Archives for category: Comedy

Meet the Spoon Family

August 3, 2014 //

At the Festival of Performing Objects we are going to have a Kid’s zone in the Gallery and we hope that the little visitors will take to an impromptu play. I bought a packet of googly eyes for $2 at the Salvation Army Shop, and the wooden spoons in the Everything-is-50%- off-sale at the 2-Dollar-Shop. My ethical conscience is cringing at the price, but as I am living on flour and water at the moment, I told it to shut up! For my workshops I usually make a trip to the North Shore Resource Centre to get material. This is a really good volunteer organisation that my friend Cath put me on to. They collect leftovers, recycled or surplus material and you can get a big bag of all sorts of goodies to create puppets (or other artworks) for a dirt cheap price. The most expensive part of these characters are the squishy noses made from disposable ear plugs. Unfortunately, they only had orange ones in the hardware store.

Anyway, I got carried away embellishing them. The idea was that the wooden spoons should be really simple so that they are easy to clean. Ah well, the handles are still easy to wipe down and that is where you hold them.

Tags art, Characters, craft, exhibition, imagination, thoughts

Categories Art, Comedy, craft, Exhibition, Fun, Hand Puppets, Promotion, workshop

Gone bananas

July 18, 2014 //

Here is the second film we did last week. This one was created by a group of teenagers as a holiday programme. Pretty slim pickings, but we got there in the end. In this film the kids had to make their own actors and they also created the music, the backdrop and the props. I enjoyed working with the youngsters and I’ve learned a tremendeous amount. The kids on the other hand just thought I was weird… Happy, but weird!

Tags art, life, workshop

Categories Absurd, Art, Comedy, film, Fun, Life, Stop Motion, workshop

Library visit

July 14, 2014 //

At the moment we have school holidays and I did two puppet workshops last week. They couldn’t have be more different. The one I was so looking forward to was a four morning course where the participants were supposed to do the full monty – creating the actors, coming up with the story, making props and then filming the thing. The other one was just one afternoon in the library, where the participants invented an impromptu story and used the Dedes to act it out.

The course in the library was fantastic. It doesn’t take long to set the youngsters (aged between eight and twelve years) off to come up with a weird and wonderful story. There was no stopping them. All of them were running around making up props and chopping and changing the storyline. One of them sneaked in their own puppet. You might notice the non-Dede in the group picture at the end of the film when they celebrate.

Ah well, the other workshop was totally different. First of all it was a different age range. Here the participants were teenagers and puppets are so uncool. It is strange how kids can be so creative when they are twelve and with their thirteenth birthday all the creativity seems to go out the window. And then when they leave school, they are expected to be creative to find a job….

We did get there in the end, though I don’t know how much sticks in their minds, but I’ve learned heaps.

Here is the film from the library.

Enjoy.

Tags art, dede puppets, fun, reflections, story telling, workshop

Categories Absurd, Art, Comedy, film, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Stop Motion, workshop

Good to be a Dede

June 30, 2014 //

Last weekend the Dedes were a bit upset with me for favouring the chickens. The birds showed up and I went all gooey. The Dedes have made such an effort over the last few months waiting patiently and quietly in the art cupboard for me to find my feet again. I do appreciate this but I don’t know how to express it. Nosy Neighbour, who always wants to know what’s going on, had a little peek today from the upstairs window to check out the new competition. I am pleased that he decided he wouldn’t swap places with them for anything in the world. And I hope he will tell all the others there is a clear benefit to being a Dede. You are allowed to stay inside when rain is pouring down outside. On this rainy day I too found a new appreciation for the Dede folk. They don’t make a mess! I am not really looking forward to braving the elements and cleaning out the chicken mansion today. The girls are pretty messy!

Tags art, Characters, dede puppets, friends, life, relationships, story

Categories Absurd, Art, Comedy, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life, Relationships, Social Network

Travel

June 20, 2014 //

I have started a new teaching job this week and had to fly to Christchurch for induction. The Dedes and I have a deal that when ever I go places I pick one of them to accompany me should there be space in my backpack. I believe they view this as an assurance I will return to them. This time I chose Mr Vague, a placid old fellow who goes with the flow. I certainly couldn’t have coped with one who wanted to paint the town red at night. I knew there would be a lot of information to take in during the day.

Right! He was so placid that he stayed in my backpack pretty much all the time. I was traveling with my new colleague Bonnie, who I met for the first time when I took my seat in the airplane. Mr Vague is very shy. That is why I took him. I thought he might come out of his shell when he is away from the other Dedes. But no, he stayed where he was because he heard us chatting away and did not want to impose. I wanted to show him the town centre that was struck by a horrific earthquake in 2011 and still looks like a battle field. As it is winter, it was dark by the time we left the art school. The town is also closer to the south pole than Auckland and therefore colder. I thought he might be interested in the Cardboard Cathedral, designed by disaster architect Shigeru Ban to temporarily replace the original cathedral that was damanged in the quake. After all, Mr Vague is made from the same material. He took a quick glance and said it is too cold to come out of the warm backpack.

