Shadow and big puppets

Description: This week we’ve been focusing on acting with the puppets and making our “shadow puppets” scene. I’ve been doing scene 5, with the big royal puppets, with the big head and all the body we made for Deborah, Damian and the archbishop. Also we’ve been doing the shadow puppets starting with exploring the different source of lights and making the puppets for this scene, as well as making very nice shadows, with Debora’s character.

Analysis: This week, I might say it’s been the most challenging week for me, as I had to explore lots of different things. First of all this week was the first week I’ve ever worked with the entire big royal puppet structure. We never had the body so we never worked with it, but this time I had to make it work somehow and explore it at its maximum. I must say that working with this puppets isn’t easy as it looks like or as I thought it would be like. First of all the head of my puppet moves a lot and I have to stay at a specific position, for it to work. Also I have to move the “hands and arms” of the puppet as it is what gives it life and what makes it interesting to see, but it is not any movement, it has to be big, precise and of course it has to link with the words that I am saying. I had to try different ways of moving for different lines, and to see which one looks better. What I do not like in this it’s that I can ONLY move the arms and nothing else, so it has to be big in order to drag the audience attention. On the other hand we have the shadow puppets scene, which we had to explore a lot this week. We spent like 3 hours just to see which source of light would work. Also we spent a lot of time doing the shapes of the citizens that are going to appear in this scene. In this scene I am doing Deborah with Nicole, and we are both her, and the shadow of this creates a great illusion. We had to work a lot on the movements of the hands, as it is the only thing that moves a lot. We create a movement for a sentence and even for some words that for us seemed important. This last was very challenging as it is not easy to create movements as each movement has to be perfect and precise, in order to look organized.

Connections: Working with the big puppets, reminded me of some big puppets I saw once near the beach, they seemed very easy to manage and very easy to make the movements, but what I saw wasn’t people talking and making movements, but just people making random movements, which in the play, I can’t do. Also just making the movements aren’t easy as you have to maintain the arm high and try not to get exhausted. Working with the shadow puppets was completely different for what I thought it would be like, I imagined something like, shadows with the hands, but this goes beyond that. Making Deborah reminded me of black light theatre as I thought that shadow puppets were with hand shapes and drawing images and not with people. The shadow puppets scene made me more interest in this kind of theatre which linked me to my video bellow: “Chinese shadow theatre”, which I found very impressive, as they did different shapes and different figures with their body. I just found it very spectacular and awe-inspiring.

Reflexion: I wonder how much it takes for someone to be able to do this kind of shadows. What skills do we need apart from been flexible, how much would it take to do that? – As I found this very interesting I think I will be searching about this kind of theatre in order to answer my questions. Also regarding the school play, how can I make the big royal puppet scene more interesting?, what other movements can I find apart from moving the arms?, are there other movements I can make to make it more interesting? How can I explore deeply?