Missionary Position—Pleasure Journeys for the Intrepid Lady Explorer, Dec. 12 - 14, 2013

Missionary Position
Pleasure Journeys for the Intrepid Lady Explorer 

ONE WEEKEND ONLY!! DECEMBER 12-14TH 8 p.m.
Salvage Vanguard Theatre, 2803 Manor Rd. - click for map
$10 tickets available for limited presale!

Salvage Vanguard presents the first in a series of faux lecture tours featuring renowned Victorian Lady Scientist Amelia Wetherbeaten (Caroline Reck) and Intrepid Lady Explorer Eleanor Dangerbottom, (Cami Alys). These daring ladies have traveled to the nether creases of the earth and run their voluminous skirt hems over the dusty bottoms of creation. They are here for a limited time to set you straight on what you thought you didn't think you needed to know.
Series One features the Acting talents of Noel Gaulin & Jay Byrd, Puppetry from Mr. Hopkins, Lighting by Natalie George, Sound by Eliot Haynes, Stage Management by Dallas Tate.

CHARLOTTE'S WEB, based on the E.B. White novel, Scottish Rite Theatre, July 6 - August 3, 2013

[207 W. 18th St. at Lavaca -- click for map]

presents

July 6 - August 3, 2013

Saturdays at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.

Sundays at 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m.

Scottish Rite Theatre - click for map

The beloved childhood classic, based on the book by E.B. White and re-imagined by acclaimed director Jenny Larson, is a play that will enchant audiences with a story of loyalty and friendship.

Wilbur, an affectionate and spirited pig, is valiantly saved by a young girl named Fern from a deadly fate. But after being sent away to live on the Zuckerman farm, Wilbur finds it difficult to adjust without Fern. Wilbur soon befriends some local farm animals, including a kindhearted and clever spider named Charlotte. Unbeknownst to Wilbur, he is being well fed to meet his tragic fate. In an effort to save Wilbur's life, Charlotte weaves a plan with the help of an unlikely character.

This new adaptation captures a warmhearted tale with the help of live music arranged by Emily Marks, captivating puppetry designed by Caroline Reck, video projections by Chris Hatcher, and a stellar cast.
(Click to return to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Photos by Stephen Pruitt for The Cruel Circus by Connor Hopkins, Trouble Puppet Theatre Company at the Salvage Vanguard, May 8 - 25, 2013

Performance photos by Stephen Pruitt for the








production of

The Cruel Circus
by Connor Hopkins
May 9–May 25, 2013 (8 pm Thursdays – Saturdays, 6pm Sundays.)
Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road, Austin, TX 78722 - click for map
Arrive early (at least 15 min. before showtime) for preshow music by Cami Alys!

Tickets: $10-$20 at at the door or on-line via

(photo: Stephen Pruitt)

(photo: Stephen Pruitt)

 Frankenstein meets the island of misfit toys . . . and goes to the circus. A mysterious tinkerer brings to life an entire world of strange circus performers — some polished and complete, some clumsy and misshapen — then disappears, leaving them to make sense of who they are and what they are made for.

A new work of dark whimsy from the company who brought Austin award-winning productions of The Jungle, Frankenstein, Riddley Walker, and most recently, Toil & Trouble. Trouble Puppet deploys bunraku-style tabletop puppets to create graceful, lifelike, compelling drama for adults. This production features beautiful, complex puppets of remarkable design, by Connor Hopkins. Come see the handwalker, unicyclist, lion-tamer, acrobats, human cannonball, and fuselier!


Click to view additional performance photos by Stephen Pruitt at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Opinion: Caroline Reck on Austin's 'New Puppet Revolution,' Howlround.com, April 15, 2013

Published at

The Austin Puppet Revolution

Caroline Reck

April 15, 2013

Caroline Reck (photo via CreativeAction.org)

 

I was invited to write this entry about the response of Austin audiences to the “New Puppet Revolution.” Each word in this phrase makes me smile: “new,” because Austin is such a nourishing environment for new theater, “puppet,” because puppet theater (particularly shows geared toward adult audiences) is killin’ it in Austin these days, and “revolution,” because puppets have been aiding and abetting revolutions since people first started moving objects around. Put the whole phrase together, and I’m suddenly thinking about time, objects, and anarchy: a great crossroads to talk about puppets.

Mention puppetry to most people, and the image conjured up is of a creature, perhaps made of felt, probably adorable, with a moving mouth that’s talking to you (or your child), most likely through a television screen. There is really great puppetry like this in America—with the extraordinary Jim Henson Company topping the list. There is also a lot of other puppet work being made that looks nothing like this, and for some reason that is baffling puppeteers in caves and attics across America, audiences are starting to take notice.

Puppetry is a diverse and ancient art form. I won’t get specific on the timeline, but sometime between developing opposable thumbs and the invention of broadcast television, people began animating objects and giving them soul, voice, and intention. These objects have served as great entertainment and meaningful ritual to people young and old for a really long time. Then, very recently, the world industrialized and certain children in lucky nations weren’t an obligatory part of the workforce anymore. Someone noticed that bored children get into mischief, and started gearing puppets shows toward the little ones. Meanwhile, collective common memory in this country forgot that puppets are for grown-ups, too.

