Today I spent a lot of time just focusing on getting some stuff done for the School of Puppetry classes, in between chasing up a couple of web designers who I’m interested in hiring… But due to a week-long headache, I’ve spent the majority of the afternoon and evening trying to come up with an idea of what to build for the school.

You see, I’m going to be building alongside the students, and I have been struggling to find a character worth building. I realised that just doing an ‘average’ moppet design isn’t enough for me: I find doing a monster, or a human entirely dull. Especially as I’ve just come off a (year) long build for my latest moppet pattern. 

For me, the challenge in puppetry is taking the design to the next level: looking at Jarrod Boutcher’s work for example reminds me of how I view the Melbourne Theatre Company’s work. The MTC, whose home used to be the Victorian Arts Centre, is pretty much the big name theatre company in my town. When I was at school, they were held up as the pinnacle of acting - and it was. But as I saw more theatre - more fringe theatre - in smaller venues, I realised something. The MTC was a technically excellent piece of work. Technically, the acting was spot on, the vocal work excellent, the staging and design brilliant. But it was heartless. It had no passion, no fire, no rawness - and that’s what the fringe had in spades. I would walk out of an MTC show and think it was good, but half an hour later, forget I’d even saw it. Whereas less technically proficient shows I’d walk out and nitpick a little, but still be thinking about them weeks, months or even years later. Indeed, the best shows I’ve ever seen - since then, or before - have been ones that were both technically excellent and soulful. 

Getting back to Jarrod’s work (and although I hate to harp on him specifically, especially as he’s an Aussie; I just refer to him because I was looking at his work today and is in relation to my thought process on my own design), I always feel like I’m looking at a technically good puppet. His designs are simple, understated, but well executed. His characters are interesting, but also generic enough that you’d want to buy one. But for me, it’s just too… technical. 

And this is where we come back to my design: I just don’t like doing the simple, the average, the overall character that has nothing interesting to ’say’ other than what’s written on its face. (With shadow puppets it’s slightly different, because you create an interesting design based on the way you piece it together; which parts move; how it moves) So I’ve been thinking of a few different designs which will have features added to them that are a little bit of a ’surprise’. On two of them I have functions that are both simple to execute and intricate in appearance; both of which are unexpected - I suppose one could consider them mechs - features that are hidden from the immediate view. The other is a design which, while not having any additional functionality, is quite wacky but if executed correctly will still appeal to the audience. 

I have no idea which design to use yet: the first requires a mechanism which is all about gravity and magnets, and I’m not sure how I can pull it off yet; the second is more a matter that I need to stick to the patterns used in the classes (since it’s a build-along) and this requires a slight variation on the pattern; and the third is more about figuring out what materials to use and how to execute it without going overboard or creating a mess.

I think the saddest thing in puppetry is that there are so many people who do just enough, and never really push the envelope. It’s also interesting to discover - since I’ve never really been a fan of Henson, nor knowledgeable on his work - that so many people don’t realise that Henson himself liked the fact that other puppeteers steered away from copying. I think perhaps if more people realised this, maybe there wouldn’t be so many replica makers out there. (To be clear: I’m not conflating Jarrod’s work with replication. But I am for others)