Swinburne's puppetry course
You may be looking for the post on where to study puppetry in Australia; this is a lengthy post specifically about one of those places.
Taken from another google search, this title is a slight misnomer. You see, Swinburne University in Melbourne doesn’t run a puppetry course. It’s a theatre course - both acting and tech - that just happens to have a puppetry component in it. (In fact, there is also a circus component in it too) I thought since the only other puppetry course in Australia has been shut down, most likely for good, it would be an excellent idea to discuss Swinburne’s course in more detail. Especially since I studied there and actually developed my interest in puppetry during the course. This then, will cover in detail what the course is all about, with further information about the puppetry component itself. In order to discuss the puppetry, I must first describe the course as a whole so that the puppetry may be put in context. (Your question answered: can you only do the puppetry part of Swinburne’s course?)
First of all, it should be noted that I graduated from Swinburne in 2002, and things have changed a great deal in terms of the puppetry component since I left (but the rest of the course remains the same). For a start, there has been a change in the sessional lecturer who takes the component (it was Ken Evans, of the now defunct Handspan company, when I was there; now it is Julia Davis of Dream Puppets). Secondly, the component has become larger, and runs for a much longer time (while I attended the component was merely part of our end of second-year production, with a little for the annual Moomba parade; now the component runs across both years in much more detail). Because of these changes, the following discussion should be taken with a very large grain of salt. UPDATE: Please read Sean’s comment below - he has just graduated from the course and leaves some very useful info about the current state of the course.
The Swinburne course runs over two years and is a Diploma of Arts (they changed the name since I attended too; it was called ‘Small Companies and Community Theatre’, obviously a difficult title to pronouce, now it’s something like ‘Theatre Arts’… don’t quote me on that). Students are required to study a variety of subjects in both acting and production areas. It includes subjects like: movement, voice, acting (character development, etc), scriptwriting, stage management, set design, lighting design, sound design, costume, makeup, puppetry, circus (students are usually given a choice between puppetry and circus), first aid, marketing and publicity, and many many more topics.
Throughout the two years, there are four end-of-semester productions, with the subjects requiring assignments, small performances and tests to pass; the productions are the core testing of what you’ve learned in those subjects. Towards the end-of-semester productions, subject classes disappear and the days are spent rehearsing and producing. The first year sees students tackling two major productions. The first one is focused around scriptwriting, all students must produce a short (5-10 minutes) play, some of which are chosen to perform at the end of semester one. The class is divided into small groups, with students often taking two or three roles; one for each of the plays performed (often between 6 - 10 plays). This means that students are often acting in one short play, resting for the next, stage managing for the third, etc etc.
The second semester production is an opportunity to to go out and produce theatre as you would in the real world. Students are split into groups and required to produce ‘community theatre’ - that is, something that is either on a social issue, or working with a community or ethnic group to produce a show about their particular issues. The group takes on all roles, from acting to scriptwriting to production. The only role the lecturers have is to make sure we’re doing our work and to provide advice and financial backing; you do the rest.
The third semester production (or the first production of the second year) is a class effort, in which the acting lecturer becomes director and we all must work on whatever script he has chosen to perform. This is usually taken as the most serious of the major productions, and the majority of the class ends up acting with one or two technical responsibilities as well.
The fourth and last production is focused on puppetry and circus. If there are enough people wishing to do both, then the class democratically decides whether or not to produce one show together (that is, combine puppetry with circus or vice versa) or to produce two separate shows.
And for those who would freak out at having to do either acting or tech, and not wanting to, then there’s really no need to worry. It is understood by the lecturers that there are people who prefer acting and people who prefer tech, and this is taken into account. I’m not saying that one person who likes tech will be graded harder than someone who doesn’t; just that the course is easy enough to pass no matter what you prefer (so long as you make the effort that is). Additionally, when it comes to end-of-semester productions, students are asked what their preference is and every effort is made to accommodate those preferences. For instance, by the end of first year I was developing a strong interest and talent in lighting design; when asked, I said lighting design over any other role in the show, and the lecturers made me lighting designer. In the second semester production (the community theatre one), the roles are decided within each group, rather than by the lecturer’s decision. In this way, it is very easy to avoid doing roles you don’t like and do more of the ones you do like.