Austin audiences like to be presented with new ideas, and to be presented with old ideas wrought in a new way, and they like how puppetry can do both. Glass Half Full and Trouble Puppet both consistently sell out shows, and both make a majority of their income from ticket sales.

Puppetry is a rigorous art form that uses movement, timing, spatial relativity, scale, breath, and gravity to create a sense of visceral recognition in the gut of the audience. Puppets can simply do and be more than humans. They can be beasts and spirits, inanimate forms made animate, ideas made manifest. They make use of scale in a way humans cannot; they can be large in one scene and tiny in the next, which effectively changes the dimensions of the stage. Puppets can fly, breathe underwater, grow onstage; they can vanish. They can be publicly incinerated, internally lit, transparent, and show that they have “no heart” by literally carving out the absence of a heart in their figure. They make costume changes in a flash (two different identical puppets). They evade the stereotypes of the traditional actor. A tiny female puppeteer can perform a giant puppet; an aging puppeteer can play a young hero. They are a democratic, constantly evolving, revolutionary art form that can take many shapes and forms and tell stories that are whimsical, or demonic, or profound.

So there is really nothing new about puppet revolution. But the recent popular response to the puppeteer’s ongoing revolution feels new. The popularity of puppets on Broadway (Lion King, Avenue Q, War Horse) nudged people to find out what else is out there. The puppet has a special relationship with the audience. We know, intellectually, that the puppet is an object. Yet seeing an object repudiate everything our intellect knows to be true, by moving, feeling, being, invites the audience to take that extra step toward believing. Part of the work of puppetry happens in the audience, when they lend their collective imagination to the scene; when the mind’s eye erases the marionette’s string, fades out the tabletop manipulator’s body, and ignores the arm rod sticking from the elbow of the puppet. The audience is uniquely implicated in the energetic triangle between audience, puppeteer, and puppet. They are viscerally involved, part of the magic, moved to laughter and tears.


I’m the Creative Director of a little company called Glass Half Full Theatre, which was founded in France in 2004. We relocated to Austin in 2010, and have had great audiences and critical response to our original, puppet-based work since we arrived. This is in part because Austin audiences are open-minded; they are happy come to see what they’ve never seen before. It’s also because the other puppeteers beat down the path to adult audience in Austin before we got here.

Click 'Read more' to continue at AustinLiveTheatre.com or click HERE to go to the article at www.howlround.com

Adam Sultan by Steve Moore and Zeb L. West, Physical Plant Theare, March 28 - April 13, 2013

(poster design: Jennymarie Jemison)

by Dr. David Glen Robinson


For the committed theatergoer, this was a long-awaited premiere. The blended live-action and puppet play previewed at the 2012 Fusebox Festival. The preview tantalized audiences with its potential for taking many different directions.


The premiere at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre on March 28 satisfied our aroused curiosity with a long sequence of wise story choices. They took us through some surprising ways yet never strayed from its emotional heart. Sure, it was about death, and innovative puppetry sustained all its moods and action; at the same time the production remained light, humor-filled and entertaining. 
 A demanding ticket buyer couldn’t ask for much more.


The play follows the character of Adam Sultan, played by the artist Adam Sultan, through to the far distant future of A.D. 2052 (not quite forty years from now). 

 Aged and infirm, Sultan sees and feels the loss of his artist friends all around him. Seemingly despairing, he collects mementos of their lives and seals those objects into glass jars. His bookshelf fills with the jars. Then one day a half-scale doppelganger puppet enters his apartment, drinks heavily and passes out. Sultan doesn’t know what to make of it; he never does know what to make of it. What’s sure is only that from this point forward puppets carry equal weight with human actors in conveying the story and its meanings.

(photo: Physical Plant Theatre)

The Physical Plant team of Steve Moore and Zeb L. West wrote and crafted the show. In addition to makiing unerring choices in a mature story revolving around death, they incorporated advanced concepts of new puppetry that took Adam Sultan to the edge of theatre and puppetry. 

Completely black-garbed puppeteers were visible onstage. In conventional theatre, anyone wearing black is a technician and therefore invisible in the sense of operating the play and not figuring in the scripted action; technicians are merely making it happen.


The Adam Sultan puppeteers pushed this envelope or bent this frame in several ways. First and most fundamentally, the puppeteers manipulated and changed the human actors throughout the play; they did so subtly and tellingly when they reshaped the postures and stances of the living to reflect advancing age, as for example in the touching moment when they placed wedding rings on the fingers of the lead characters. In addition, the puppeteers removed their black headgear to speak narrative voice-overs at a microphone stand at stage left. With this, the audience no longer held the puppeteers comfortably framed in invisibility as helpers for the story. Attention, audience: they might do other things, so be ready.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

THE CRUEL CIRCUS, Trouble Puppet Theatre Company at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre, May 2 - 25, 2013

[workshopping and performing at Salvage Vanguard Theatre, 2803 Manor Rd. -- click for map]

presents an original play:

The Cruel Circus
written and directed by Connor Hopkins

May 9 - 25, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 6 p.m.

