NPF ‘09 Gallery NPF ‘09 Itinerary

Read yesterday’s diary post here.

Day Three: The Song That Never Ends

Today started a bit weird for me. I didn’t go to bed til 2am – yes, I know, naughty me. But honestly, I wasn’t all that tired and got stuck watching American TV. There’s something amazing about American TV; so many more channels, and still not much to watch. But I did enjoy catching the second half of Ferris Bueler’s Day Off, which I haven’t seen in years – probably since high school, a good ten years ago. Then I got caught up in The Little Couple, which is all about… yeah, you guessed it, a married couple who are under 5” tall. Very sweet.

Anyway, the combination of heat and unusually soft pillows meant I had a really restless night. I woke up, and this is when my travel anxiety really started to kick in. it’s been relatively mild so far, in the back of my mind but easy to deal with. This morning the stress and tiredness of bad sleep, and the anticipation of starting the festival – and knowing no one – was getting to me. But I pushed on, and went to have breakfast.

Which was totally disappointing. My new place to stay has advertised hot and cold breakfast, which I had assumed meant what anybody expects from breakfast at a big hotel; a dining room with a buffet selection. Oh there was buffet selection alright, but you could fit the whole thing into a large walk-in cupboard. The food wasn’t bad, just, well, not as good as Miss Maud’s, where I stayed at UNIMA 2008 (if I tell you the place has a Swedish breakfast and receives awards all over the world, does that tell you the difference?).

The dining area is also pretty small, and I sat down near the TV, which probably wasn’t a good idea since I had brought a book to read while eating. CNN was on and they had just started the confirmation hearings for the new Supreme court judge (I know the name peoples, but I probably wouldn’t be able to spell it, and net connection is slow right now). I’d had enough of the TV, and took some food up to my room to eat in quiet with my book. Which is where things went weird.

I was so damn tired, I decided not to go, as planned, directly to Georgia Tech to drop off my exhibition puppets. Instead I had a couple of hours of sleep. Which I’m really, really glad I did, because a lot of the stress of the morning went away. It wasn’t good sleep – in fact, it was about the same as last night – but I had more of it, which kind of balances things out.

When I finally got up, it was time to go check in for the festival. And I didn’t have to go far: for those staying at the hotel, they arranged check in at the lobby. I got my pack, which is awesome. Contained inside is a festival program, with lots of witty advice and info about the festival, locations, etc; plus info about the shows and films, bios for performers, and info on workshops. There’s also a bound copy of all the workshop notes: so even if you don’t get to go to all of them (which isn’t possible, since there are so many), you still have the notes to take home. Awesome! Then there’s the festival badge, which you’re told repeatedly to always wear, as you can’t access activities, meals, etc, without it. The colour blue represents the group I’m in: there’s lots of performances and heaps of people, so the blue and red groups take turns to see shows. (In this way, the festival is different from UNIMA 2008. The NPF is for puppeteers by puppeteers, whilst UNIMA 2008 was by puppeteers for everyone else. Not bad, just different. It also means no paying entry to shows and you get to see every show)

This system also applies for meals if you have bought a meal package with the festival (this allows you to eat at the campus cafeteria, and is infinitely cheaper eating off campus). The star on the name tag also means that I’m a first-timer at the festival, and signals other people to be “nice” (paraphrasing from my guide book). I also purchased a t-shirt, which has the festival program design on the back and the logo on the front.

From there, I took my puppets over to the campus, and met the very lovely Phillip Huber, who as I left, was busy making the puppets look P-E-R-F-E-C-T. I did see lots of other puppets, but don’t have pics because they weren’t officially opening the exhibit yet and a lot of them hadn’t been positioned or set up yet. I also left my ‘traffle’ (raffle) item – there was no one around, so I just left it with the others and hoped someone would see it.

Well, by the time I’d fixed up my puppets and displayed them appropriately on the screens, I’d no time left to head to the Centre of Puppetry Arts to see Grey Seal Puppets’ show, so I had some time to kill.

Luckily for me, this was a perfect opportunity to go see some of the puppetry films that are being shown during the festival; and which I probably wouldn’t have had time to see. The films are shown at Georgia Tech’s Student Centre theatre (for Aussies, the student centre is what we would consider the student union ‘lounge’, but on a grander scale… they have their own post office!). There’s no ticketing, you just walk in. Lights are kept up, so people can come and go at their will.

