HappyFt Travels

My friend Kevin White got an NPR media hit today when Josh Ritter’s video “Curse” premiered on “All Songs Considered.” Though he assisted, Kevin is credited as drummer/puppeteer Liam Hurley’s mentor in the transcript. Can’t embed the video, so here’s  a pic of Kevin in a shoot, and here’s the link for the NPR video (a great video btw!).

ALSO: Here is a blog post I wrote in 2006 while spending a day with Kevin, and Liam, during their job with NYC Park and Rec.’s puppet roadshow.

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Tags: friends, Puppets, video
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Shadows In Stereo, is an installation that provides a rare opportunity to create and experience stereoscopic 3D with one’s own shadow.

Guests are invited to wear anaglyph glasses as they traverse the gallery having their shadows projected 40’ high.  Unlike a typical shadow, when viewed in 3D shadows do not cling to surfaces they move out into cubic space.  A sense of somatic dislocation occurs that is surprising and delightful.

The viewing experience is created by hand made stereoscopic lights and glasses constructed by artist Christine Marie.  The installation is a low- fi spectacle, more congruent with the light magic of Athanasius Kircher than the CG-Real-D digital work of James Cameron.

The experience is just as sensational appealing both to feeling of awe and an archetypal sense of wonder.

Installation created by Christine Marie.  www.cimimarie.com

Soundscape by Aden Liggett.

Maintained by Russell Howze

Tags: cellspace, Creations, Puppets, shadow
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I will be performing shadows once again for the “Only Jealousy of Emer,” composed by Lou Harrison. This will be a FREE show at the SF Conservatory of Music, with donations going to the Delancey Street Foundation. We’ll perform during the 3pm to 4pm block of music, at the bottom of the hour according to the lineup on the website.

What is Hot Air Music Festival?

Hot Air Music Festival is the SF Conservatory’s first student-run contemporary music festival. With an 8-hour marathon concert, our goal is to celebrate the SF Conservatory’s connection to the new music world. Students and Alumni will play both the music of their peers, great classics of new music, and the music of our time.

When is Hot Air Music Festival?

April 4, 2010: 2:00PM - 10:00 PM @ The San Francisco Conservatory of Music: 50 Oak Street SF CA 94102

How much are tickets?

Admission is FREE (there is a suggested donation to the Delancey Street Foundation at the door)

Where will the music be?

2:00-7:00 @ Hume Concert Hall

7:00-10:00 @ Sol Recital Hall and Osher Salon

Tags: Puppets, shadow, Sound
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Puppet Supper Alum Andrea Taylor spent a year in Indonesia teaching English. Also an alum of Lunatique Fantastique, Andrea made time to see some of the shadow plays that the region is famous for. While conversing with San Francisco Conservatory of Music conductor Nicole Paiement last year, a collaboration began for a one-day only performance of Lou Harrison’s “The Only Jealousy of Emer” (from the Noh-inspired play of William Butler Yeats).

Andrea worked with Allison Ross on creating the shadow vignettes and thematic pieces that come straight from Yeats’ work. I was asked to come in as the rehearsal process picked up and be their third player.

We had our first rehearsal with the New Music Ensemble today in the beautiful concert hall and things look great for the upcoming show.

Hope you can join us for the performance.

Go here for the SFMC event info page

Crosscurrents… where arts converge. Flowing Shadows
Student Ensembles
Saturday, February 20, 8:00 PM

Tickets:
$20/$15 call the box office at 415.503.6275

Program:
Lou Harrison : The Only Jealousy of Emer

Varèse: Déserts

Peter Sculthorpe: Nourlangie for solo guitar and ensemble

Lembit Beecher: The Art of Remembering

Description:
Shadow puppeteers will join the New Music Ensemble in Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe’s Nourlangie, for guitar and ensemble, with acclaimed guitarist and Conservatory faculty member David Tanenbaum as soloist. Not to be missed is the full version of Edgard Varèse’s ground-breaking Déserts, as well as works by Lembit Beecher and Lou Harrison.

Performers:

Tags: Puppets, shadows
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I am currently doing sound and stage managing for the Big Tadoo Puppet Crew’s “Breath of Fresh Air” show. The show goes to Alameda County (East Bay) elementary schools and teaches the children how to walk and bike to school safely. We set up two huge cranky/crankie devices at every school, with allen wrenches as the only tool.