 A mysterious tinkerer brings to life an entire world of strange circus performers some polished and complete, some clumsy and misshapen then disappears, leaving them to make sense of who they are and what they are made for.

A new work of dark whimsy from the company who brought Austin award-winning productions of The Jungle, Frankenstein, Riddley Walker, and most recently, Toil & Trouble.

Featuring performances by Zac Crofford, Travis Bedard, Seth White, Rob Jacques, Jose Villarreal, Gricelda Silva, Ellie McBride, Caroline Reck, and Brock England

Preshow music by Cami Alys; Music by Justin Sherburn; Sound Design by K. Eliot Haynes and Bernard Klinke; Lighting Design by Stephen Pruitt; Costume Design by Monica Gibson (with Lucie Cunningham)

ASL interpretation available for selected performances by Parker Dority and Shelby Mitchusson.

Made for adults. But children 10 and up, accompanied by adults, are welcome.
Tickets: Sliding scale, $10 - $50, available now through





(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Video by Dannie Snyder: Rehearsing Once There Were Six Seasons, Glass Half Full Theatre workshop running February 21 - March 3, 2013

A video by Dannie Snyder and LIV Creations for






and its upcoming workshop production of environmental puppetry

 

 

Once There Were Six Seasons 

Feb. 21^st – March 3^rd. Thursdays-Saturdays @ 8 PM, Sundays @ 6 PM.

 

Salvage Vanguard Theatre, 2803 E. Manor Road, Austin, TX, 78722 - click for map  

Tickets: Sliding scale $12-$20. 
Pay-what-you-can: Sunday February 24^th. 
Some ASL interpreted performances (see ticketing site for details). 
The two-weekend workshop performance will include opportunities for audience feedback and interaction, including talkbacks hosted by Rudy Ramirez and In.gredients.



Once There Were Six Seasons from LIV creations on Vimeo.

Glass Half Full Theatre presents a workshop production of Once There Were Six Seasons, an original work of environmental puppetry. Puppeteers manipulate vast miniature landscapes to address the impact of climate change on subsistence societies around the world. From the Arctic to the Philippines to the high plains of Texas, this work highlights how the accelerating pace of human-caused climate change has outstripped the ability of traditional cultures to adapt their lifestyles. From B. Iden Payne award-winning director and writer Caroline Reck, with an award winning cast of puppeteer/performers: Connor Hopkins, Rommel Sulit, Noel Gaulin, Gricelda Silva, and Parker Dority, and award-wining designers Eliot Haynes and Stephen Pruitt.

THE ECO-TOPOGRAPHIC HANDMADE BIKINI FASHION SHOW fundraiser, Glass Half Full Theatre at the Fort, February 9, 2013

presents

The Eco-topographic Handmade Bikini Fashion Show

Launch party for Glass Half Full Theatre’s 2013 season

Feb. 9th Doors at 8PM; Show at 9PM

at The Fort: 301 Chicon St. Unit G, Austin, TX 78722 (click for map)

Tickets at the Door: Sliding Scale $10 - $20

FOR MORE INFORMATION call 347 907 5428, visit www.glasshalffulltheatre.com, or email caroline@glasshalffulltheatre.com

Glass Half Full Theatre, which features Puppetry & Physical Theatre of Objects and Ideas, based on the theatrical training of Jacques Lecoq, is organizing its annual fundraising party. A handful of East Austin Theater's most creative designers have built bikinis/ frocks that represent the disappearing ecosystems and will model them at our party/ fashion show. One guest designer spot remains open for the wildest walk-up invention of the night.

Check out Griffon Ramsey's footage from last year’s Post-Apocalyptic Handmade Bikini Fashion Show on YouTube: The Fort Show 3.

 





Hosted by Kelly Hasandras. Artist/ models include Adam Sultan, Griffon Ramsey, Benjamin Taylor Ridgeway, Jennymarie Jeminson, Kelli Bland, Annie Bradley-McCall, Noel Caulin, Clint Hofmeister, Adrienne Mischler, Pam Fletcher Friday, Lucie Cunningham, Rachel Dendy, Gricelda Silva, Sophi Hopkins, Dannie Synder & Caroline Reck.


This party is a preproduction event for Glass Half Full Theatre’s upcoming workshop production of Once There Were Six Seasons, opening February 21st. Enjoy drinks, music, & snacks while getting a sneak peek at elements featured in the wildly inventive original work of environmental puppetry and physical theatre from the award-winning company that brought you The Orchid Flotilla and FupDuck.

