The Nose: Group Project Puppet Update

A different tact has been taken for the puppet head construction. They will now be made using a clay mould covered in paper mache and then cut. This will make the heads lighter and easier to manipulate as well as giving them a more finished appearance whilst maintaining the translucence qualities of the earlier versions. The model above is my first attempt and I am calling him The Nose: a middle aged, grumpy, city banker type. I do not want to make the characters too specific but I think it is necessary for them to hint at a certain ‘stock type’ so they have a universal feel in contrast to the more three dimensional realism of Mr and Mrs North. I have been working on achieving a more realistic face structure and then adding exaggerations to the features, as I still want the puppet crowd to contain an air of the grotesque. I will hold several days of puppet making next week; a timetable is on the notice board.

Dostoevsky and the Cross Course Crit

Despite initial fears of a critical mauling, my cross course crit on Friday proved to be simultaneously enjoyable and beneficial. I decided to create a piece of performance to demonstrate the current position of my ideas rather than a ramble about them. I was concerned that this risk would not pay off and just confuse the Crit (ers) even more. I wrote a short play entitled Once More, with Feeling, which centred on a quote from Dostoevsky’s The Double. I sat with a mannequin and a tape machine having a conversation with myself with my trousers down. I will leave the description there but my intention was to play out some of the ideas that currently concern my practice.

The performance received a positive response. I think this was partly because there seems to rarely be performance in the fine art saturated MA studios, (something I hope myself and the other VLP students will change) but overall it seemed to offer something tangible for the group.

The crux of the feedback was that my work seemed to have moved beyond the doppelganger and posed more pertinent questions concerning the fundamental nature of humanism: what it is to be human. This theoretically extends my ideas into a philosophical field that I have been aware of yet cautious to visit, but I shall begin grappling with more challenging texts in preparation for my critical studies tutorial in a few weeks. At this stage I do not want to abandon my work and reading into the myth surrounding the double but look to incorporate it into the body of reading (and eventually writing) that will form my thesis.

Punctum Puppet Update…

Just a quick update of the latest puppet. It is intended to be one of the crowd, an old lady, consisting of a head, shoulders, and right arm (the chair is not part of it– unless we really want to hit the surreal). Kasia and I have been working together to try and perfect the style and overall feel of the puppet, to make her realistic but still located in the realm of the grotesque. I think we are almost there and I hope tomorrow proves just as productive as today. She is made with wire and thin paper so when we start playing with lighting we should be able to produce some workable shadows.

Pure Object Theatre

Fischli and Weiss: Flowers and Questions A Retrospective.

Showing at the Tate Modern Until 14th January 2007.

The delight of this exhibition can be found in Rooms 5 and 6. In room 5 there are a number of photographs depicting objects placed in humorous states of play with each other, as if caught out playing games with other or caught in the act of object copulation. The titles in turn add a surrealist twist that harks back to the ready-mades of Duchamp and the gang.

Yet this is just a prelude for what must be the amusing film I have ever seen in a gallery. The Way Things Go (1986 -7) is a product of the artists playing with objects as they set off an absurd chain reaction of events that combine chairs, tyres, balloons filled with acid, bars of corroding soap, tiny cars, kettles mounted on roller skates and all manner of inventive combinations of objects lasting for over thirty minutes. They manage to animate this array of inanimate objects with the tinniest force, liberating them from banality. This is no doubt a famous work that has been parodied (or stolen) by that Honda Ad but coming across it unexpectedly was the highlight of a thoroughly enjoyable retrospective. If only science lessons had been like this.

You can see a clip at this site:
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/the-way-of-things/

Metal Mrs North

click on the image to see the video

I have made a small wire puppet head for the character of Mrs North. I have been paying with lighting it from various angles and wanted to share the results in the form of a video. I think this could be the way forward for the puppet design. It seems to fit the overall style that is emerging and I like the idea of using various found objects like the glasses in it’s construction.

A new fire has been started deep down in the gut...

Bukowski drinks too a productive meeting...as if he needs an excuss

As a result of a meeting on Sunday (5/11/2006) a plan has been draw up concerning the advancement of the company. Here is the outcome:

A full production timetable has been put in place for Love is a Dog from Hell, which will be incorporated as part of my personal research. As we ae only working on this part time we have decided to work towards a full scratch performance of the play around Easter 2007 (date to be confirmed). It will be performed in the Companies H.Q in Clapham. The rehearsal process will begin with a number workshops starting with an investigation into the transformation of objects (animation) and then continuing with a closer look at puppet presence, working with the specific puppets in the play in more detail. In-between now and Easter we hope to develop the play through participation in various scratch nights, including Battersea Arts Centre, the Latchmere Scratch, and a workshop at Wimbledon.

In addition to the regular company the Greyhounds will produce an original score for the play.(I will place a link to their myspace music page as soon as I get it)

We will raise £300 for improvements to our space and to pay for costs of production.