The show has been running for three seasons now, and I posted photos of the crankies when I was helping Jonathan Youtt build them out. During our Fall season last year, I snapped a few pics of the tried and true crankies.

The two cranky scrolls (center) are placed for the top of the show. The blue straps were added after the show started running. They give the canvas more structure to stay smooth as the velo-cranks move the scene along.

Photo of the front of the scrolls (while I stand on the puppet stage). Notice how the blue straps give tension to the canvas. Both scrolls roll from the middle out, ending up at school!

June Rollalot (Sirraum) and his mom (Afi) stand in front of their house. Once June starts rolling (and singing), the scroll is cranked to simulate movement.

While in NYC December, I caught Bread & Puppet’s theater show. Like their Summer show, they had a ding dong (small performance before and after the main peformance) in the lobby. The performer (ahh, can’t remember his name!) gave an intimate two-person audience toy theater in a suitcase show. He used a cranky too!

As a backdrop for the Bread & Puppet ding dong show, the small cranky box is used to change scenes and create depth and movement. It all fits in the case/stage!

For more info on crankies, go to my Crankie Archives page and see/read all about it!

Tags: crankie, Puppets
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Sunday at the West Fest, a free concert in Golden Gate Park, I threw a new line in my carny spiel: “Just like the SF Diggers gave it all away in the Summer of Love, our games are free. There ain’t no line, and it don’t cost a dime!” The SF Diggers have inspired me many times over with their mad, creative urge to make the word “free” the real deal. They gave food away to the wayward runaways that flocked to Upper Haight, inspiring the Food Not Bombs campaigns. They hustled landlords to get living space and then crammed in as many homeless teens as possible to get them off the streets, and the Huckleberry Youth Programs is a reminder of their work. The SF Diggers threw free concerts in the Panhandle, the West Fest was a quasi-unsponsored (they did have logos all over things) example of that legacy. Finally, the SF Diggers created free stores, where money wasn’t considered. The Really Really Free Markets and Clothing Swaps stand as 21st Century Examples of this idea.

The SF Diggers, for good or bad, were tied to the San Francisco Mime Troupe. On top of all that free culture listed above, there were also many puppet performances, spontaneous art happenings, and wild, tripped out parties. The Mime Troupe gave their shows away for free in parks across the City, and they had to fight for that right, inspiring the SF Diggers (and bringing on the hilarious arrest of some of their giant puppets). On the East Coast, Peter Schumann’s Bread and Puppet Theater also began to throw free performances in New York, Vermont, and beyond. And Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino also began free, radical performance from a Mexi-Cali Latino perspective.

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Tags: free, Politics, Puppets
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AsiaAlive

Burmese Puppet Troupe

Tuesday through Saturday, October 25 through 31

12:00 noon – 4:00 pm

North Court

FREE with general museum admission

Mandalay Marionettes Theatre from Burma demonstrate their culture’s traditional puppet-making process. Watch them manipulate puppets, and create your own artwork to take home. The Mandalay Marionettes Theatre also presents short performances on Target First Free Sunday.

In conjunction with the special exhibition, Emerald Cities: Arts of Siam and Burma.

Performance: Mandalay Marionettes Theatre
Sunday, November 1
12:00 noon and 2:00 pm, Samsung Hall
Free admission sponsored by Target.

Enjoy puppet shows filled with Himalayan adventures, love stories, and dance.

Tags: Puppets
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October 28 - November 8, 2009
8PM, Oct 28 - 30, Nov 4 - 7
2PM, Oct 31, Nov 1 & 8

BRAVA Theater Center
2781 24th St., San Francisco, CA 94110

Ticket Prices
Wed,Thur, Sun: $20; Fri & Sat: $25
*Opening Night (Oct 28): $35 includes performance + post-show reception
*Thursday, Oct 29: Pay-What-You-Wish ($5 min. donation suggested)
*Student, Senior & Group discount available via phone & in person

Box Office: 415 647 2822 | 24/7 Online Box Office

More Info: www.shadowlightghosts.org

Tags: Puppets
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The Treasure Island Music Fest had a good vibe. Not too big (about 10,000 people), not too corporate, and the music was ecclectic enough to not get boring. Only two stages so things didn’t get too loud at Recycle Swish and the GMO Freak Show. Figured out that we had backstage access on Sunday so finally got to find Erminio Pinque of Big Nazo (Providence, RI) and say a quick hello. Wanye from Flaming Lips wandered by me too while I was back there! TIMF did pay a group of artists to create a great, Dust Bowl-era Midway of games for the event, so we got a second-rate placement stuck amongst the vendor tent row. And only had room for one game instead of the contracted two. We made do with what we got and had a good time giving it.