2012-2013 Season of Puppetry and Performance, Glass Half Full Theatre

celebrates its 13 B. Iden Payne Award nominations this year, with double nods in Comedy and Drama to both FupDuck and The Orchid Flotilla for Production, Acting, Script, Score, and Puppetry, as well as Direction for FupDuck and Sound & Scenic Design for Orchid

and announces its 2013 season:


Once There Were Six Seasons

February 2013 @ Salvage Vanguard

This new work uses puppetry and physical theatre to addresses the impact of climate change on traditional farming societies around the world. This project will show, through puppetry, narrative and imagery, how farming systems used for hundreds of years across the globe have been drastically affected by the rapidly changing global climate, and how communities and families are undone when their cultures are irrevocably altered by these external environmental changes. Tiny puppet figures exist in vast spaces onstage, and visible puppeteers move the figures through a changing environmental landscape. Emphasis is placed on the shifting landscapes around the puppets, and on the puppeteers’ role as the “cause” of those changes. There will be lots of sand and water. Featuring the performance and design work of Ia Instera, Eliot Haynes, Connor Hopkins, Rommel Sulit, Gricelda Silva, Parker Dority, Noel Gaulin and Caroline Reck.



The fourth Austin Puppet Incident

an evening of short works of puppetry from a variety of local and visiting artists
June 2013 @ Salvage Vanguard 

The Austin Puppet Incident is a joint creation of Glass Half Full Theatre and Trouble Puppet Theater Company, with the goal of highlighting short works of puppetry for adults, we encourage artists to participate in our reciprocal model, in which artists work with and for each other in a variety of pieces. 



The Boston/Austin Project

December 2013 at the Salvage Vanguard (Austin) and at the Charlestown Working Theater (Boston) 
 

A physical theatre performance crafted and devised by Caroline Reck and guest artist Bonnie Duncan, whose Poste Restante won the Austin Critics' Table award for Outstanding Touring Show. Bonnie and Caroline met in 2008 at the National Puppetry Conference, and are crafting their performance via Pintrest*, phone calls, and residencies. They got tired of their cohorts saying, "You two have a similar vision. You should work together." So now they are. Find it on Pintrest as "The Show We Will one Day Make Together."

Upcoming: Fup Duck, Glass Half Full Theatre and the White Ghost Shivers, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, August 10 - 25

presents

FupDuck

Tabletop Puppetry and Live Americana Music

adapted and directed by Caroline Reck and accompanied by the White Ghost Shivers

August 10th -25, Thursdays-Saturdays 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m., plus a 3 p.m. matinee on August 25

Salvage Vanguard Theatre, 2803 E. Manor Road, Austin, TX, 78722 (click for map)

Tickets: $8 children/ $12-$25 adults via

(http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/256690)

[*3PM Matinees will feature gentler language for parents who don’t want to expose their children to a foul-mouthed old geezer of a puppet. Family-Friendly matinee shows recommended for children ages 8 and up.]

Granddaddy Jake is a foul-mouthed, back-woods octogenarian who receives unexpected custody of his grandson Tiny, a child as gentle as Jake is cantankerous. Fup is their ornery twenty-pound duck, who embodies both chaos and heartfelt wisdom. The story explores this non-traditional family’s diverse obsessions, namely whiskey-brewing, fence-building, checkers, and an enthusiasm for sitting still. Granddaddy Jake's memories of his conversations with Johnny Seven Moons, the local Medicine Man, and Tiny and Fup's ongoing feud with the wild boar, Lockjaw, lead to a wry examination of what it means to live and how it is to die. 

Click to read Wayne Alan Brenner's comments in the Austin Chronicle of the production in March, 2010 ("Live music by the White Ghost Shivers made this puppet adaptation complete")

Click for additional information at AustinLiveTheatre.com

Upcoming: The Austin Puppet Incident, sponsored by Trouble Puppet and Glass Half Full, June 9

Trouble Puppet Theater Company

and

Glass Half Full Theatre Company

present

the Austin Puppet Incident

an evening of short puppet works from a variety of Austin-based puppet artists

June 9 @ 8 pm & 10 pm

at The Fort, 301 Chicon Street, Austin, TX, 78702 (click for map)

Tickets $10 General Admission/ $8 Student or senior.

www.brownpapertickets.com 

Glass Half Full Theatre and Trouble Puppet Theater Company bring you the third Austin Puppet Incident, featuring short puppet acts for adults in a variety of styles, from time-based puppet installation to Taiwanese Fighting Puppets performing martial arts.

For this summer’s Incident, we’ve relocated to the Fort, an indoor/outdoor arts venue. Short puppet pieces will be performed all over the Fort, from the backyard stage to under the kitchen sink. Two Showings. One Night Only!  

The Austin Puppet Incident is a joint creation of Glass Half Full Theatre and Trouble Puppet Theater Company to highlight short works of puppetry for adults on the Austin stage. We encourage artists to participate in our reciprocal model, in which artists work with and for each other in a variety of pieces. This Incident will showcase local performers. The Incident is funded by a grant from the Puppet Slam Network.      

