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.