We were there for two days and like all the Dedes he loves breakfast. So a cup of coffee finally lured him out for a quick chat in the morning. The warm ambience of the art noveau cafe suited him well and the coffee was excellent. That is all he needed to be content for another day and have a snooze while I was off to more induction.

The next time I saw him was when I arrived at the airport and heard that our plane would be delayed by 4 hours, which meant we wouldn’t be home before 2am. He shrugged the news off. “Nothing you can do about it” he said and shouted me a beer. Neither of us got flustered – Mr Vague because he had slept for two days, and I because I was too tired.

Tags art, character traits, Characters, dede puppets, life, mood, paper mache, story, story telling

Categories Absurd, Art, Comedy, Hand Puppets, Life

A show for an egg

June 4, 2014 //

I did this puppet show last week. My first ever public one (I had done one before, at the launch of my Hermit’s Web book, but I believe I must have known pretty much every single person of the hundred people who were attending the launch and I can’t really call this public.) I am not a performer. My intention with puppets is for people to participate in the play and tapping into their own creativity, rather than just producing a show for others to watch. Coming up with a storyline for puppets is an invaluable cathartic process.

Anyway, when my friend asked me to do a puppet show at her book launch I happily agreed. The subject of the book is something I strongly believe in. Now my friend has come up with another scheme I can’t say no to either. It is an arrangement that suits the Dedes to a T. You might know that we have just renovated our house and our backyard is a total shambles with heaps of rubble and mountains of dirt dug out from under the house. We will have to redesign our garden and now that I am working from home I am extremely keen to turn it into a producing vege patch. My friend offered me her chickens for a few months to clear up and fertilise my backyard, so we can start planting in spring. Over Queen’s Birthday weekend we scavenged around our property to find material to build a chook house with. The old fence we took down did just fine. We even salvaged the nails that held it together and reused them. As it is with such things, what should have taken a day, took us three (two of them mainly scratching our heads), but we are now proud owners of a ramshackle chook mansion and are looking forward to receiving the lodgers.

Tags art, book launch, friends, fun, life, nature, relationships, story, thoughts

Categories Absurd, Art, Book Launch, Comedy, Fun, Life, Social Network

Performance

May 30, 2014 //

I had to think long and hard about sharing the film of last Monday’s show with you or not. The quality is pretty shoddy. In the end I decided to share the film with you mainly for the audio. The show is pretty simple, but you can definitely hear how the audience gets more and more into it. I had amazing feedback afterwards.

The show was performed at the launch of garden and nutrition guru Dee Pigneguy’s book “Grow me well” at the Takapuna Library. That same evening two other books were launched and Dee was allocated 15 minutes for her speech. She thought a puppet show would be a lovely introduction. She left it entirely up to me what I did with the puppets and I came up with this three minute sketch for Munch, Kin and the Wooden Spoon. The puppets were specifically designed for this event and I wanted them to be able to open their mouths and stuff themselves. My puppets are usually not big on words, so here we go, another surprise. On the evening we had the puppets set up in one corner of the room. Then, when I was sitting in the audience listening to the first speakers, I realised nobody would be able to see the puppets perform where they were. On the spur of the moment I decided to take the cast to the lectern. It definitely had its benefits and I had the microphone as well, but I had to push the puppets uphill, which caused me a little bit of trouble to begin with. And the person who was holding the camera didn’t have a tripod, so there is a lot of camera shake.

But still, if you are a hardy Dede-fan, you might enjoy it.

Tags art, book, book launch, Characters, friends, story telling

Categories Absurd, Art, Book Launch, Comedy, film, Fun, Hand Puppets, Promotion

Puppet show

May 23, 2014 //

Monday night I will have a little puppet gig in the library in Takapuna. A friend of mine is launching her book about healthy nutrition for kids. I am not really a performer, but agreed to do a very short puppet show with the two puppets Munch & Kin and also this lady, who of course knows how to cook a healthy meal, as she is descendant from a long line of wooden spoons.

Tags art, craft, friends, fun, puppet show, story

Categories Absurd, Art, Comedy, Fun, Hand Puppets, Promotion

Semantics, really

May 21, 2014 //

We are working on this event for close to eight month now and are just entering the hot phase. Tying up loose ends and promoting! Originally it was called “Puppet Festival”. The manager of the art centre and I, we are both totally excited about the whole affair. We got funding from the local council and everything seems to run smoothly except – and that is the big dampener – whenever we talk about puppets everybody’s eyes seem to glaze over. Strangely though, and I am single minded enough to do that, when you continue to talk, people do get interested in our plans. So, we finally decided to give it a new spin and renamed it to The Festival of Performing Objects. Admittedly it sounds much more grown-up and I actually I do love the new name.

We are still looking for artists who want to take part in the group exhibition and also for performers and stall holders on market day. So, if you live in New Zealand and want to take part, get in touch….

Tags art, Puppet Festival, reflections, thoughts

Categories Art, Comedy, Exhibition, Fun