Glass Half Full Theatre creates puppetry and physical theatre of objects and ideas, devising visually driven narratives inspired by issues that concern humans across the globe. Our goal is to share stories that are generous, not only in their core content and narratives, but in their deeper invitations: to imagine, to participate, to question, and to strive for meaning. The company was formed in Paris, France in 2003 by a group of students from the Ecole Internationale de Theatre, Jacques Lecoq, and was based in Paris and Baltimore before settling in Austin, Texas in 2010.  Glass Half Full Theatre is a sponsored project of the Austin Creative Alliance and is funded in part by the Jim Henson Foundation and the Creative Fund. www.glasshalffulltheatre.com

Trouble Puppet Theater Company, recipient of such B. Iden Payne Awards as Outstanding Director of a Drama, Best Production of a Drama, Outstanding Original Script, and Outstanding Puppetry, is dedicated to the creation of outstanding works of puppet theater for grownups. Trouble Puppet was created in 2004 by Artistic Director Connor Hopkins and has in recent years been making trouble in shows such as Frankenstein: The Trouble Puppet Show, The Jungle, and Riddley Walker. Trouble Puppet is a sponsored project of Salvage Vanguard Theater and is supported in part by the city of Austin, the Jim Henson Foundation, and individual donors. www.troublepuppet.com

Upcoming Fundraiser: The Post Apocalyptic Handmade Bikini Fashion Show, Glass Half Full Theatre at The Fort, February 29

presents

The Post Apocalyptic Handmade Bikini Fashion Show

Launch party for Glass Half Full Theatre’s 2012 season

Wednesday, February 29th, 8-11pm

The Fort, 301 Chicon St. Unit G, Austin, TX 78722

Tickets at the Door: Sliding Scale $10 - $20 ($5 if you come in costume items made from recycled materials)

A handful of East Austin Theater's most creative designers will build outfits out of materials that could survive the apocalypse (rubber/plastic/non-food food items, etc), and model them at our party/ fashion show. One guest designer spot remains open for the wildest walk-up invention of the night.

This party is a preproduction event for Glass Half Full Theatre’s upcoming production The Orchid Flotilla. Enjoy drinks, music, & hors d’oeuvres while getting a sneak peek at scenic elements and found object shadow puppetry featured in the wildly inventive original work from the company that brought you FupDuck (2010), The Austin Puppet Incident (2011, and co-presented They Gotta Be Secret Agents Poste Restante (2011).

Glass Half Full Theatre features Puppetry & Physical Theatre of Objects and Ideas, based on the theatrical training of Jacques Lecoq.

Upcoming: The Orchard Flotilla by Caroline Reck and other pieces, Glass Half Full Theatre at Salvage Vanguard Theatre, March 23 - April 6

presents

The Orchid Flotilla:

Gestural Theater & Shadow Puppetry

Puppetry & Performance by Caroline Reck & Gricelda Silva
Found Object Shadow Puppetry & Costumes by Erin Meyer

March 23- April 6, performance times TBA

Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Rd. (click for map)

The flotilla is a tiny floating island of rubbish, adrift on a sea of blue plastic. Characters arise out of the depths in the form of human performers, manipulated objects, plastic junk masquerading as organic material, and human limbs manipulated as puppets. These characters are unified in their search for meaning in a solitary existence. From the depths of lonely imagination arises a sensual and poetic narrative about the transformative power of companionship and a witty examination of disposable packaging.

Original Sound & Music by Eliot Haynes & Adam Sultan
Scenic Design by Connor Hopkins -- Lights by Megan Reilly

History of the Production Inspired by a trip to the sinking Sunderban Islands in India and Bengladesh, work began in 2008 on The Orchid Flotilla. A gestural theatre and shadow puppetry performance, which also incorporates body puppetry, object manipulation, and live sound amplification, it explores several convergent themes: the human capacity to overcome ecological disaster; the transformative power of companionship (real or imagined); and the usefulness and uselessness of the manufactured objects we depend upon.

First presented in 2010 at Salisbury University for the International Association for Environmental Philosophy's conference "Geo-Aesthetics in the Anthropocene", The Orchid Flotilla is a deeply meditative piece, punctuated by humorous moments that acknowledge the universal struggle inherent in the human condition. The story unfolds over five "days" from sunrise to sunset and spans 13 years of the woman's life. During the "nighttime" sequences, shadow puppets and human shadows in the canopy of the flotilla reveal further details about the inner workings of the woman's mind, heart, memory, and hopes.

Click to view additional image at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

The Crapstall Street Boys, Trouble Puppet Theatre Company at SVT, 1/24-2/05

by Michael Meigs

Perhaps it's inherent to the art form, but I did have a moment of wondering whether we ought to be concerned about our Connor.

The Crapstall Street Boys is captivating puppetry and story telling, as is always the case with the Trouble Puppet Theatre Company, a crew of talented and devoted colleagues and acolytes who've gathered around Connor Hopkins. This time the approach is announced as "Czech puppetry" -- small articulated figures at the end of a long rigid wand. The characters are anything but stiff, for with the deft and delicate handling of that single attachment, TP members achieve convincing body English and even give those glassy little eyes a hint of emotion. Or, often, a suggestion of wonder, sometimes one of bewilderment.

