Meeting update

Due to the death of a brother-in-law, the Voights will be unable to attend the meeting in Ft. Atkinson. Pam Corcoran has graciously stepped up and will perform "Queen of Hearts" in place of the Fever River Puppeteers'  "River Critters." We will miss you all and hope to see you in October.

Newsletter and Meeting

We're snail-mailing a newsletter this week. Watch for it!
Let us know if there are other people who should be on the list.
We have decided tentatively to send some of the newsletters via actual U.S. Postal Service, since it's often easy to ignore emails (we get so many!) and it's nice to have a paper thing to hold in your hand.

Here, though, is the basic info on the next meeting:

Ft. Atkinson 

Guild Meeting 

Saturday, Sept. 29

St. Joseph School,

1660 Endl Boulevard

,Fort Atkinson, WI 53538

(920) 563-3029

 1-1:30 p.m.: Introductions and sharing: 

1:30 to 1:45: WPG Business Meeting: 

 1:45-2 p.m.: Coffee: 

 2-3:15: Hand on Workshop --  

Making Stories Come to Life: Using

puppets to involve groups of children

 (ages 5 - 12) in telling stories

     This workshop, designed for teachers, librarians, and others who work

with children,  will introduce methods to construct quick and easy puppets

and use them to present narrated stories.

3:30-4:30 p.m.: Performance

“River Critters,” by the Fever River Puppeteers -- a hand, rod and shadow puppet show. A day on the Mississippi River, as Buddy and Grandpa go fishing, unaware of the antics of a playful otter, a wily raccoon and assorted other critters.

Hands 2 Grow is offering its new summer show at the Little Chute Public Library tomorrow (Wednesday) at 10:30 and 1:30.  Tall tale fun to match the theme:  Dream Big: READ!

Looking for a great kids book to read? Try Balloons over Broadway by Melissa Sweet. Tells the story of Tony Sarg - the puppeteer who created the annual parade that delights so many people Thanksgiving!  Good stuff!

Important News!!

  

Kickstart 

Hang onto your dowel rods. Zip up your Velcro.  Ratchet up your wingnuts!

We’re tweaking the creaking controls of the Wisconsin Puppetry Guild.

The executive committee of WPG held a planning meeting Saturday, June 23, 2012, at the Middleton home of Joan McCarthy.

This is an update of officers and a SAVE-THE-DATE for the coming puppet year: Sept. 2012 to summer 2013. A fullsome newsletter will be coming later this summer.

OFFICERS

We haven’t had new officers in a long, long, looooooooooonnnnnggggg time.

Since our bylaws call for official elections to be in May, we decided to retool the slate on a temp basis until May 2013. As Pam said, it’s along the lines of “Good news, prisoners! You get to change clothes today. The bad news: Joe, you change with Hank. Hank, you change with Bart….” Etc.

President: Pam Corcoran – corcoran@wi-net.com

Treasurer/membership: Zona Platzek – zplatzek@aol.com

Secretary: Jill Frederickson – handfullofstars@gmail.com

Historian: Joan McCarthy – joan.mccarthy@madcap.org

Newsletter editor: Sandye Voight – voight@mhtc.net

Webmaster: Chuck Voight – voight@mhtc.net

Pam will be in charge of programming as part of her presidential duties. Zona figured it made sense to link membership with the treasury. Chuck and Sandye will work on keeping the blog up to date. The old website will be used only to refer to the blog. Joan is organizing and keeping up scrapbooks about the guild.

SAVE-THE-DATES 

We are planning four regular meeting/events, with a workshop and performance at each, as well as time for updates on Puppeteers of America, festivals, etc. as well as sharing what we are all working on individually.

Saturday, Sept. 29 – St. Joseph School, Ft. Atkinson

Saturday, Oct. 13 – Kenosha -- an evening puppet slam!

Saturday, April 13 – Wild Rose (note that Friday evening, April 12, Brian Henson will be performing in Wausau)

Saturday, May 18 – Pup-a-Foo-Glee (Day of Puppetry) Hazel Green

I expect to have all the details in a nice newsletter to be mailed in August. I will be hounding everyone for pictures in the form of jpgs.

Also, note that the touring production of “War Horse” will be in Appleton on June 25-27, 2013. If you know of other puppet performances or tours coming to Wisconsin, please let us know. It’s always nice to meet for lunch or supper and go to a show together.

Have a great summer! Keep cool.

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