This Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011 from 9pm (ish) – midnight (or later) at Akbar it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!
Project: Hand Puppets
$2 Processing fee, please
$4 Cosmopolitans! Come to where the flavor is!
These are very interesting little blank canvas puppets, they are not socks, but they have been sewn in a “sock style” shape, suitable for hand puppeting. All you have to do is design it, and boy am I excited to see what you come up with THIS WEEK! I’m going to put out the weird craft supplies, the stuff I just don’t know what to do with, the bizarre, the strange, the oddball craft supplies!
As a kid I used to make puppets and put on shows, and I remember making this blue dog out of styrofoam, felt and fur. I regarded this dog with a certain level of disdain, I thought “Well, this isn’t a real puppet, the ones I see on TV are real puppets, this thing falls apart too much when I fling it around, it’s not durable enough.” I was seven years old, and already a legend in my own mind and being very hard on myself about this blue dog puppet.
Fast forward years later to my job working for Jim Henson Productions, at Raleigh Studios, STAGE 6 (aka The Muppet Workshop) gazing at all the muppets and going “Oh my god, everything falls apart all the time!” If only my 7-year-old self had a team of puppet makers to fix every broken puppet I’d ever made growing up, then I would’ve probably been a calmer kid… or maybe a nightmare of a kid?!?
You should know that, while Muppets look great on the screen, they totally break down, lose eyeballs, have funky mechanisms that need adjustment, and they have duplicates. Yes! Duplicates! The constant care and detail in taking care of all the various Muppets in existence is extremely rigorous.
The point is, I want you to come in here and make puppets and know that they are real, and know that if you fling ’em around and make ’em eat cookies or answer the phone or chase people or spray alcohol on one and set it on fire: it will fall apart! And all you have to do is sew the hair back on, find another eyeball, put a different shirt on it, and it’ll be just fine. Make a puppet and you have a friend for life.
You can say things with puppets that cannot be said. While puppets are looked down upon for having masters who control them, the dynamic between puppet and puppeteer is far more complex. Puppets are ancient and powerful, it never fails to surprise me that even the most jaded or nervous individuals can be moved or fascinated by inanimate objects come to life. We humans are also rather ancient, and even though we are surrounded by all of our advanced technology, we still dig a bonfire and a talking sock once in awhile, it’s just natural.
I find such things reassuring in this day and age.
See you at the Craft Table!
JP Craft Captain