The presentation of this fable imagined by our Connor takes place on a lengthy table provided with folding cut-out scenery constructed on the scale of the tiny boys. Hopkins puts a narrator into the piece to assist the puppeteers. Steve Moore sits at stage right in a comfortable chair with a large book before him, setting the scene and explaining some of the action as it occurs. Connor, Caroline Reck, Rob Jacques and Lucie Cunningham move a number of tiny folk through the story -- the protagonist, addressed only as "You, lad!" and his dull-witted and venial parents, a factory owner who buys young boys for a mysterious assembly line, a dog and a chicken, a couple of ravening monsters that sail in as hand puppets to gobble the unwary, and the boys of the factory at Crapstall Street.

The table action is quick and menacing, presenting a grim dog-eat-dog story -- almost literally -- as YouLad is cast into subhuman circumstances similar to the pitiless meat processing lines depicted so vividly by the company in their adaptaion of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. In the miserably exploited work team YouLad makes a friend, the equally lost young fellow named Little Pig who counsels him how to survive. One by one, while struggling frantically for food, young workers disappear and the monsters are afoot.

Erin Meyer is assigned a puppetcam. She follows the action at times and grainy black-and-white images appear on a screen high behind the puppeteers. The duality between puppet action and video action is disconcerting, perhaps deliberately so. The video presentation was intermittent and somewhat erratic; whether that was deliberate or due to equipment malfunction was unclear.

Crapstall Street is a grim place, friends, and the message is one of ceaseless, animal exploitation of man by man, children by parents, humankind by lurking evil. The medium is accomplished but the message is harrowing.

Has our Connor experienced unhappinesses that must be worked out through fable? Puppeteers are necessarily manipulators of their story-telling instruments, and perhaps that shapes a world view -- elsewhere, more commonly, a Howdy Doody happy freneticism, but here the a sophisticated, emphatic conviction that the characters embodied by these puppets are either powerless or brutal.

Perhaps we should sit Connor and friends down with their opening act, Darren Petersen the juggler, patter man, dog trainer and unicyclist of Circus Chickendog, who's as breezily upbeat as the TP piece is gloomy. That would make for some very entertaining group therapy. And for this FronteraFest Long Fringe production made of roughly equal parts of Chickendog and Crapstall, it would achieve an average mood of just about, "It's all right, mate!"

by Hannah Bisewski

As part of Austin’s 2012 Fronterafest Trouble Puppet Theatre Company stages performs a haunting nd unapologetically macabre piece at their home venue the Salvage Vanguard Theatre. The Crapstall Street Boys by TP leader Connor Hopkins tells the story of a factory employing boys, located in the heart of a town overrun by monsters. YouLad’s parents sell him to the factory in exchange for the money that will buy them a “monster masher” to protect themselves, and he starts to notice something strange happening around him. Some boys in the factory disappear;, others grow bigger and bigger.

The puppets in the show are dark, nearly grotesque, but appropriately so. In keeping with that style is the technique of using a small camera inserted shakily into scenes, projecting images in eerie night-vision blur onto the projection screen above the puppet set. A brisk, deep violin piece accompanies the more frenetic action of the puppets, and when it returns at the close of the show it hints at the eerie events that will continue to haunt the small village.

Narrated by Steve Moore as a sort of demented bedtime story, The Crapstall Street Boys inevitably reminds you of the more macabre fairy tales that colored your childhood. The sheer morbidity of The Crapstall Street Boys may remind you of how dark these stories really were. Maybe this particular fairytale isn’t much of a parody after all.

All in all, the show, directed and designed by Connor Hopkins, is a fine piece of puppet theatre and an excellent showing on Trouble Puppet’s part.

Review by Cate Blouke for the Stateman's Austin360.com Seeing Things blog, January 25

Comments by Elizabeth Cobbe for the Austin Chronicle, January 26 (215 words)

EXTRA

A message from Connor Hpopkins in the program leaflet:

Director's Note: If you've ever seen a Trouble Puppet show before, it will be quite clear to you what a departure from our usual form this one represents. A different sort of puppet, a different sort of story (although our traditional themes get in there: capitalism, cannibalism, corruption ... ), and a new technological tool in the live-feed camera traveling around onstage with the puppets: these all make this show a big experiment for us. So our hope is that what the show lacks in mastery and technique it makes up for in innovation, and, well, the puppets are real cute. Plus we've got Steve Moore. So how far wrong can you go, in that situation? I know, I shouldn't ask.

Anyway, thanks for coming out, and we hope you enjoy our stab at this style. Also, we're taking a poll: I originally conceived Crapstall as a kids' show. Having seen it, do you or do you not think this show could be a kids' show? I say yes; others say that would be a prosecutable act. Tell us what you think. And if it goes well, look for a more developed version sometime in the future. If it doesn't go well, let us never speak of this again

Click to view the program leaflet for The Crapstall Street Boys:

The Austin Puppet Incident, Trouble Puppet and Glass Half Full Theatre Companies, December 9 and 10

by Hannah Bisewski and Michael Meigs

Trouble Puppet Theatre Company's brand of inventive, challenging entertainment is so strong here in Austin that the company can fill up the Salvage Vanguard Theatre for two weekend nights with a miscellany from students at their puppetry workshop.

