Today, we at Puppet Showplace are asking you to lend us a hand. But, hidden or not, those hands are needed to tell the story, create the excitement, and bring the puppets to life. The hands of the puppeteers are often hidden during puppet shows – inside a puppet, beneath the stage, or behind a curtain. And for adults and teens, the Puppets at Night series returned with the season opener, “Flying Lessons,” a stunner with graceful, mysterious shadow puppetry by Caitlin Brzezinski and Libby Schap. I recently watched the most adorable little fuzzy grey rats besiege the town of Hamelin, much to the chagrin of the puppet inhabitants - and to the delight of the young audience in the theater. So much has happened, and yet, here we are: Puppets on stage! People in the theater! Children, masked and sitting with a bit more space around them, once again giggling at the adventures of favorite characters. For this reason, the performances contain all the main ingredients of a full scale production, which makes it very useful for theatre studies.As I reflect on the past year and a half, I am truly grateful. The experience of viewing the shows has been compared to having a small state theatre come to you, rather than you to it. The Dreamer shows are complete theatrical productions on a scale small enough to travel and fit in a diverse range of venues. The rods are also covered in black velvet to make them invisible. Because this is black light, the rods are just long enough to be held in the hand as the puppeteer can be standing directly behind and still not be visible. This enables the puppeteer to operate the puppet without the distraction of hands getting in the way or being visible. These puppets have rods attached to key places such as the head, back, elbows, wrists and ankles. The main type of puppets used in the performances are rod puppets. Dream Puppets have developed a larger palette of 'fluoro' colours, beyong the expected orange, yellow, light green, pink and blue, taking black light theatre to another level. The results are spectacular, even though the stage is only 3 meters wide. The Dreamer productions reflect several years of experimentation and development in this medium. The space must be dark enough for the full effect. In this way, performances in black light can be truly magical. If the performance space is nice and dark, the puppeteer becomes invisible while the puppets and sets are clearly seen. The background is black velvet and the puppeteer is also covered in black velvet. This light makes any fluorescent colours and bleached white materials glow. Black light blue lights are very dark blue in appearance and when switched on, produce blue/violet and ultra violet light at low levels. The name is derived from the main sources of light for the performances - long fluorescent tubes known as “Black light, blue”, ( not to be confused with “Black light, white”). The Dreamer productions use a style of theatre called black light. The Mystery behind Dreamer and Black light Explained The only real difference between an actor and puppeteer is that the puppeteer does this through the puppet and requires specialised skills in this area. Most performance is about creating the illusion that the performer is somebody or something else. All puppeteers are performers and the more highly skilled they are, the greater the range and depth of characters they can portray. It covers a range of different styles and mediums, including film and television. There is a myth in our society that all puppets are for children and only children believe “dolls” can be “alive”.Īll puppetry is theatre, just like dance, drama, mime, mask, opera etc. It ranges from children's theatre to adult and street theatre. Puppetry is a well developed theatre art form in Australia with quite a few professional companies and practitioners.
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