Puppet Potlatch in Indiana

Pokagon report 2011

There were more than 90 people at this year’s Puppet Potlatch at Pokagon State Park in Indiana. The weather was great, conducive to walks in the woods.

We (Chuck and Sandye Voight) were the only ones from the Wisconsin Puppetry Guild, and while we missed our fellow Cheeseheads, we did have a chance to hang out with Ginger Lozar of Champaign, IL. Her Central Illinois Guild is alive and kicking. Ginger came with her friend and fellow puppeteer, Elizabeth (whose last name escapes me). They brought wonderful puppets to sell at the trading post --- and let us have a Friday night sneak peak and first pick!

The puppets were from the estate of Esther Cheatle, a retired Springfield, Ill., pathologist and lifelong puppeteer who died last spring at the age of 95. She had no children or other survivors and the estate gave her extensive collection of puppets to the Central Ill. Guild. We acquired several that she made in the Martin Stevens style, as well as a fantastic disconnecting skeleton (she was a pathologist!) and a few that she had collected (one from Burma) and a Kukla, Fran & Ollie poster.

Friday Night

The ice breaker was a make-a-puppet-show game in which we had to use found objects to make up a fairy tale/nursery rhyme a la “Into the Woods.” Has anyone ever tried this with kids? It sounds like a fun workshop for a winter day.

The evening performances were “Hans My Hedgehog,” a large-scale (like 8 ft. by 10 ft) shadow show of this obscure Grimm Fairy Tale, using overhead projector black-and-white shadows. Four puppeteers of the Sea Beast Puppet Co. worked 3 overheads behind this gigantic set. It was great. Kat Pleviak and her brother, of Chicago, are the instigators. We’d like to get them to come to the Hazel Green Day of Puppetry.

The second Friday night performance was Fred Putz and Richard Schnadig’s “Punch and the Sausage Factory.” But we bailed to turn in for the night.

(By the way, since we have the tollway pass for Illinois, which works in Indiana, AND there was NO ROAD CONSTRUCTION!!, it took us only 5 ½ hours to get there this year – half an hour less than usual).

Saturday, I went to the

Guild Presidents’ Breakfast

Dave Herzog, regional director, was presented with a blue cape embroidered with “Grand Poo-bah of the Great Lakes Region.”

He reported that our region is in pretty good financial shape, with a balance of about $7,000.

Among the guild reports, I noted that the Chicago Guild relies majorly on Facebook, which really reels in the young puppeteers. Kat Pleviak (see above) organized a puppet slam in a bar and it was a sell-out.

Another guild (sorry, I didn’t write it down), celebrates the English tradition of Boxing Day sometime after Christmas by exchanging boxes of puppet stuff --- the idea is that stuff you don’t want might work for someone else, plus you get rid of it.

Dave reported that only 264 people attended the national festival in Atlanta this past summer. Not a great turnout for a national. Efforts are under way to make the next one more affordable.

Next year, our guild will be in charge of performances for Potlatch.

Saturday Fun

We went to Kat Pleviak’s shadow puppet workshop and Dave’s costuming shortcuts. There were others on animating eyes, acting, casting in plastic wood, painting and wigging your puppet, playwriting, paper puppets, simple rod puppets and puppets in therapy.

After lunch and the best trading post ever (not kidding), there were 2 performances designed to be critiqued by Jim Rose, Nancy Sander and Mel Biske. There was “Hope USO Show in WWII,” a marionette show by Freedom Puppets (Scott Beam) and “The Crane Maiden,” by DeRosier Puppets --- a troupe of 3 girls, ages 8-12! The critiquing was very tactful and helpful.

Regional meeting

The regional festival next summer will be Howe to do Puppets at the Howe Academy in Howe, Ind. (not far from Shipshewana).

It will be bare bones, bring your own sleeping bag, towels, etc. for a stripped down price of $250 per person P of A member, $120 for juniors and a 2 + 2 family rate of $480 INCLUDING MEALS. Performances will be open to the public. Performers will no longer attend for free.

The next national festival is set for Philadelphia, which is also being touted as an affordable event.

