I have a unified theory of puppet performance that I’ve taken to calling “Six Principles of Great Puppetry”. It’s been slowly simmering in my brain for at least as long as I’ve been writing this blog. I’ve written some posts over the years that discuss various aspects of it, which was inspired by Disney’s famous 12 basic principles of animation and consists of six key elements – mechanics and movement, lip synchronization, thought and focus, rhythm, staging, and character.

The UK’s National Theatre has two interesting videos on their site right now that deal with two of those elements that I think are especially important (and often under-utilized by puppeteers), breath (which is an element of rhythm) and thought. The videos were shot during rehearsals for Or You Could Kiss Me, a co-production between the National Theatre and South Africa’s acclaimed Handspring Puppet Company.

Breath and thought are two elements of puppet performance that Handspring always puts an emphasis on in all of its performances; breath and rhythm are the reasons why the horses in Warhorse (see previous post) seem so real. These two videos provide a brief, but very valuable glimpse in to Handspring’s process.

If you’d like to learn more about Handspring and how they work, I highly recommend ordering a copy of  the excellent Handspring Puppet Company book. It’s available to order online through David Krut Publishing.

Video links via Spirits Dancing.

Although I’ve attended several puppet slams in the past, this is the first one I’ve actually performed in and it was a lot of fun. Puppet slam performances are often experimental and usually a bit of a mixed bag in terms of quality. I was really delighted to see that wasn’t the case at all at CanZine; I thought every one of the acts was pretty good. Adam Earle and Greg Forbes performed their show Bumtown Live, Caitlin Black mixed Mariah Carey and sock puppets and a group led by Jamie Shannon (see previous post) performed a re-imagining of The Ugly Duckling that featured probably the best puppet show introduction I’ve ever seen. I also really liked Fill Me Up, a piece of object theatre by The Bricoteer Puppetry Project that went over really well with the crowd despite some initial snickering from the audience who had trouble accepting water-filled drinking glasses as puppets at first.

You can find a little more coverage of CanZine online here, here, and here.

Puppet slams seem to be exploding across North America. In fact, there’s another puppet slam happening in Winnipeg on Wednesday. Unraku is sponsoring/hosting another puppet slam in Toronto in January (it was originally planned for November, but got pushed back after CanZine announced their slam). Specific details aren’t online just yet, but if you’re interesting in taking part drop me a line at puppetvision {at} gmail.com and I’ll pass it along.

Oh and check out the latest issue of Broken Pencil Magazine if you can. This month’s issues features a nice piece on puppetry by Lindsay Gibb, Broken Pencil’s editor and our puppet slam organizer.

One of the most popular puppets on YouTube has got to be Achmed The Dead Terrorist, a creation of Ventriloquist Jeff Dunham. Achmed is a brilliant idea for a character – even if Jeff’s humour is sometimes questionable (see previous post) – but what I think really makes audiences respond to Achmed is the way Jeff performs him, especially the way he creates the illusion of thought and focus.

Jeff’s performance of Achmed is pretty minimalist. He doesn’t do much with the puppet, but what he does he does incredibly well. When you watch the clip above, pay close attention to what Jeff does with Achmed’s head and eyes. Achmed’s focus is only on two things – Jeff and the audience – and he alternates between them with almost perfect timing.

Like most Ventriloquists, Jeff relies a lot on mechanisms in his puppets to get laughs and when he’s moving Achmed’s eyes or eyebrows to get a laugh he’ll usually keep the rest of the puppet very still. This is partially for practical reasons – it’s very difficult to operate multiple mechanisms simultaneously on most Vent figures – but also because by not moving the rest of the puppet the gag movement is exaggerated and draws a bigger laugh.

By making very specific choices about where Achmed looks, Jeff subtly communicates to his audience where their focus should be at any given moment in his act, like a magician masterfully misdirecting his audience on stage. Watch Jeff’s performances with a critical eye and I think you’ll learn a lot.

The puppetry of Warhorse – a runaway hit currently playing in London’s West End – is absolutely stunning (you can watch a video here). As longtime PuppetVision readers already know, I love this sort of very realistic, highly technical puppetry and I dare anyone to say they’re not impressed by what South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company has accomplished with this show.

Special thanks to Dave H. in the UK for sending this in!

For a long time I didn’t care much for marionettes. It wasn’t that I ever thought there was anything wrong with string puppets per se, it was just that I’ve always been a big fan of very precise, technical and realistic puppetry and until several years ago I hadn’t seen much marionette work that was really impressive.

Thankfully, I was eventually exposed to the work of people like Basil Twist (see previous post) and Joseph Cashore that took away my ignorance. I’m a particularly big fan of the Cashore Marionettes. There really is no substitute for seeing them live, but for those that haven’t yet had the pleasure they have a couple of new-ish videos – Life in Motion and Simple Gifts – that give you a taste of their amazing work.

Remember that big animatronic puppet that Jim Henson’s Creature Shop was building for Kanye West last year? Well, Sean – who along with his brother Patrick was part of the team that built the monster – sent in some links to some amateur video from one of Kanye’s concerts on YouTube.

The monster was apparently made out of foam and fiberglass, built on a carbon fiber spine and covered with hand-stitched fabric. The quality of the videos (which you can watch here and here) aren’t great, but the effect looks spectacular!

I haven’t featured any Christian puppetry here on PuppetVision for quite awhile, so what the heck…here’s a video of a group called Stuff-N-Foam lip syncing to Walk Like a Christian. Excessive hair twirling notwithstanding, it’s not bad.

And how can you not love a group that calls itself Stuff-N-Foam?

L.A. Weekly recently sat down for a chat with Brian Henson. In the interview Brian talks about Puppet Up! Uncensored, which has one of its monthly shows at Avalon Hollywood in L.A. tomorrow night at 8 p.m.

Via Tough Pigs.

Check out this video of Baltimore’s Annex Theater performing an episode of the cult classic cartoon Space Ghost live on stage with puppets (you can watch the original episode for reference purposes here). Just watch out for Dr. Nightmare and his army of Nightmare Creatures…

Via Urlesque.

Take a look at CNN’s report of the incredible 50 ft spider that’s currently on the loose in England. Don’t worry, there hasn’t been an invasion of giant radioactive insects (yet) it’s just an elaborate piece of free street theatre that’s happening this weekend in Bristol, UK. The “Robo-Spider” requires 12 operators and reportedly cost about $1.8 million to build.

Kind of makes you want your own giant animatronic robot, doesn’t it?

07/09/08 Update: I forgot to mention that the people behind this are La Machine (some of the same folks who created The Sultan’s Elephant).