From bunraku, to shadow, to crankie scroll, pageant-style puppets and more, puppets took over for an 12 amazing days and nights of inspiration and invention. Artists came from Chicago, the nation and internationally from Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Iceland, Norway, South Africa, and Spain. Over 105 performances and events Astonished & Delighted attendees.
Under the leadership of studio co-founders Blair Thomas and Tom Lee, a small team of highly-skilled builders and designers create. Audiences returned to venues all over Chicago for “Chicago’s Best Festival” (runner up behind only Ravinia Festival). The Chicago Puppet Studio is the design and manufacturing arm of The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival organization creating original puppetry elements for theaters and theater artists nationally. Engaging and inspiring the largest and most diverse audiences for puppetry possible, the Festival is the biggest event dedicated to puppetry in North America and traditionally offers more. Though the Festival did return successfully in the middle of Omicron in 2022, which was a wonderful restart - the 2023 Festival blew it right out of the water - beginning with watery Opening Night performances of Moby Dick. The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival advances the art of puppetry by presenting sophisticated programs vital to the cultural life of Chicago. We'll continue to develop "Brothers of Invention" this year thanks to support from the Jim Henson Foundation and hopefully many more donors interested in bringing this unique work of puppet theater to life.Chicago’s appetite for puppetry was proven yet again with more sold out shows than ever before and a delicious variety of international performances! This 5th edition of the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival was a great return and the inaugural year of the Festival becoming an annual event. It was thrilling to make a start on this project we have been conceptualizing for so long.
You'll notice in the photos below that the performers are very visible and take on duties outside of manipulating the character objects. Their simple functionality defined the scale of the piece and allowed us to experiment with their interactions with each other, basic set pieces and props, and the space itself. The human animator may or may not be visible to the audience. In puppetry, a drama unfolds that is entirely or primarily acted out by specialized representational objects, which are manipulated by a puppeteer. The puppets in this workshop production are still works in progress. Puppetry is an ancient form of artistic expression that is a variation of storytelling or human theatrical productions. It was a wild fortnight but with access to the fantastic workshop and performance space of the David and Reva Logan Center for the Arts, and the performance collaboration of John Adam Keating, it helped us get this show off the ground. We arrived at the University of Chicago Performance Lab with 2 puppet heads and a million ideas, and two weeks later shared a 15 minute segment of this work in progress to four enthusiastic audiences who had come to witness The Puppet Quartet.
0 kommentar(er)
