Puppet Slam and a western Wayang

Last night was Puppet Slam night.  It's a great way to see a variety of very short works by skilled - though often amateur - performers.  The pieces are light and humorous - no deep meaning here- but the writing was clever and allowed puppeteers to try out new material in front of an audience.  Particularly noteworthy to my mind was magic tricks performed by a big hairy monster and a version of Peter and the Wolf that turned into a telenovela with a Lady Gaga wolf!

Today after a great workshop on creating character through mask, I lunched with a couple of college professors who were particularly interested in shadow puppetry.  Me too!  We went to a shadow puppet play about the Civil Rights Movement.  Michael Richardson of Red String Wayang Theatre, designs his puppets and has them cut out in Indonesia.  Then he paints them with watercolor himself.  He must have used 50 puppets in this play he put together with a drama teacher from a high school in Mississippi.  He admitted to us after the show that this was the debut performance!  He has had great difficulty getting anyone to book it. Even the Indonesian government refused to let him perform it there when the US promised to pay the bill.  They thought he'd stir up trouble in their country.  Shame because it was an inspiring piece - really three 20-minute plays with gorgeous puppets that he let us photograph afterwards.