Artistic Director Connor Hopkins shared his workshop for a month with collaborator Caroline Reck of Glass Half Full Productions and her students. Mind you, there were few novices among them -- performers at the Austin Puppet Incident included animators from Trouble Puppet's earlier epic productions of Frankenstein, The Jungle and Riddley Walker, as well as other veterans, grizzled or not. (Hopkins himself, beginning to look like the Old Man of the Mountain with that voluminous beard, presented a short traditional Mr. Punch show).

Organizers kicked off the night with an hour of short puppet films selected from Heather Henson's collection of Handmade Puppet Dreams ("numbers 1,4, 8 and 14"). They constituted a kaleidoscope of fascinating variations on the puppetry medium, with subject matter ranging from nursery rhyme retellings to a comic science fiction homage. Thanks to selections made by Henson and by Hopkins every film offered quirky humor.

The nine scenes of live puppetry entertainment began with a fantastical piece The Miniaturist, adapted from the Millhauser novel In the Reign of Harad IV. To a narration recorded by Austin writer and performer Turk Pipkin, puppeteers working simultaneously in three formats enacted the tale of a mythical master craftsman who became so obsessed in creating miniaturized works of art that they were too small to see -- and eventually too small even for magnifying glasses. The eerie life-size figure of the craftsman appeared at stage right, animated by three puppeteers; stage center showed a shadowbox with silhouettes; at stage left, two marionettists gave life to characters no more than 18 inches tall. You can get a sense of it through a YouTube video posted by Trouble Puppet -- but only as through a glass darkly. In contrast,if you were sitting in the audience, your attention would b keenly fixed on each successive element of the story and the characters would loom enormous in your imagination.

The rest of the night’s scenettes ranged from the traditional (including Hopkins' very traditional Punch and Judy) to the experimental in several different forms. A different puppeteer conceived and elaborated each scene, with imaginative results. Some skits were half-human, half-puppet; others were of a developing form called “environmental puppetry,” pioneered by Reck, a style that aims to evoke the intricacy of the puppets’ environments rather than focusing on the puppets themselves. Concluding the magic hour were Bob's Hardware, an prosaic, appealing story of a man and his dog over a span of years as a small community is overwhelmed by franchises, and Arbor Day, a gleefully sardonic prosecution (perhaps persecution) of the traditional American Christmas tree. Connor Hopkins wearing a bristling, leafy headpiece as the sylvan prosecutor was an awesome sight.

Glass Half Full Theater and Trouble Puppet Theater Company are very Austin. Forget your notions of puppetry as entertainment for kids. These folks have serious, dramatic things to say. The toy-like appearance of their instruments tempts you to smile quietly at the absurdity of the make believe, but the accomplishment of their art provides a visual bliss of brilliant conceits and unpredictable movement.

ALT still owes these pioneers an essay on their epic Riddley Walker of last October, which for reasons beyond our control ALT caught only on closing night. If you missed these two evenings of the Austin Puppet Incident, you can still catch these innovators as they perform the new piece The Crapstall Street Boys four times at the FronteraFest (Januaury 24 - February 4). Otherwise you'll just have to hunker down and hold out for their Macbeth, scheduled for October 21 - November 18.

Upcoming: Hill Country Underbelly, a musical by Elizabeth Doss and Mark Stewart, Paper Chairs at the Vortex Yard, August 5 - 21

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Paper Chairs Announces Production of an Original Musical –

Hillcountry Underbelly: A Pilgrimage on the Outskirts

Book and Lyrics by Elizabeth Doss, Music by Mark Stewart

Thursdays – Sundays from August 5 to August 21 nightly at 8:30 p.m. (please note later start time) in The VORTEX yard (2307 Manor Rd. - click for map).

Tickets: Pay-What-You-Want Thursdays; Fridays-Sundays after that - $15.00 - $25.00 general seating. Advanced ticket purchase will be available through our website as of July 18, 2011 (www.paperchairs.com).

Paper Chairs excitedly announces its third production, Hillcountry Underbelly: A Pilgrimage on the Outskirts, written by Elizabeth Doss, with original music by Mark Stewart, directed by Dustin Wills and Keri Boyd.

Pa’s fall down a deathtrap rattles through the land like thunder. His ghost appears in limestone, prophesying a great flood will take the hillcountry by storm. His six surviving orphans must head to higher ground to elude their demise. Watch the pack aim to outrun and outsmart every obstacle on the outskirts in the fierce pursuit of life. How do you survive a flood when you’ve lost your roots? Paper Chairs will flood the VORTEX Yard and wash away a scorching August in an environmental production of this torrential tale. Holes, floods, tunes, dogs and buzzards abound. Prepare for a soaking.

