Adult and childrens puppetry

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cTF9zvzRBY

This is a good video of the relationship between adult and childrens puppetry. It starts out as a childrens puppet show would fun, friendly, entertaining, and informative. Then it turns into an adults puppet show with comedy, violence, and jokes that are not ment for children.

http://www.smallworldpuppets.com/aboutus.htm

This is a source to small world puppets, which is a corporation devoted to learning education and childrens puppetry. They do camps, schools, fire departments, corporations, and private parties. They do a bunch of small skits for many educational facilities and businesses.

Violent Puppets Gone Wild

Once again I am going to revert to one of my best known puppetiers known as Jeff Dunham the ventrilaquist. He uses different forms of violence in his performance. Most of the violence is verbal abuse used in the form of comedy to make the specktators laugh. Each puppet has it's own personality and with their personalities different forms of verbal abuse. One of my favorite puppets is Waltor an old man who uses crude termonalogy and violent thoughts to talk about life. He always has a negative point of view and likes to degrade people and places. He represents a grumpy old man who likes to blame the world for his problems. He likes to bash his wife as an old bag of bones and the places they do the performances. He always finds something bad to say about the places they perform.

He also has different charectors who use sexual verbal abuse and all different kinds of verbal abuse. The one i found to be the most interesting is one of the newer charactor who represents a violent living charactor. This newer charactor is the skeleton of a terorist bomer. This charactor likes to talk about killing and murdering people. He talks about his bombing experience. This charactor represents a huge scene of violence in our world today. Ever since september eleventh terorists have been in the minds of every american and people all over the world. Our air ports have been under a lot more security since then. This ventrilaquist uses this character to turn a living tradgedy into a comedy show. He uses modern day violence scenes to create his jokes by blowing them out of perportion by bring the terrorist back from the dead to talk about the experience and why he did it. I found this violence interesting because most people wouldn't think that it is violence when actually it's just making fun of a very serious violence in our world.

The following is a website to a youtube show of Jeff Dunham and Aukmed the dead terroris....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwOL4rB-go

Puppets' Characters

I thought that the Hiroshima Maidens made by the American puppet artist Dan Hurlin in 2004 were really cool. He used broken-eggshell shapes for the heads to represent young woman disfigured by th atomic bomb. I found this to be fasinating because who would think of broken egg shells to represent people. I think it makes perfect sense i mean the egg shape would almost make it look like a bomb that was broke which is what the atomic bomb was. The purpose of these puppets was to demonstrate the damage and mutilation caused by the atomic bomb. Their traits were basically mishappen girls as the result of the atomic bomb.

I also thought this was kind of cool because back in middle school we put on a mock trial for my history class, and our topic was the bombing of Hiroshima. I was a witness and i was suppose to be a Japenese survivor of the atomic bomb. I had to have a whole ton of paste aplied to my face to make me look really mishapen. I thought that it was a different and unique technique to use broken egg shapes to represent the damage. I just felt a personal connection to this type of character.

Types of American Puppetry

Well at the very beggining of the video the man was holding a puppet that was connected by strings. This type of puppet form is a marionette form. This form is used widely throughout the world from Egypt and Greece to India and sub-Saharan Africa. This is a form where the puppets have strings or rods connected to parts of the puppet to help them move like they have joints. Many cultures became very good at perfecting this form so as to enhance movement and hide the strings and rods better.

In the video when they were moving those cloths through the water with the rods i feel that it was a mixture of several different art forms. First i think it had aspects of the marionette such as the rod that was used for the majority of the movement. The rods where most commonly used in Asia. The performers would be under the stage using the rods to move the puppet. In the video however they used the rods to stir and cycle the cloths in the water to make them look alive. They also used the lighting and such to make the puppets or cloth stick out more much like Shadow puppets that were most common in places like China, Java, and other places in Asia. This helped give it a two or three dimensional look to it.

I also caught a glimps of a rubber octopus in the film which is a custum to the swiss and was developed by Mummenschanz. They use the foam and rubber to bend it and fold it in amazing ways while controlling it from the inside. It quite reminded me of the other video we watched in class about the human slinky. I think it is a fascinating art form and i love how they can do such amazing things with the puppets. The video contained many forms of puppetry and i think it is fascinating how all the forms can be blended together to create anything you can imagine. It's like being able to create a whole knew world and bring it to life.

Let's Discuss!!!

Briefly explain the relationship between religion/ritual and puppets??? Well puppets are used as a form of interpreting especially things that people can't comprehend or do, and religion fits right into that category.

Puppets come to life!!!

I have very little experience with puppets. Besides the movie we watched in class the only other time I’ve seen a puppet performance was the Jeff Dunham comedy show. Jeff Dunham is a comedian ventriloquist who uses different puppets to assist his comedy. Each puppet has its own personality and I found it to be very amusing. One of the puppets is an old guy who likes to complain about the different towns they perform in and about his wife. I think that the voice helps bring these puppets to life and gives them all a unique character. One of his newer puppets is a terrorist bomber. He is basically a skeleton who likes to say “I’ll kill you” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwOL4rB-go ). I think that the variation and the different voices helps make these puppets come to life.

 Besides ventriloquism I found that in the video in class there was a moment where the puppets did seem to come alive. I really liked how the one puppet that was dressed in all white kept going up to kids and sitting on their laps. I thought it was cute how the one little girl didn't want to let him go it gave the puppet a life like quality. I also liked how the one puppet that played the trumpet in a jazz performance would wipe his forehead with a towel. That action to me made him more lifelike because it is something that you could see any performer doing and It made the puppet seem almost human.

 I also thought the bird that ate out of the kids hands had a life like quality because birds do eat out of people’s hands. I thought many of the puppets seemed to come to life because they all did things that are very real and because the audience members helped make them real. Like how the kids all stuck out their hands to feed the bird. That action gave the puppets life and was really cool. The puppet master also helped bring the puppets to life by helping to guide their movements and help interact with the audience. I liked how he said that "If you change one thing even the strings with one the exact same length it also changes the puppets personality."

 I thought that was cool because it made it seem like even to the creator of the puppets they were alive and had different personalities. I think that the varied personalities also helped contribute to their life like quality. Just like no two people are the same none of the puppets were the same either and i think it added a lot to the performance. I find it amazing how the puppet master could make the puppets move like they were real and make it seem like they really were walking and dancing or playing an instrument. I liked the video and was surprised how easily i was drawn into the world the puppet master was creating with his puppets. It's amazing how with a little care and attention you can bring objects to life and make someone smile.