More shows

After the usual fun supper at Timbuktoo (formerly known as the Herb Garden – they still have crab cakes and sweet potato fries), the evening shows were Melikan’s “The Shoemaker and the Night Before Christmas,” and Bob Brown’s ‘Teddy Bear’s Picnic.” And, of course, there was the late night Potpourri. Roz Puppets performed Sunday at the Punch Brunch.

See what you guys missed? Next year’s Potlatch will be Nov. 2-4.

Sandye Voight

Day of Puppetry 2012

The Fever River Puppeteers Board has been meeting regularly (or more than usual) to better plan next year's Day of Puppetry at the Hazel Green Opera House.

We've settled on Saturday, May 19 -- which is the weekend AFTER Mother's Day but still avoids the dreaded graduation party time which has been sucking away audiences.

We're aiming for more of a children's festival -- taking a cue from West Liberty, Iowa, home of Monica Leo's Eulenspiegel Puppets and a wonderful Children's Festival in late September.

Our plan is to offer 2 or 3 guest shows, plus our children play-writing contest winners (we're opening it to grownups this year) and to alternate the shows with Something Else at the church hall. Our board members felt strongly that we need to offer kids something physical to do, so we've got a couple of possibilities -- a gymnastics teacher, yoga teacher and mom-and-tot music activity teacher.

Instead of a puppet workshop at the church hall, we hope to have some make/take booths on the street, along with concessions and vendors. The local Women's Club is interested in being part of it and possibly some groups from the high school. Maybe musicians (the high school music teacher's tuba ensemble has been a big hit), giant puppets milling around.

Maybe the Wis. Puppetry Guild could have a booth of its own?

Please mark your calendars for next year.

Feel free to email us at voight@mhtc.net.

Sandye Voight

Guild planning meeting

After a long hiatus, the Wisconsin Puppetry Guild held a planning meeting Sept. 10 at Joan McCarthy’s home in Middleton.

We decided to focus on two big meetings during the coming year, one in the Fox Valley and one in Madison.

Dates need to be firmed up and Joan is working on a newsletter, but tentative plans are for an April 14 or 21, 2012, meeting in Madison and a Sept. 8, 2012, meeting in Oshkosh. (We first considered it just the opposite --- April in Oshkosh, September in Madison. But we want the Oshkosh meeting to be an outdoor event, to see Jeff Decker’s Sherman the Dragon, so September might be better.)

We want to try to get back to our original model of a performance and a workshop at each meeting and of having them in public libraries to encourage new members.

We also want to offer optional get-togethers around the state when puppeteers are performing. We’d go out for lunch or supper together. One such possibility is in January, when Joe Cashore will be performing in Dubuque, Iowa – which is just 15 minutes from the Hazel Green Opera House.

We also want to improve the link to our blog via the website, which needs updating.

And we want to resume sending at least some of our newsletters out in paper form.

You input is encouraged.

Thanks.

Sandye Voight

President for life unless you want to arm wrestle

News from the National Festival

At long last, I'm posting again on what is supposed to be a blog for the Wisconsin Puppetry Guild.

I've created 3 postings today. This one is an overview of the recent festival --- the fun stuff about performances, etc. Then I threw my reports on the national meeting and the Great Lakes Regional meetings into 2 other blog postings. So scroll down and read. Please add your comments.

And, when I set this thing up, it was so that others of you could post, too. But frankly, I don't remember how!

I've got some other things to add before we meet on Saturday, Sept. 10, at 9:30 a.m. in Middleton, but I'll do that another day.

Thanks for reading!

Sandye Voight

Guild president (still! impeach me, so I can't be President for Life.)

Festival Overview, Thoughts, Observations

This was the second time in 2 years that the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta hosted the National Puppetry Festival.

Chuck and I attended both. This was my 8^th national and Chuck’s 7^th (he didn’t go to the one in Tampa, Fla., in 2000.)

This time, in Atlanta, we were all in one dorm and the distance to the center of activity was not as long as 2 years ago. That helped us cope with the heat and humidity. (The South. In July. Bound to be hot hot hot.) The rooms were all “suites” with a bathroom per 2 rooms. That was OK. But our tolerance of bunkbed living is about over.

