They hold mallets to play a prop marimba. The imposing Mr. Ringmaster presides masterfully over them. Skip to main content. Search this exhibition. Puppets on Stage. Shadow puppetry is an ancient art form that originated in Asian cultures. A flexible, two-dimentional cutout figure is controlled by rods, performing behind a backlit translucent screen. By skillful manipulation, the unseen pupeteer magically brings to life the shadows cast on the screen by the puppet and light source.
Usually made of cloth, a hand puppet is a flexible, glove-like structure. The puppeteer inserts a hand and manipulates the figure by moving fingers and wrist. This method can be traced to prehistoric times, when storytellers used their hands to make shadows to illustrate their tales. It evolved evolved into the use of highly sophisticated objects of wood, plastic, paint, and fabric. Gift of Hazelle and J. Woodson Rollins. A rod puppet has external wooden sticks or wire rods attached, allowing the puppeteer to manipulate its movements.
Some puppets, notably those created by Jim Henson, combine both hand and rod manipulation. An entire group of characters may require simultaneous movement of hands, legs, clothing, and even hair — in addition to facial expressions.
To ensure the puppets remain firmly in place, their heels are fastened to the set with inconspicuous, small nails. Technology, form, material, texture, volume, plot, dialogue, music, acting ability, and a host of other factors have stimulated animation teams at Soyuzmultfilm to search for new ways of perfecting their art for almost a century.
Each animation puppet is built around a metal skeleton with ball joints and hands made of flexible wire, a construction that produces stability and precise movements. The frame is then covered in layers of foam and wound in thread to give it the required physical form. Skin and visible extremities are made from dental plaster; eyes from large ball bearings. In all, about six months is needed for one minute of animation. Filmmaking may have unlimited possibilities in one sense, but the world of stop-motion animation has strict limitations.
Puppet animators do not have the luxury of rehearsals and many films — especially in the early period — were shot with only one take per scene. The creative team must weigh its daily work with the overall visual and technical requirements of the film — even more so if the film is attempting something new. The first puppet animation film in history was made by a Russian ballet choreographer Puppet animation was born at the beginning of the 20th century.
Small figures of 50 centimetres or less have a head mounted on a short rod or handle held in the right hand. This is often equipped with strings to allow for movement of eyes, eyebrows, the mouth, and even the ears. These puppets have no actual body. The head rod passes through a ring in the top of an under costume which is held in place by a small wooden pin running through the rod below the ring.
Larger figures of about one metre sometimes have a more substantial support rod which reaches almost to the ground, whilst life-size ones, particularly used in Beijing, have a rod that sits in a holder in a leather belt worn by the performer. Larger figures also tend to have a more fully carved torso. In some cases such figures may be equipped with trigger-operated strings on the control rods that allow for both facial movements and articulation of the hands for handling props.
In such cases more than one manipulator may be required. Larger rod puppets in China sometimes have hidden arm rods, but this practice which may have originally helped suggest that the figures moved without human agency has often been abandoned today, as external rods allow for a wider range of gesture and expressiveness. Concealed control rods are a feature of the beautifully carved and decorated hun krabok puppets from Thailand which have a central bamboo rod for the head whilst the arm rods run inside the costume, which is a rectangular bag some 60 centimetres wide, terminated by small hands at the two top corners.
Taiwanese glove puppets sometimes have rods inserted during the performance to achieve a special effect such as the handling of a prop. In Mali puppets with arm rods concealed in the costume are quite common. In the case of very large puppets, which may reach nearly 3 metres, the puppeteer is inside a voluminous costume and the head of the figure is worn above his own head, whilst he operates rods terminated with hands that run inside the forearms.
In most cases the rod puppet is operated from below, but there are also cases where the puppeteer stands behind the figure and the rods are therefore horizontal to the ground. Broadly speaking the Bunraku figures are operated in this way and the technique is used in the Chaozhou region of China, where the much smaller figures are effectively tabletop puppets. Some Chinese shadow performers also use the horizontal rod, and the light is placed high up above the head of the performer.
The most specific case is the various cribs of Eastern Europe, notably the Polish szopka see Nativity Scenes. In Europe the notion of the rod puppet as a new genre came with Richard Teschner and Nina Simonovitvch-Efimova, both inspired by the Indonesian wayang golek. Obraztsov would sometimes multiply both the number of rods and the number of operators concealed beneath the playboard.
0コメント