Clockwork or All Wound Up

For the third year physical theatre show, all the theatre arts student who have been on working on placements will make up the technical team for the show. During our first production meeting last friday the concept for the production was presented as well, as the director's ideas on the set, lighting, etc. As the show is based on Phillip Pullman's fairytale, Clockwork, the setting would be a ninteenith century inn, primarily. It will also be performed in the round and incorporate puppets into the performance, as well as the twenty cast memebers. As a designer for the show I will be involved in the development of the set, as well as sourcing/creating props and working on the puppets that will feature heavily in the show.

Although in it's early stages of development one aspect we have been developing this week is the structure of the puppets themselves. The physical theatre students had sculpted a number of heads out of polysytrene and then papier mached the surfaces. Our task this week was to, using the heads, develop two prototypes for the director to see today (wednesday). First we attended the PT lesson on monday morning and, after talking with Kasia (the director), took away a number of heads we had chosen to incorporate with the rest of the puppet's structure we were developing.

Once back in the workshop, we chose a number of heads to develop and slightly recarved them. This defined the face's structure more, creating a more interesting character that would look more defined when painted and lit.

Kasia had made a point of the importance of them looking quite neutral and not too detailed as the audience would be able to see what kind of characters they were from their manipulation by the PT students.

We also restructured the jaw section, which was separate from the head, so that it sat and moved more naturalistically with the upper part of the head. W then re-applied the paiper mache to the surface to strengthen it and began to consider how the puppet would be operated and how the puppeteer would control and manipulate it's features.

We used a coat hanger, hooked over the thumb, to hold up the body and create a pair of shoulders, which the head would then sit on top of. Although this would need bulking out to make more life-like, it was a good start to developing the rest of the puppet's body. We allowed the heads to dry before experimenting with how the whole body ould connect up together.

To hide the hand, which went through a slit under the collar of the shirt, we create a sleeve out of material. Although the distance between the head and shoulders was too far, we thought it was a good idea to develop at this stage, as Kasia was only expecting a rough prototype.
 

Items collected to possibly be incoporated into the set design or used to construct props.


One thing we all began to realise as we worked on the puppets was the way in which Kasia liked to work. Where as in the past I would have a design meeting with a director and go away and develop something with a clear idea of what I was doing, this was totoally different to how Kaisa worked. Instead of sitting down and accurately laying out how things would work, she would prefer to give us a rough outline of what she wanted and then we would go away to develop something based roughly on what she'd described. Although stressful and time consuming at first, we began to develop our system of creating the puppets so instead of trying to pin own exactly what she wanted, we would develop something as best as we thought how and present it to her. This made developing the puppets ten times easier as she actually had something to look at and could explain to us what she liked and what needed to be re-designed or removed.


Re-structuring the jaw.

I suppose this was down to the fact she teaches physical theatre, and as such her whole method of working is to improvise and workshop ideas that would be developed as the process went on. Although completely different to how I was used to working, from a set/props point of view, and the girls in terms of costume, it was refreshing and incrediably useful to explore a different method of creating, and look at things from a new angle.
Our next job was to consider how we would bulk up the shoulders, creating a more natralistic look. At first we considered polystrene, but decided instead to create a selotape cast of someone's shoulders using selotape, as this was more flexible and easier to manipulate.

First we cling filmed the shoulders, then we began to cover them in tape. We decided quite a thick layer would be appropriate as this would hold it's form better and be much stronger.

The shoulder mould completed.

With the tape thick enough I carefully cut the back down the middle, so it could be removed and neatly retaped. With the mould finished we covered theinside with tape as well so it wouldn't fall apart. Next we attached the coathanger inside so that the frame was secured and the hook was ready to hold the head on top. Below is the shoulder mould with the head and shirt on. This looked dramatically different to what we had tried with just the coat hanger, and gave a much more life-like impression.

                             

Although the shirt we used was far too big for a four foot tall person, we felt the puppets were still beginning to take on a much more human look. Our next step was to show Kasia what we had done and get feedback on any alterations that needed to be made. Her first note was that the shoulder mould needed to finish higher up. Meaning that we kept the topmost section of the mould and trimmed away the lower section. This would keep the same form and hold the posture, but allow the puppeteer's arms to move more freely inside, without being restrictive to their actions.

The shoulder mould would be trimmed down to leave the higher section only.

Kasia also mentioned the neck needed to be smaller and the head sat closer above the shoulders. We also widened the neck area. As there would be no limbs, the pieces all had to be connected with material to hold it together underneath the costumes they would be wearing. Another point she made was that although there were no legs to the puppets a knee cap would be useful for defining the tops of the legs, although the rest of the leg would not be important. With this information we went away and finish our prototype for presenting on wedensday. As can be seen below.

As you can see we thinned the shoulder supports and created the pelvic structure using a coat hanger, covered in foam. From this we dropped the two knee cap sections and connected it all with material. Although only a rough construct at this time we had designed the bear strucutre of the puppet. At thi early stage it was great to be able to give ourselves the time to experiment with different ways of designing the puppets and meet up with Kasia to see what she thought of what we had made. As we knew a number of aspects of the puppet were likely to change as the design went on, we only pinned or taped the pieces together. This allowed us to show Kasia how we had interpreted what she had told us, but also easily alter parts that weren't quite there yet. As there were no arms (the puppeteers would use their own) we had cut slits at the top of each sleeve for the puppeteer, however Kasia felt it would be better if these slits were nearer the wrists to make it much easier to control the sleeve.

A good example of this is the mouth piece, which conects the bottom jaw to the rest of the head. This can be seen below. 

                                            

Here you can see we pinned the mouth piece in place so we could alter it later if needs be. We finally painted the faces a pale cream, flesh colour. Our next step will be to develop the prototype so its more structured and secure, as well as two cat puppets which may be a different style of puppet to the ones we had developed so far.