I have begun some online creative exchanges with Kay Aika, a marionette puppeteer based in Yokohama, Japan. We are working between clowning and puppetry, exchanging our ideas via video. Here's her website: Kay Aika. Kay creates performances with a study group based at Puppet House, Tokyo. The performances of solo puppeteers and ensembles in the group are filmed and edited for the Puppet House site. There's a short video about the aims of Puppet House here.
I asked Kay to send over very short videos (i.e. limited to a simple movement), of one of her puppets - 'Pino-Kun'. This has become a process of 'corresponding', co-performing. So I sent this video back. It is a very rough experiment with a Green Screen.
Video Clip 1: A very rough green screen edit experiment Pino-Kun (L) operated by Kay Aika and Kurt, 19/1/22.
Now we are thinking that we could start working on a new video story based on The Adventures of Pinocchio (Le avventure di Pinocchio, 1881) by Carlo Collodi.
I took part in a workshop with Chris Pirie (Green Ginger) at the London International Mime Festival (22/1/22). He was encouraging us to begin with anything - plastic bags, plumbing pipes and bits of wood, and to just begin playing. He asked us to think about the complicity between operators behind the puppets. When puppets are manipulated by performers who are visible onstage, the operators need to use breath to communicate and relax, and almost to 'forget' about breathing. I assume this applies to working marionettes too.
Chris also told us that the puppet has no peripheral vision, that you have to exaggerate the direction of its gaze and to isolate each movement - not unlike some aspects of clowning, I think. He got me thinking about the puppet's environment too. How do the puppets relate to it and to the human operator? Perhaps we shouldn't to get too preoccupied either with defining or with concealing the boundaries between human and puppet - but just to begin to play between. Kay has been studying human movement in order to refine the way she works with her marionettes. After the workshop, I sent another video.
What sort of background would be good for this, do you think? For this puppet/hu-man? We are hoping that a photographer will help us by capturing some visual 'worlds' as a backdrop.
Video clip 2: A sample puppet-human gesture sent to Kay Aika to respond to with Pino-Kun, 25/1/22.
What happens when Pinocchio's new and epic journey begins online with that smartphone? What happens when he meets fake/virtual characters? This is an idea coming out of our global zoom experience and the world of the virus. There are lots of interesting practical explorations and writing already about puppets, robots, materiality and objects in the virtual 'proscenium'. And some thoughts about hybrid forms of puppet/avatar performance here - Dassia N. Posner, Claudia Orenstein and John Bell. Eds. 2014. The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance. New York: Routledge.
There are links between these concepts and some of my experiments with virtual clowning. These are discussed on these blog pages, and in some instances have been connected with clowning and/with older people. I am working with Sefton Older People's Forum (OPF) in Southport, Merseyside, as you know. And coincidentally Kay has pointed me to a Puppet Therapy classic by Caroline Astell-Burt (1984, 2002) I AM THE STORY: A Manual of Special Puppetry Projects. Souvenir Press. Astell-Burt in turn references Heinrich von Kleist who suggests that marionettes help audiences to transcend gravity-bound existence and ego (Astell-Burt, 2002, pg xiii) and her 'guiding principle' is 'the impulse in every human being to respond to objects as if they are alive' (3). From there she enlists all kinds of raw materials to knock together DIY puppets and to stimulate the creativity in her workshop participants.
I was so inspired, by the way, when Marion (surname withheld), one member of the OPF, talked about cleaning up at home after a visit from her grandchildren. Imagine Marion as a kind of Geppetto (or vice versa!). Imagine them not just tidying up, but playing with the toys that are left behind - especially the lego figures. So I am hoping that the group will contribute some devising ideas for this project too. I hope they will have a chance to talk with Kay at some point. And in the process we'll all begin to play with simple digital streaming technology.
Image: Kurt as Geppetto, superimposed, 25/1/22
In Collodi's original story, the maker of Pinocchio is Geppetto and supposedly he is a laughing stock who has hair like 'cornmeal mush' or polenta. What would that look like? A bad blonde wig maybe? Who is the maker in our new version? And what are his or her materials and media?
Let's see where this adventure takes us..
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