Here’s a pic an official photographer took of me being silly with the Corn Dog. It made it on the festival’s main site!

Tags: carny
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Yoo hoo…. I’ve been working hard this past month, doing sound tech (5 mics and about 25 sound cues) for the Big Tadoo’s “Walk and Roll to School” puppet show for TRANSFORM in Alameda County elementary schools. Just finished week two of the Fall Tour, leaving the kids with the urge to either bike and walk to school (or maybe put on a puppet and sing a great song).

Come visit me and a few events I’ll be participating in for your fall carny/puppet goodness:

The Sustainable Living Roadshow will have two games at Treasure Island Music Fest this weekend. If you stop by during Flaming Lips, you won’t see me there!!!

Big Tadoo will have a public performance of the show on Halloween with for the 3rd Annual Scraper Bike Day in Oakland. Never heard of scraper bikes? Check out this site for more info on a cool, inner-city urban bike movement.

CANCELLED due to permit problems (fingers crossed that we’ll perform for them soon!)

October 31st
Fremont Highschool parking lot
4610 Foothill Blvd. tween 46th and 45th
Oakland, CA 94601

Tags: bikes, carny, Puppets
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Heya HappyFt pardners. Haven’t posted much in the past weeks because I’ve been laying low, reorganizing, re-energizing, and trying to land from a year or so on the road. So not much has gone on in these yon parts of the Left Coast. Well, I did come out of a great men’s meditation retreat at Spririt Rock a few Wednesday’s back and landed smack into Christine Marie and Dan Cantrell’s Rootabega Opera. I’d known about their project for months and was never sure if my schedule would allow me to be part of the show, but they had a small part throwing shadows that they kept for me! And I jumped in slowly but with relish and spanch. Great to land back into the “shit” as Wes Nisker calls life, into an amazing fantasy land of shadows, clowns, and amazing live music. The flame throwers and metal art of the Fire Arts Festival also provided a strange take on reality after a week of looking inward.

Here’s a YouTube teaser that Christine edited last night. I threw the sun shadow. Hope you all enjoy it.

Life will return to HappyFt soon as well. For all the micro-latest, head over to FaceBook. For stencil goodness, keep the RSS feed humming over at Stencil Archive…. TTFN

Tags: Puppets, shadow, video
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Wot? Culture clash in the California southern badlands. My infected thumb and I hop a late-running bus off of Powell St. to find out that the company will drop us off mid-way to load in on a van. Off season they say. Still winter in April so small van to LA. At the switch, I use my honed travel skills to save a seat with a bag as soon as the van arrives. Glad I did, because one poor beaten soul (seriously, he looked recently beaten) had to sit on the floor for the next three hours. I soaked the podcasts and made a big dent in the Day of the Triffids as the dessert stretched on beyond all the fruit and nut plantations. Drought? Your water feeds the USA….. LA LA, not quite hot today but haul luggage from Union Station to catch the MetroLink north along the Antelope Line towards Newhall and CalArts. No problems. How to get to CALArts? Umm…. Oh, look. A bus driver arrives just when I need to ask. “Just take the 4 or 14. Over there,” he tells me. My train ticket gives me a free transfer. Some 20 minutes later the bus arrives and I know to look for McBean Parkway. Hey, there’s the CalArts sign. The driver just drops me off there (there IS public transportation in LA) and I haul my huge, heavy bag up into CalArts and ask a few students where to find the fourth floor theater where Christine’s show is. Find it no problem! She’s surprised to see me there. My honed travel skills prevail for the day. My thumb and Peter’s Shadow celebrate.
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Tags: book, LA, Puppets
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