Thus, the course is much more complicated and interesting than just your average theatre course. Whilst most students enter the course because they want to study acting - and usually couldn’t get into other acting courses - some do attend to learn the production side of things, as I did. Many students, if not most, will walk out with an appreciation of both, and those actors often learn respect for the techies (many of my fellow graduates actually find more work knowing tech roles, or can create their own shows easier having done those roles), and vice versa. In particular, this course teaches you about producing your own performances, which, as any professional will tell you, is absolutely necessary to survive in the entertainment industry. Indeed there are usually two or three groups that end up graduating and setting up professional companies as a result.
Additionally, it’s important to note that the course is very much full time. Although the lecturers have been known to offer places as part-time, it is extremely rare and really not worth it. One attends 9-4, five days a week; during performances or public parades, you are often there after hours in the evenings, on weekends, and during public or school holidays.
No discussion of a course is complete without also describing the staff and the campus. The staff are all excellent (aside from an occasional sessional teacher, most of whom the ones my year had problems with have all gone) and cover a range of topics. The main lecturers are: John Butler, course coordinator and covers improvisation, history, and several other subjects; John Preston, the acting and voice lecturer and several other subjects; George Kulikovski, the lighting and sound lecturer, also the theatre manager; Jeany Lee (who incidentally is my fellow graduate and company founder), who does a little sound lecturing but mainly helps oversee the theatre. There are other sessional teachers who come in, including ones for set design (Mark Wager), movement, circus, puppetry, first aid and OH&S; along with assistance from Swinburne’s costume course and coordinators. Each of the staff have their own personal quirks and personalities (nothing bad, I assure you) but all are extremely supportive, encouraging and good to work with and for. These lecturers, given the nature of what is studied and the closeness of the work, are more like friends by the end of the course.
The campus itself is an odd conglomeration of old and new. Students attend the Prahran campus of Swinburne, where there is a 120 seat theatre (actually called the David Williamson Theatre, or DWT for short, after Australia’s well-known playwright); a ‘downstairs’ theatre, literally underneath the DWT; a workshop and ‘white space’ (another workshop area) next to the DWT; two adjoining rooms across the road in the PB building of the campus; and occasional access to the costume, sculpture and graphic design departments. The DWT is the main performance area, a black box multi-use space with raked seating, storage in the vomitory (go look it up) and access to a small green room, and a small but functional foyer/refreshments area. The workshop is for building things, and the ‘white space’ is for the same, although usually for storage. The ‘downstairs’ theatre, the original venue for the course, is predominantly used for other classes and rehearsal; it also has about 120 seats in raked formation, with a little storage stage left. Both venues are equipped with lighting and sound for shows as well as for practice in technical subjects. The PB rooms are mainly used for acting/movement, have a basic lighting rig and are used for ’smaller’ productions (ie. presentation of individual mask performances, or end-of-subject assignment performances).
The campus itself is extremely well looked after, and is one of the safest places to learn and perform theatre (if I had a choice between performing at the Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne’s biggest venue for performing arts and the DWT, I’d pick the DWT every time). In fact, students are really spoiled learning in such a space. Equipment is up-to-date, checked and rechecked, safety is given more attention than aesthetics, and indeed there is more equipment (and more modern equipment) than you will find in most professional venues in Melbourne.
… So with all of that described in detail, we can finally discuss the puppetry.
The first semester of the second year of the course (when I attended, this isn’t true now) had a minimal puppetry component. This mainly consisted of a very brief introduction to some of the types of puppets, a few puppet performance exercises (ie. using a table-top puppet in groups of three, learning dexterity/flexing exercises for fingers and hands), and some puppet building.
This was all in lead up to performing and building puppets for the Moomba Parade; at this time Moomba was using the city’s trams (trolleys for you Yanks) as performance areas. The students at Swinburne were given the ‘Quarter Acre’ tram, a vehicle designated to be covered head to toe in real (
) grass. It was up to us to create a performance based on this feature, and we decided (in many of these performances students are given creative input on many levels) to do a take on summer lawns and Aussie families. The second year was split into two ‘teams’, one focusing on performance/circus acts, the other on puppetry/props. The former group would perform on the outside of the tram via abseiling (a vertical landscape on the wall of grass), whilst the latter worked inside the tram on various activities. My main job was to be ’stage manager’, but mostly I ran up and down the length of the tram, pushing fake flowers through holes in the grass - to onlookers, it appeared as though the flowers were growing.
Moomba is often a manic time of year for students, as all preparation is done between and during normal subjects, but it is an awful lot of fun. Since I attended, Moomba has become more of a ‘water based’ festival (although Moomba’s parades have always wavered between street, water, or both) and students now work on floats or similar water-themed puppets.
