NPF ‘09 Gallery NPF ‘09 Itinerary

Read yesterday’s post here.

Day Six: Wayang, Tortillas and Tartaglia

Today is the last day of workshops, and funnily enough, both of them are related to shadow puppets. I started with ‘Control Mechanisms for Rod and Shadow Puppets’, run by Hobey Ford (see yesterday’s diary post and review - linked below - for more info about Ford). He brought in a range of sample materials that he uses: from wire cable, to string; from telescoping brass rods to nuts and bolts and other bits and pieces. He also brought in many of his puppets, including the ‘Foamies’ that he used in his show yesterday (pictured here are his whale puppets), other rod puppets, and some eye mechs. Unfortunately, he spent a lot more time talking about what the materials were, and less time on how to use them.

Fortunately, a lot of his stuff is described on his website, as well as my workshop notes. The gems:

• The main goal of the rod on a puppet is to support it
• His ‘Peepers’ (go google it) tell us that if you put eyes on anything, it comes to life
• Guitar string and piano wire are strong materials
• Never use three-braided cord, it unravels when you cut it; use parachute cord, which is better
• Hansjurgen Fettig’s book is invaluable ()
• You must always consider your rod attachments/strings/etc and if/how/when they will stretch
• Flange the ends of tubes to reduce friction and cutting of string/wire inside the tubing
• If you’re making shadow puppets, check out eBay for Indonesian shadow chisels!
• ABS plastic is what Ford uses for his puppets; it comes in thin black and is durable
• Bailing wire is good for armature
• Using nylon for mechanisms, melt the end of the cord, and then shape it; you can use it as a needle, making threading through screw eyes, tubing, etc. much easier

From this workshop, I headed to ‘Messing with Wayang’ with Michael Richardson. I got there a bit early, and got to watch him set up a bit. For those who aren’t familiar, Wayang Kulit are Indonesian shadow puppets, made out of animal hide, painted, and then jointed with bone. The rods are also bone. The puppets are very intricate; see my Flickr pics for more (The particular puppet at the right here didn’t have rods attached; but you can see just how detailed they get).

Richardson spent most of the workshop talking about how he got into Wayang, sprinkling it with a little info about how the puppets are made. There weren’t that many gems: just that if you don’t want to use animal hide, you can cut up washed-out milk bottles and then use sharpies to colour them; something about durolar, which now I’ve completely forgotten about and didn’t write more than that word (), and nylon lacing cord can be used to make strong joints - melt the ends to secure them.

We then got to watch one of his shows, a tale about a soldier who gets tricked by a witch, finds a magic tinder box, falls in love with and rescues a princess; all with the help of a magical dragon. I’ve never seen Wayang performed live, and though the puppets were beautifully made, the manipulation of it could have done with some refining. Having said that, I’ve got nothing to compare it to, and maybe traditional dalangs (puppeteers) perform in a similar way.

Time for lunch: and then two shows. First was The Day it Snowed Tortillas, and then, unfortunately the second show got cancelled and was replaced with Entertaining a Thought. The evening shows were (well, the first, not so much a show) An Evening with John Tartaglia and La Muela del Ray Farfán. You can find the links to the reviews below, under the ‘related posts’ heading.

Read next day’s post here.