Featuring performances by Robert Pierson as Pa (2011 Critic’s Table and 2010 B. Iden Payne Best Supporting Actor), Caroline Reck as the Theotokos, and Jacob Trussell, Emily Tindall, Noel Gaulin, Kelli Bland, Jenn Hartmann, and Mark Stewart as the orphans – oh, and musicians too.

Scenic design by Lisa Laratta (2010 Critic’s Table Best Scenic Design), costume design by Dustin Wills, projection design by Noel Gaulin and lighting design by Natalie George (2011 Critic’s Table Best Lighting Design).

Hillcountry Underbelly runs Thursdays – Sundays from August 5 to August 21 nightly at 8:30 p.m. (please note later start time) in The VORTEX yard (2307 Manor Rd.; Austin, Texas 78722). Tickets: Pay-What-You-Want Thursdays; Fridays-Sundays after that - $15.00 - $25.00 general seating. Advanced ticket purchase will be available through our website as of July 18, 2011 (www.paperchairs.com).

Hillcountry Underbelly will be presented in the VORTEX yard – we encourage folks to dress down! The Butterfly Bar will sell cooling refreshments and Paper Chairs will offer bug spray (if needed), fans, mist, general comfort and an outhouse – you can even bring your own chair if you don’t like ours.

Paper Chairs creates sensorially dynamic theatre combining fractured subjectivity, music, unconventional audience situation, surrealism and labor-intensive mechanics. We favor challenging texts that allow for a fusion of various performance styles, music genres, and historical periods to excite modern sensibilities and educate by suggesting past and present cultural connections. The work is outrageous, well-researched, and a little bit dangerous.

OUR KICKSTARTER SITE: www.kickstarter.com/projects/paperchairs/hillcountry-underbelly

A Most Unsettling and Possibly Haunted Evening in the Parlour of the Brothers Grimm, Hidden Room Theatre and Trouble Puppet Theatre, October 28-30

We had a lovely evening at the Hidden Room last weekend in the company of some of Austin's more whimsical and talented theatre artists. That impossibly long title might suggest more whimsy than one could stomach, but in fact the Evening in the Parlour of the Brothers Grimm was something of a Halloween valentine. Or more precisely, perhaps, a delicate, exciting dark chocolate delight, laced with spices and bitter almonds.

Sweet enough to make you giddy with the fetching, subtle taste of cyanide. . . .

Imagination was rife. This collaboration must have been a labor of love, done for three nights only. Guiding forces were Beth Burns of Hidden Theatre, that gifted refugee from Los Angeles who has become thoroughly Austin; the genial Robert Matney, so familiar in character roles in this town; puppet wizards Connor Hopkins, Caroline Reck and theTrouble Puppet team; musicians masked and led by Jennifer Davis, sorcerer of period music; and the slim, mysterious and exotic Djahari Clark, a bicoastal dancer who leads her own group Desert Sin.

Spectator participants gathered with their passwords at the historic Masonic building on West 7th Street. Those who know Austin theatre received a special shiver of anticipation when they realized that Bernadette Nason was the prim receptionist downstairs. Nason is a clever and personable actress in her own right -- her presence in the downstairs antechamber in itself promised astonishing events upstairs.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Object Theatre Workshop at Trouble Puppet Theatre Company, November 2 - December 7

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Object Theater Workshop!
Six Tuesdays, November 2 – December 7

Trouble Puppet kicks off its Working Artist Workshop Series, a six-session workshop series conducted by artist with specializations in the field of puppetry and related arts. The first workshop will be on Object Theater, facilitated by Caroline Reck, who directed FupDuck as the Visiting Guest Artist this year for Trouble Puppet.

The workshop will have a dual focus on manipulation technique and the dramaturgy of storytelling with objects, with particular attention paid to design choices and appropriate materials. Learn manipulation techniques, using everyday objects as your puppets, and use those objects as a medium for storytelling.

Useful for actors expanding their technique repertoire, designers looking for a new angle on materials, and theater-makers interested in storytelling technique. The workshop will culminate in a showing of short works.

Fall Workshop: Six Tuesdays, November 2 – December 7, 7 – 9pm at the Trouble Puppet workshop at Salvage Vanguard Theater. Priced with the working artist in mind at $30 for the entire six sessions. Please submit your completed application (attached) to carolinereck@yahoo.com. Questions? Contact: carolinereck@yahoo.com


Caroline Reck is a graduate of the Lecoq School of Physical Theatre in Paris, France and has an MFA in Theatre from Towson University’s program for self-producing theatre artists. A performer/ director and frequent collaborator on devised work, her background is in mime, object theatre and puppetry. She worked for two years in Europe with the Paris-based Sous Un Otre Angle, performing an object theatre version of The Musicians of Bremen, which won accolades at the Avignon Festival in France. Her company, Glass Half Full, is currently touring The FupDuck Project, a puppet show with live music, whiskey, and a duck; as well as The Orchid Flotilla, a solo puppetry and gestural performance about ecological disaster and the value of stuff.