Songs of the Abyss

Baltimore cartoonist Eamon Espey’s beautiful new graphic novel, Songs of the Abyss, has just been published by Secret Acres.

Eamon’s stunning graphic work has appeared in art shows in Los Angeles, Istanbul, New York and Sweden, as well as in magazines across the planet. Songs of the Abyss continues Espey's fascination with the spiritual and grotesque - ancient Egyptian gods birth Biblical giants; Santa Claus is an agent of the Devil; A scientist performs sadistic experiments in search of enlightenment.

Eamon collaborated with sculptor and puppeteer Lisa Krause to promote the book through a puppet show adaptation of one chapter of the new comic, titled "Ishi’s Brain," based on the true story of a man often been referred to as “the last wild Indian.” The show includes shadow puppets, masks, marionettes and lots of painted cardboard.

Eamon and his puppet show come to Seattle for one performance only. This Thursday, April 25, at the Richard Hugo House. Presented by the ever-expanding Short Run Literary Collective. Tickets are just $5 and available at the door.

Me I

A rainy Saturday morning, and we're at home watching videos. This terrific clip created for TV On The Radio by directors Daniel Garcia and Mixtape Club never gets old.

Dinosaur Saints & Humble Robots

Speaking of Adam Ende, what has that guy been up to?

As it happens, Adam has been traveling with his son Cornsnake as part of their father and son puppet troupe, Jawbone Puppet Theater. Together they adapt stories of Franz Kafka, reinterpret African American folk tales with dinosaurs, explode in Spanish political rants, and share a gorgeous story about 16th century Peruvian saint San Martin de Porres. Adam designs the puppets and 5-year-old Cornsnake serves as love interest and musical director.

The two of them have been crossing the United States in a van along with Puerto Rican puppet troupe Poncili Company, who present their own subversive, thought provoking and occasionally shocking spectacles made of cardboard.

The 5-person circus recently wrapped up a two-month multi-city tour of New England, the Atlantic coast and the deep South, and are gearing up for their Spring and Summer tour across the northern states, Pacific Northwest and California. Touring libraries, farm markets, left wing book stores, underground enclaves and parking lots, they are probably headed your way before you know it. Watch their regularly updated facebook page for exact dates and locations.

Don't Hug me I'm Scared

Thank you Adam Ende for sending me this!

A trippy piece of puppety something from This Is It film-making collective out of London.

Best of Henson

Of course pretty much everyone from my generation has a great reverence for Jim Henson. We grew up watching Sesame Street, moved on to the Muppet Show, and watched Labyrinth and the Dark Crystal so many times that huge swaths of our population have memorized the dialogue. Henson's creativity was legendary and his mastery of television has influenced everything that came afterward.

What's interesting is that in the years since his death, no one has come close to claiming his niche. I can't think of a single popular artist today who speaks to children and adults with such equal fluency, and whose work has such huge commercial appeal without ever being trite, saccharine or downright mercenary. We all knew Henson was unique at the time - it's looking more and more like he was true genius.

Starting tomorrow, November 5, the new SIFF Cinema at the Uptown is celebrating the work of Jim Henson by screening including the three original Muppet films, the fantasy classics The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, and eight different collections of classic shorts featuring from The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and rarities from the Henson vaults.

The series runs through November 22, and the full schedule is available here.

And if you haven't seen this in a while, it's a perfect moment to re-visit Henson's 1966 short film Time Piece. Brilliant, anti-authoritarian, and not a single muppet. Enjoy.

Hans Bellmer

Today is the birthday of Hans Bellmer, born March 13, 1902. Bellmer was born in Kattowitz, Germany and at his father's insistence worked in a steel factory and a coal mine until entering Berlin Polytechnic to study engineering. While in Berlin Bellmer met the artists John Heartfield, Rudolf Schlichter and George Grosz and their friendship and inspiration led him to drop out of college in 1924 to work as a book printer and then as a commercial illustrator.