When it came time to doing our final ever production, there were enough people in the class (a total of 15 students) to separate into circus and puppetry; but we combined again to do one 1-hour show. Those who chose to do circus would work in the downstairs theatre, and take lessons with sessional teachers and those working across the road at the National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA, the only college in Australia specifically for circus, shares much of the land of the Prahran campus; although they are separate facilities within themselves). Those who chose to do puppetry worked upstairs in the white space, workshop and DWT, with our sessional lecturer - at the time, Ken Evans.
Because I worked within the puppetry group, I will discuss that in more detail. It was decided amongst us - and again, this is democratic, so the process changes from year to year - that the puppetry group would worry about storyline and overall themes, and the circus group would fit their ideas into ours. Initial discussion focussed on an abstract plot, combining visuals from Magritte paintings, Brazil, and other oddities. Once we developed distinct scenes (the nature of the performance was more like scenelets strung together than an actual story) we set about building the puppets. It should be made clear that in my year, very little time was spent on theory; now there is much more theory and practical exercises taught before being thrown into producing a show.
As the puppetry lecturers have changed since I graduated, it’s not quite fair to comment on the quality of their teaching. I have met the current lecturer (Julia Davis) once in person, and had minimal contact with her via email. I’ve not seen any of her work, nor have I seen much of the student puppetry/circus performances since. However, I do have ‘insider’ information thanks to Jeany, and recently another friend attended the course. From what I have heard, Julia is liked and many small improvements have been made to the component. (It should be noted that John Butler, the course coordinator, is a strong puppetry enthusiast, and continues to fight for more and better puppetry in the curriculum. He has stated to me, informally, on a number of occasions, that he would like the course to become an undergraduate to VCA’s postgrad/masters)
As for Ken Evans, there are many stories I could discuss here about his teaching methods and personal contributions to the course; some good, some not so good. However, seeing as how he no longer works as the sessional lecturer, it is not right to discuss them here. (If someone has good enough reason to ask, and does ask me via email, I’m happy to consider answering the questions)
From my own personal experiences, there were many things I enjoyed about the course and the puppetry component, as well as many things I would have liked to have seen done differently. The course overall is extremely good, and very underrated within the Australian educational opportunities for performing arts. The subjects are in depth and cover so much ground it is not hard to graduate without a very good basis for working professionally in Australia. Many students go on to attend VCA or NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Arts, considered the top college for performing arts in Australia), self produce shows successfully, begin touring companies, or work with top venues and companies around the world.
The puppetry component is hard to judge: much of it is reliant on group dynamics and the quality of the sessional lecturer’s oversight and teaching. In my case, I don’t believe I learned much puppetry theory or basics within the course. (Again, please remember that my experiences are my own and don’t reflect the current state of the course) Additionally, because each year the show is democratically evolved from discussions within the student body, it’s hard to pin down what is actually learned about puppet design and operation. We were very much thrown into the deep end, and learned how to do things as we went along (actually, this suits me quite fine, but meant a lot of theory or background to puppet design I would learn over the years since graduating). As an example, it was decided we would have a ‘growing’ city in the show, and developed a rather unique puppet to do it: a rolling table made out of aluminium tubing and MDF on the top; holes cut in the MDF allowed us to have access to the core-flute buildings we made and attached to the wood; Christmas lights and other decorations were built into the ‘puppet’; me and another student operated it from below manually. This was, as far as I know, dismantled after the performance, and never seen again… And so it’s very hard to pin down exactly what was learned and the quality of the puppetry component. However, thanks to my meeting Jeany (a South Korean puppeteer originally) and my enjoyment of working with classmates on many of our puppetry-related stuff, I developed quite an interest in the craft - and it has just grown over the years.
Having said all of this, it should be noted that the curriculum and the lecturers go out of their way to let every student have the opportunity to explore all areas of theatre, and to develop those interests which are sparked during their studies. That is why it’s wrong to consider the course as a ‘puppetry’ one: it’s not and doesn’t try to be. What it does however, is give students the ability and freedom to learn the basics of producing shows, from a large array of angles, and to have the confidence in those roles to be self-reliant in the industry.
… This has been a long post and I am sure I have missed many important details that could be discussed. If there are potential students, or just interested parties, who would like more information on any area of the course (especially the puppetry), then please leave a comment and I will update this post.
Want more? Help build a puppet!