We have setup a company blog as a forum for debating and promoting the work: thingsonfiretheatre.blogspot.com

The Website is under reconstruction. www.thingsonfire.co.uk

If anybody would like to come and take part in the rehearsal workshops then please contact me for more details.

Things On Fire H.Q

For the first time Things On Fire have a base for rehearsal, storage, and possibly performance. Situated above a church in Clapham Junction the H.Q has everything an aspiring theatre company may need: kitchen, storage/workshop room, and a good sized rehearsal space. The plan over the coming months is to adapt the space to make it more performance friendly, which will include: blackout curtains, basic lighting, seating, flats, and various ’things’ which the company like to use in the devising process. From the H.Q Things On Fire can start to spread the word of cheap art for all. The company plan to mark the occasion this Sunday with the continuing rehearsal of Love is a Dog from Hell and a celebratory roast.


The company will also continue to progress with the redevelopment of the website and a company blog to mark progress. I will post this information here as and when it comes.

In honour of our new home I have pasted the company manifesto below:

Things On Fire: 1st Manifesto

There is an overwhelming problem facing the world, the problem of things on fire. For years we have produced, horded and consumed a startling amount of things, things that have finally had enough. The time has come when they shall have their revenge - AH!

On returning from work one evening you will find your table has spontaneously combusted and your suit is smouldering in the wardrobe… Pots and pans spark in the cupboards and the glowing ashes of a doormat crackle in the wind outside… When out walking you see a pair of shoes burning in a shop window… A road sweeper's broom smokes on the street as it pushes piles of flaming cans into a melting bin.

And yet the fire will not stop there. It will spread and catch rooftops, houses and trees, roads and streetlights.

Can we possibly justify making any more? When many have little enough to sustain themselves, we just stand by and let things burn. And yet they have been burning for a long time, so long in fact that we hardly notice anymore…

We have been abruptly awakened by the accidental meeting of an umbrella and a sewing machine on an operating table; teaspoons, light-bulbs, nudes and table legs; axels, eyelids, top hats and mandolins. The immediate absurdity of the object out of its place, scurrying along the tabletop, swinging from the periphery; the object rising from its ashes and diagnosing its sickness. The poor, inconsiderable, low, inanimate object, salvaged from the scrapheap, found on a side-street, washed up in a drainpipe…the object stamped with the sign of death, the object that has had a life already… Things on Fire make these objects perform, fusing them with the poorest objects of their kind, giving them a new form, a new significance, a new life - a bike, a hat, a bed, a mannequin.

Our aesthetic is born out of a passion for the surreal and the cinematic, the photographic and the atmospheric, the dark and the beautiful moving image. Through puppetry and performing objects the company have developed a theatrical language with which to paint pictures and set scenes, a stage upon which actors are shaped within their surroundings and framed in a space as if seen through a camera's lens.

The Double’s Paradox: Part 1

(As an object in performance)

Here is a trial of thought at its earliest stage. This is something I have been mulling over and just wanted to put the idea up here. I have not contextualised my thoughts in the mythology surrounding the double or indeed the nature of object theatre, hence why it is part 1.Apologies for the poor grammar in some parts of this, it is taken from a stream of notes. Please comment if you have any thoughts.



The relationship between body (performer) and object: There is an investment within the process of transformation that demands a commitment to the object – essentially a commitment of exchange that occurs between the performer and the object. With the animorphication of an object the commitment of the performer must be total. It exists as a one-way street of exchange, both mentally and physically from the performer to the object. If this did not happen the illusion of artificial life is broken and the spectator cannot join in with the exchange, they become distanced from it and it ultimately results in the objects falsified life – dying.

In the case of the doppelganger there seems to occur an almost opposite exchange. The process of transforming your own inanimate double from dead object into a live one seems to contradict the very nature of it. The performer becomes the servant and thus is accepting his own demons– his own death (?) – his darker ‘other side’ then the question emerges:

Why does he not just drop the damn thing and live?

Suddenly the object gains a great sense of power. It asks very personal (or should that be philosophical – I think of Camus and Suicide) questions of the animator, the most personal.

Another way of looking at it is that the animator must keep the animation going – the object alive, if it drops then surely he is done for, if your double dies then where (or what!) does it leave you…. A very complex questioning emerges and the animator/character is confronted with a much more sophisticated relationship with the object he is animating.

This needs to be explored practically.

It is completely different when a puppeteer animates the double of another actor. It breaks the personalisation of the event. The exchange reverts back to that of the one-way street. This is of course when we are in the realm of a ‘theatrical reality’ – the animation of your own double does not actually mean you are orchestrating your death – playing the part of the reaper (of course…of course!) What is at stake is for the character version of you this is where the drama exists.

Subversion of the fantasy life and real life –An argument developed in the Perverts Guide - Žižek's asserts that fantasy life IS you and the real life is a suppressed version, a socially acceptable version. Following this logic the performer becomes the object (the double) and vice versa. (They both love big brother so to speak – using Orwell as a symbol)