In 1933, as the Nazi party assumed power, Bellmer resigned his position and refused to continue working as a sign of resistance. He began to construct deliberately provocative sculptures using girlish three-dimensional dolls, which he photographed in erotic poses. Some of these works were published by Bellmer at his own expense in 1934, and others appeared in the Surrealist journal "Le Minotaure," signaling a long association with the European surrealists. In 1938 Bellmer fled Germany for Paris and on the outbreak of the second world war was interned with Max Ernst in a camp near Aix-en-Provence. On being discharged from the camp in 1941, Bellmer renounced his German nationality and fled to Castres. In 1943 Bellmer had his first one-man show at the "Librairie Trentin", a bookshop in Toulouse. It was followed by numerous international Surrealist group shows.

Over the course of his career Bellmer continually explored the subconscious aspect of sexuality by creating hallucinatory sculptural objects, photographs, drawings, prints and paintings. Bellmer never stopped creating evocative and arguably obscene images with which he expressed a rebellion against society, conventional rationality and the dangerously conformist times and places in which he lived.

Hans Bellmer died in Paris in February 1975.

A show of his work is on display in Los Angeles at Galerie Anais through March 31.

Hobo Grunt

Puppeteer Kevin Augustine is a brutal and poetic puppeteer who's New York-based company, Lone Wolf Tribe, has won all manner of accolades for their blend of puppets and actors, and for their uncompromising look at difficult subject matter. His current show, Hobo Grunt Cycle, looks at the trauma of damaged war veterans through the experience of a severely injured fight-ring pit bull.

Written and developed by Augustine, the show is touring with a traveling cast that includes one of Seattle's most beloved and most wayward puppeteers Adam Ende. The show has already passed through festivals in Holland and Brazil, won a prestigious UNIMA Award for Excellence in Puppet Theatre, and now lands in San Francisco for a 3 week run at the EXIT Theatre. The show opens tonight, February 17, and runs through March 5. Tickets availablehere.

Time Based Puppets

The Time Based Art Festival gets under way on September 9th in Portland, with dozens of one-off and one-of-a-kind music and art performances from the likes of Rufus Wainwright, The Wooster Group and Charles Atlas. The full schedule is here, and Redefine Magazine is sifting through some of the more compelling acts here.

The opening night show features the experimental shadow puppet collective Night Shade collaborating with art-rocking skatepunkers Japanther. The haunted world of underground rock-n-roll puppet shows gets hauled out of dingy New York basements and onto the stage at the Old Washington High School Auditorium at 531 SE 14th Ave. The show starts at 10:30 pm and admission is free.

You can buy tickets for other festival events here.

Mr. Weekend

Seattle artist Mike Simi has been creating weirder and weirder installations since graduating with an MFA from the UW back in 2007. His public work has included the "Beef Stew Monster," a blue-eyed mechanical creature made of meat that reacted in different ways to viewers, and "Nightmoves," a circle of a dozen mechanical people hidden in dark clothing, lumbering through a space as if lost.

His most recent work is Mr. Weekend, a 15-foot tall interactive robotic sock puppet. More about Mr. Weekend, including a video on the making of the puppet, here.

Frankenocchio

Seattle's Monkey Wrench Puppet Labs once again bring the extraordinary puppet show "Frankenocchio" back from the dead, this time under the direction of puppet master Brian Kooser, the hard-working madman recently responsible for "Bloody Henry" and "Dracula: A Case Study."

The show opens a window on a fever vision of a decrepit circus populated by drunk clowns, has-been fortune tellers, pinheads and geeks. Into the midst of this depravity falls the angel Frank, who brings a stark and shining light into the darkness. It's a wild show, full of terror and beauty, and filled with some of the most beautiful puppetry you will ever see. The show features live music by God's Favorite Beefcake, three members of the now defunct Circus Contraption band.

Frankenocchio shows at the Lee Center for the Arts, 901 12th Ave., on the Seattle University Campus. Opens August 12 and runs through September 4, 2010. Tickets are available here.

Hippo Update

A quick update to let you know that Andrew Kim's splendid hippo puppet, built over a four-wheeled tall bike frame, is done. The puppet debuted in Hebden Bridge as part of the Big Green Weekend celebration. I blogged the hippo as a work in progress here. You can see more photos of the creature around here. And learn more about Andrew's work and scheduled appearances here.