Enough about the accommodations (oh, food—OK. Alcohol at late-night events non-existent, except for sneaking it in a grownup sippy cup. Too high a price, apparently, for university approval. ) What you really want to hear about:

Festival Performances

Our favorites included “Brother Coyote and Sister Fox,” by the Thistle Theatre. There were some particularly hilarious chickens in a show that was kind of biligual. The Corbian Arts created a magical show – “Darwin the Dinosaur” -- with high puppets that featured tech lights, like they were wrapped in Christmas lights.

Our favorite show was the most hilarious version I’ve ever seen of “The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow” by the Frogtown Mountain Puppeteers of Maine. This sibling group of 2 brothers and a sister perform Muppet-style on cardboard sets. (This was the last show of the festival and a fitting, feel-good ending.)

We were bused to the Center for Puppetry Arts for two shows, “Cinderella Della Circus,” a whimsical traditional marionette show, and The Ghastly Dreadfuls, a wonderful, adult Halloween show that they brought back just for us. It was a series of short puppet bits in a variety of styles – some funny, some just creepy and “Twilight Zone”-esque. Plus we got a chance to sing along. The musicians were fantastic.

Peggy Melchior and her daughter Heidi Pearson entertained us with “An Evening with the Melchior Marionettes: Three Women, Three Mothers, Three Puppeteers.” There was a Power Point slide show reminiscence about Peggy’s mother Erica, interspersed with live performances of well-known bits from their shows. And their was a fourth puppeteer: Peggy’s little girl in her stagehand debut.

Another evening show was Steve Whitmire and KERMIT THE FROG!!!! Steve has been performing Kermit for the more than 20 years, since the death of Jim Henson. At first, it was just Steve on stage and I kept mumbling, “where’s the frog?” At the end of the very special evening (slide show, Q & A, anecdotes), at the request of a woman in the audience, Kermit led us all in singing, “Rainbow Connection.”

Altogether, there were 16 performances, plus late night events: Potpourri was led off by 98-year-old Bernice Silver, who rose from her wheel chair and then assumed a big grin and a “ta-da” posture as she began one of her usual puppet skits involving paper cutouts and a singalong to a song she wrote and that nobody had the words to! You had to be there. (We made it to at least the beginnings of these late night festivities.)

I attended workshops on grant writing, new sculpting materials and using a limberjack. And I hit the puppetry store a few times, too.

Before the awards ceremony on Saturday night, guilds with banners (including us) paraded in with them and stood on stage. I forgot to bring a cow puppet with me, and wanted to have one to help represent Wisconsin, so I bought skunk handpuppet in the store and surgically changed him into a passable Bossy.

Puppets of America festival meeting

Puppeteers of America –

National meeting July 13, 2011

Puppeteers gathered for a national meeting on the second afternoon of the festival in Atlanta, Ga., on the campus of Georgia Tech.

President Anna Vargas reported that the P of A currently has 1,418 members.

(Note that the Wisconsin Puppetry Guild’s Pam Corcoran is a new board member. Yay, Pam! But she was not able to attend the festival.)

Anna said the organization is in a transition period especially in regard to its website, which she said is undergoing a major upgrade. (www.puppeteers.org)

The P of A Facebook page has 3,200 people (friends?) and 1,600 check the page every week.

There are 36 active guilds within the organization.

The Northeast Region had a “spy” at the Great Lakes Region’s annual potlatch in November. Sharon Peck took copious notes and even gave a workshop. The upshot is that they will host a similar event in Sept. of 2012.

The Big News

Barriers have been lifted to forming a new guild (and to keeping a floundering one going).A guild need only have 3 members of the P of A and need only meet once per year.

Focus groups

Anna broke up the attendees into smaller focus groups, with a board member at the helm of each. The task was to do a spot analysis of the organization, to list strengths and weaknesses, threats and opportunities.

