; Chiryu Karakuri Puppetry. Read the review here. There’s heaps of images of this show, and the explanation in the review will make them a lot clearer (I hope).

The show finished and I headed outside where the last of the carnival was being held. It was time for the parade, as well as the results from the project; I quickly bumped into Kathy, and we soon found Hilary, who was sitting in amongst some other Aussie puppet people. After about 15/20 min, a group appeared with some wrapped presents in odd shapes, and got on stage. They were from a workshop, and proceeded to present a very abstract object puppet show, where each unwrapped puppet (looked like papier mache in random abstract shapes), came together to become an animal, a person, or other weird things. What made it more bizarre is that none of it was mic’d and very hard to hear; additionally it was so abstract and each ’scene’ of the piece didn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason, other than to give the people an opportunity to show off how many different things their abstract object could be. There is of course, nothing wrong with that type of theatre, but as it started in the middle of nowhere, without actually being introduced, it did not have the audience particularly interested.

Finally, there were some introductions by the UNIMA 2008 (UPDATE 30 July 2009: the site is no longer available) organisers, and a parade of puppets - those costume one that I’d already taken a photo of, some sea creatures made by Esperance Puppets (Australian group, but I don’t know where from), and all sorts of other things. By this time I had run out of camera battery, so there isn’t many photos of them. There were also some fantastic hanging flower puppets - yes, those are people inside (real people, not puppets!).

During the parade, there were more speeches, and once the parade had finished, the Guiness record was announced…. And no, they had not gotten a million. It was just 18, 585! Still, it was a pretty good effort, and it certainly seemed like more.

Once the result had been announced, the carnival day was over, and everyone headed home. I caught up with Gary Friedman, just to say hi and see if we could catch up at some point - do check out his blog, he’s interviewed several more people, including the UNIMA 2008 Artistic Director, Philip Mitchell, as well as a number of other notables.

So that’s my day really. I headed back to the hotel, and got some dinner, and wanted to make an early night of it. Tomorrow, I have a workshop with Sue Giles from Polyglot Puppet Theatre (the name of which is Visual Narrative), and two part workshop/masterclass of shadow puppets with the famous Richard Bradshaw, and a show!! Read the next diary post here.

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