Hippochondriac

Andrew Kim, who was once of Seattle's most ingenious puppeteers, left our shores some time ago to ply his trade (and try his luck) in Northern England. Andrew's been getting steady work since then, and his most recent piece is this very attractive and mobile hippopotamus with a puppet stage inside. The hippo's interior structure is built around a tall bike frame, giving the puppeteer amazing control of the creature as well as a bird's eye view of the landscape. As I said, ingenious. Kim, his hippo, and his theatre troupe "Thingumajig" will be touring the English landscape this summer. The full show schedule is here.

Pulling Strings

Two unusual and potent puppet shows currently playing in Seattle, from two of the last great puppeteers still creating work in this town.

Bloody Henry is Brian Kooser's gorgeous and gory take on the life and wives of King Henry VIII. Billed as a "hysterically accurate" puppet show about history's favorite misogynist mass murdering monarch, the design of the entire show is extraordinary, the puppets are exquisite, and the story is alternately uproarious and stomach churning. At Seattle University's Lee Center for the Arts through Oct 24.

Playwright Scot Auguston, in his perennial guise of "Sgt. Rigsby," is leading his troupe of voice actors through another riotous adventure of "Sgt. Rigsby's Amazing Silhouettes." For more than 10 years, Auguston and his remarkably consistent crew have come together periodically to create dementedly clever shadow puppet shows. The latest show, "Teensploitation," is a brave and bawdy coming-of-age story described as a unhealthy mixture of Judy Blume and R. Crumb, featuring new tingly feelings, horrifying physical changes and a singing chicken. At Theater Off Jackson until October 31.

Mysterious Gifts

A guest post from my friend Brooke.
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I work at the Seattle Children's Theater, and I don't normally try to push our productions on my friends and family, and usually don't feel like I need to. SCT is a jewel, and anyone who knows anything about the arts in our city knows that.

However, I really wanted to make sure that everyone knows about the show that we are currently putting on. Mysterious Gifts: Theatre of Iran is part of a project titled Connecting Stories which is an international collaboration of artists creating theatre for young audiences from the United States, the Netherlands, and Iran. Each country has committed to hosting a performance for four consecutive years from 2009 to 2012. The SCT show is the very first performance in this series, and Iranian artist Yaser Khaseb has created such a beautiful show of puppets and movement. After just two weeks here, the show will travel to Tempe and Minneapolis, and the Iranian theater company will have a chance to connect with artists and production staff at each theater. The performance is simply stellar, the whole Connecting Stories project is powerful in so many ways, especially in that it is giving people an opportunity to see the Iranian culture in a brand new positive light.

During opening night of the show this past Friday, the audience, myself included, was captivated. What these artists are sharing is truly something special and unique. Our friends from Iran are only here for a short 4 weeks before they must return home, and the show runs only 2 of those weeks. I am telling you now, you do not want to miss it. It is truly amazing.

Bloody Henry

Seattle puppeteer Brian Kooser is currently in London, researching locations, costumes and period language for his upcoming epic "Bloody Henry," a puppet show "wildly based" on the life and times of King Henry VIII. Kooser has working steadily on his craft for years - through his journeyman efforts with Thistle Theatre, his group work with Monkey Wrench Puppet Lab, and his turns as the creator-in-chief of Frankenocchio and Dracula: A Case Study. Still, puppets have a hard time reaching a mainstream audience and Kooser's increasingly excellent work has garnered a cult following but has otherwise been ignored by local audiences and media. Bloody Henry may well be Kooser's breakthrough. The show has been awarded funding from the Seattle Arts Commission and Artists Trust, and Kooser has been laboring on the production all year as an Artist in Residence at Seattle University. Bloody Henry opens at SU's Lee Center on September 24, and Kooser will be showing selections from the work in progress at the Frye Art Museum on July 30th.

Free Puppet Show

What an outrageously beautiful weekend in Seattle. Probably the best "start of summer" weekend most of have ever experienced in this town. It bodes very well for the months to come.

