This is Art (in Progress): Sculpture

Showing posts with label Sculpture. Show all posts

Friday, December 2, 2011

Winter Dreams at HoBT - Design Internship

NOW PLAYING at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre (1500 East Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN): A show called Winter Dreams

Winter Dreams is about the ways that all the animals of Minnesota manage to sleep through the winter. See hibernating bears, turtles who hold their breath for 3 months, snakes who bury themselves in a pit in the ground, frogs who freeze themselves cryogenically, and more! It's a kid-friendly show with some ingenious puppetry —some of which was designed by ME.

To be more specific, I took a design internship at HOBT this fall and did 3 jobs:

1. I performed image research and factual research to figure out what certain animals look like and just how their bodies work.

2. I was tasked with designing and building a shadow puppet sequence based on the Wood Frog —The frog that can tolerate being frozen solid in the winter and resume living after it thaws itself out.

3. I was also put in charge of fleshing out a sequence that had already been started - one about bees. In a beehive, the worker bees will crowd around the queen and pulse in order to keep her warm (fun fact, the drones, who usually hang out at the hive, are sent out one by one to die during the Fall)

So I took copious WIP pictures. So without further ado, this is art in progress.

(read more for pictures!)

At Open Eye Figure Theatre - Puppet-Making and Joice Rejoice!

Open Eye Figure Theatre is a nationally recognized puppetry and theatre company in Minneapolis. They do pieces in a historic theatre space as well as in neighborhoods in the Twin Cities during a tour of area communities called the "Driveway Tour." The work there is always unique, exploring and experimenting with the magic of performing objects.

In the winter, I took some workshops at Open Eye, and I met Susan Haas and Michael Sommers, the artistic directors of the theatre. After going to see a show there in June, Michael Sommers invited me out to help construct puppets for an upcoming show.

So, over the course of about two weeks in late July, I went out to Open Eye and helped the artistic directors build their puppet's heads out of papier mâché. I also helped move items around the studio, painted stage components, and wired up a lighting fixture to illuminate the puppets.

Work-in-progress shot of what I helped on.

The puppet show we constructed is a Punch and Judy-style show to be interpolated into the larger show, Joice Rejoice, conceived and written by Kevin Kling, who is a well-loved playwright and storyteller and a frequent collaborator with Open-Eye.