Here’s some of what our group came up with:

Strengths:

• Festivals – seeing strong performances, eating together and sharing ideas
• The number of young people in attendance
• The insurance program
• P of A consultants
• The online bookstore and lending library

Weaknesses/threats

• Lack of programming for teachers who attend the festivals.
• The exclusivity of festivals – that they are not open to the public
• The workshops – not many are advanced
• The invisibility of the P of A
• Puppeteers are spread out and isolated by long distances

Opportunities

• Strengthen the smaller organizations (guilds? Regions?) by organizing round robin tours of puppet theaters
• Push for more Day of Puppetry emphasis
• During festivals, have some performances puppeteers-only and some that repeat for the public.
• Puppet slams
• Technology
• Use the Puppetry Journal to provide more how-to and technical info
• Reach out to colleges
• Put something about puppetry into Broadway’s Playbill (in late of all the puppetry in the theater these days)
• Expand the bibliography (bookstore? Lending? Website?) for beginners and advanced

Vargas is interested in input from members. She welcomes you to send your ideas to her at annadpuppet@yahoo.com

Great Lakes Regional meeting report

Great Lakes Regional meeting

at the National Puppetry Festival

July 16, 2011 -- Atlanta, Ga.

Regional president Dave Herzog reported that the region is in good financial shape, with losses from the 2010 regional festival in Springfield covered by fund raising efforts at the last potlatch.

The next Potlatch will be the weekend of Nov. 4-6, at the Pottawatomie State Park near Algona, Ind. For those of you who have never gone, it is always there and always on the first full weekend of November. It also is ALWAYS a wonderful, wonderful time in a beautiful wooded setting on a lake. The Pokagon lodge is very comfy and has a great indoor pool. A potlatch (like a potluck) is about sharing, so performers and workshop presenters are not paid.

Recently, the P of A ruled that the Great Lakes Regional’s annual Potlatch IS a P of A sanctioned event, since the money is funneled through the region’s treasury. That means that elections held at Potlatch are valid.

Dave promised a regional newsletter to arrive via email in August. His email is dhpuppets@aol.com.

The next regional festival is all but officially approved by the P of A. It is scheduled for June 26-29 at the Howe Academy in Howe, Ind. It used to be called Howe Military Academy and the dorms as said to be Spartan but the site is expected to make this a very affordable festial. Plus, Dave says there’s a nice motel nearby, for those of us who’ve reached the brink of tolerance on sleeping in dorms (no word on whether these are bunk beds).

Scott Beam (freedompuppets@yahoo.com) will be the festival director. He worked closely with Guy Thompson on the festival that was held in nearby Shipshewana, Ind., in 2008.

Dave said that Corcordia Seminary in St. Paul is trying to woo the P of A back to that campus for the next 2 national festivals. Jessica Simon, a Chicago puppeteer, said there also is a proposal for a national to be held at Swarthmore College near Philadelphia.

The Chicago guild is hoping to sponsor a youth scholarship for future regional festivals.

Dave said guild members should be urged to join P of A and keep up their memberships.

A link to the guild website should be sent to the P of A webmaster.

The P of A site has a Puppet Places link. Peggy Melchior is in charge of it. (The last time I checked, the Hazel Green Opera House was on it. Is there any place else in Wisconsin that should be added?)

The Chicago Puppetry Guild piggybacked a Day of Puppetry with an Irish festival to great advantage. They highly recommend piggybacking a DoP with an existing event.

Other notes: Kat Pleviak organized a puppet slam in Chicago. And Ohio puppeteer Dave Greenbaum died in the spring.

Feb. 12 meeting

Renowned marionettist Joseph Cashore will be performing in Wisconsin in February.

Let's go! (Check out his remarkable puppetry at www.cashoremarionettes.com.)

7:30 p.m. at Thrasher Opera House

Saturday, February 12

506 Mill Street

Green Lake, WI 54941

Green Lake is west of Fondulac

Tickets: $22/each

Order tickets here:

Thrasher Opera House in Green Lake, Wisconsin

http://www.thrasheroperahouse.com/thrasher/events.asp

We could meet at 4 p.m. here for a catch-up meeting/gathering and have supper before the show:

Goose Blind Restaurant one block from Thrasher Opera House (to meet for guild business in afternoon)

http://www.gooseblind.com/

Here are a couple of places people could stay if, like us Voights, they would have a long drive home and want to relax:

Angel Inn B&B

http://www.angelinns.com/

Heidel House Resort and spa

http://www.heidelhouse.com/rooms/roomrates.asp