Amongst the hundreds of things going on this weekend was the opening for The Puppet Show exhibit at the Frye. I missed it for the sunshine, but first cloudy day this week I'm there. It sounds to be an absolutely flabbergasting exhibit by some of the world's most respected contemporary artists - (Louise Bourgeois, William Kentridge, Bruce Nauman, Kara Walker, Dennis Oppenheim, Kiki Smith, Annette Messager and Survival Research Laboratories among other equally impressive names) - all of whom were specifically invited to exhibit their work with puppets, some of which was created specifically for this show. The Frye didn't organize this exhibition — it is the fifth stop of a traveling show curated by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia — but it seems a particularly good fit for the Frye's sharp and uncommon focus on representational art. Jen Graves at the Stranger says "The Puppet Show...is one of those shows you can disappear down into, and at every level down you go, you will get something more. ...It's the oldest question—which parts of us do we control and which parts belong to systems that pull our strings?—asked another way. And what if we know about the strings? What then?" All together, there is work by some 30 artists on display, with over seven hours worth of video.

The show runs Tuesdays through Sundays until Sept. 13. The Frye has also programmed several complementary events, including an adult puppet cabaret hosted by local puppeteer Brian Kooser on June 30th, and a rare screening of The Music of Regret starring Meryl Streep and a dozen ventriloquist dummies on August 16. As always at the Frye Art Museum, admission is free.

Els Putxinellis

La Puntual is the only theatre in Barcelona dedicated exclusively to puppetry, aka "putxinellis." The tiny theatre, "a performance space made-to-measure for puppets, marionettes, shadows and any other subjects that let themselves be manipulated" was built by Catalan puppet master Eugenio Navarro in 2005. The restored space had been the workshop and rehearsal room of the renowned Barcelona puppet company La Fanfarra, and was renamed in honor of the emblematic Catalan modernist play "L’Auca del Senyor Esteve" which is centered around a haberdashery shop called La Puntual, located very near the actual theatre in the Santa Catalina neighborhood.

La Puntual is currently in the midst of their annual Winter Puppet Festival, taking place until January 4. In addition to 4 charming shows for families, the Winter Festival features a short series of shows and talks by English puppeteer Rod Burnett, regarded as one of the world's leading Punch and Judy performers. That's the way to do it!

A Terrible Sadness

My friend Douglas Paasch died suddenly on Saturday. His most recent show, the Wizard of Oz, had opened the day before at the Seattle Children's Theatre.

Doug was Seattle's best puppeteer, bar none, as well as a hugely imaginative thinker, a giving friend, and a total sweetheart of a man. I worked with him on a whole mess of shows, and saw and admired his work in many more. He was one of the very first puppeteers to commit to being part of Drunk Puppet Night, way back in 1998, and I always believed that Doug lent that whole crazy enterprise a dose of beauty and professionalism that it otherwise would never have deserved.

The most beautiful puppet show I ever saw was Doug's adaptation of dozens of Paul Klee paintings into a living, breathing piece of theatre. I believe Doug was extra proud of that one too, but day in and day out for 20 years or more Doug made gorgeous objects and brought them to life. He was a beautiful man and his loss will be sorely felt by the many people who loved him, by the hundreds who worked with him, and by the many thousands of theatre goers who were captivated by his work without ever knowing his name.

Look! Up in the Sky!

Beginning this Thursday, the talented madmen at Monkey Wrench Puppet Lab present their newest fever dream, "UFO the Puppet Show." The twisted puppeteers, who regularly stage Drunk Puppet Night and recently created the epic "Dracula: A Case Study," now tell the tale of what really went down at Roswell Airforce Base, and what it means for mankind. Apparently it involves Nazi scientists, Bess Truman, and a certain Austrian body-builder turned politician.

The show opens tomorrow, Thursday, Oct. 9, and runs Thursday, Friday & Saturday nights until Nov. 8. At the Theatre off Jackson, in the heart of the International District. Tickets are available here. MWPL are the only local theatre group really exploring the strange and beautiful world of puppetry, and their shows are always worth checking out.

Teatro Mexicano en Ruedas

Teatro UNAM is a mobile theater company based in Mexico City. They travel with a specially engineered trailer that transforms into a full stage complete with props, puppets, wardrobe, the works. The company roams throughout Mexico, and at each stop they set up the stage and perform, often in rural areas of the country where stage drama is rarely seen, if ever. This video shows one such transformation, in a high school in Mexico City, for a performance of J.M. Synge's "The Playboy of the Western World," under the direction of Alonso Ruizpalacios.