I am lucky I walked in when I did, because a film was just starting. It was A Puppet Intervention, a behind-the-scenes doco about North Carolina’s Paperhand Puppet Intervention company. At 75 minutes, it’s quite long, but totally worth it. The company is interesting to watch as we see them go through the beginnings of brainstorming a show, through to the rehearsal and performance. They do a sort of weird collection of stories, really lots of visual imagery about the world and our relationship to the earth. The puppets are large outdoor animals, and other objects. I really can’t describe them, so check out their site for info and pics. The doco was good, insightful, and depressing – watching things like this always remind me how much I miss doing shows, and how much I’d love my own workshop/studio space.

The next film – by the way, the techie had to keep putting in new DVD discs in, which was weird… I was expecting a smoother experience – the next film was Too Loud a Solitude, a Heather Henson commission. This is based on a novella by Bohumil Hrabal, and is about a book-crusher’s lost love. It’s really a commentary on the Holocaust (why is it so many films about that are animations, digital animations or puppetry?), and is very poetic in language. I liked the text, but the puppetry, which was table-top puppets (what most people call ‘bunraku’, but I reserve that term for the traditional Japanese puppets), were not all that great.

Next came The Sure Sheep, another Heather Henson commission. It’s basically a sock-puppet fable on how you shouldn’t be snobbish and try to be friendly. It’s cute, but obviously aimed at a kids audience, and I found it pretty lame. (Check out the link anyway: it’s a behind-the-scenes look at the film which is quite interesting)

The next film I’ll not bother explaining: it’s a music video, and you can watch it on Youtube for yourself at the bottom of this post. (It’s The Whole World and You) This one was probably my favourite of the bunch.

The last film was Harker, a rod-puppet (from below) silent horror film, which was both too long and too slow. Whilst the puppets themselves were very creepy and fit the story, it was just painful towards the end.

… And this is where the films finished. The projectionist just packed up his stuff, and without a word, left the audience to figure out that the show was over (it was printed in our program the times of the films, but actually the film schedule wasn’t shown in sequence). I still had some time to kill before dinner, seeing as I have the later time (the blue group remember?), so I headed to the traffle area to see if I could make sure that the organisers found my puppet. No one was there, but it was nicely laid out, so I figured it was ok. Then I headed back to the hotel, chilled out for a bit, (picked up my antron fleece!! ) and went for dinner.

The size of Georgia Tech is annoying me, especially as festival signage appears and disappears at random points. It’s easy to get lost, even with the festival map. Luckily I had picked up a Georgia Tech pamphlet at my previous accommodation which had a better map in it.

Dinner was bloody confusing, but I was really lucky – who do I see but @staceyrebecca! I introduce myself, and she kindly let me tag along and have dinner with her and a friend. I’m so glad I ran into her, because it’s quite intimidating to know no one amongst so many people who all seem to know each other. And you know what: @staceyrebecca is just as great in person! (PS. I also got to see her puppets, and they are just as cool in person as they are on her site)

We then headed over for the festival opening ceremony and the first shows of the event.

We start off with an intro by the organisers, followed by a short speech by Hobey Ford: a vocalisation of a letter he wrote to Obama about the financial crisis affecting puppeteers. Next we watched (drum roll please!) a performance by Mallory Lewis, daughter of Shari… which means Lamb Chop was onstage! Check the related links below this post (on my website, it doesn’t go through if you’re using RSS) for a link to the review.

Once the performance was over, there was a short intermission, and then we saw As I Lay Dying by Haverty Marionettes. Find the review linked below.

The show was over, and we all headed off to the Student Centre ballroom, for an opening night get-together. There were choc chip cookies and booze (I don’t get the connection either), but by this time it was 10.30pm and I was tired so I left early. There were some puppeteers and puppets wandering around, but this totally wasn’t as good or interesting as UNIMA 2008’s odd-stuff-on-the-tables thing (bottom of link it’s explained), but I probably left before anything decent happened.

Still it’s been a long day, and tomorrow I have to get up early for workshops. There’s two of those, plus a total of four shows and ‘potpourri’, a sort of puppet cabaret where anyone can do short puppet skits.

Ultimately, I’m feeling much better about the festival and my anxiety. I was tempted just to sleep more this morning, but forced myself to get up and go to the check in. As I was getting ready, I remembered Mallory Lewis was performing tonight, and it spurred me on: I really wanted to see Lamp Chop live (slightly before my time, but I’m still familiar with it) and this is probably the only chance I’ll ever get. That’s the whole point of coming here after all: to do stuff I can’t do at home. So why waste it?
Read next day’s diary post here.