Blog #4

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I was having a hard time trying to find a video or information on the violence in puppetry, but I thought of the puppet show that Marc put on.  In the puppet show it had some violence at the end of the piece where the older king brother was trying to stab his younger brother’s girl friend.  In the end he missed her and stabbed his brother by accident.  The younger brother ended up dying in the name of love.  Also during the puppet show the crowd in the street was yelling at the main character of the show and calling him names.  Also in forgetting Sarah Marshall at the end of the movie he does Dracula’s Lament, and there is quite a bit of violence that leads to Dracula dying in the end.  The Dracula puppet had red ribbon in its mouth and when he got stabbed they pulled it out of his mouth for the effect of that he was bleeding out of his mouth.  I found a video of the song that Dracula sings at the end but it is not from the actual movie and doesn’t have the violence part.  Another thing that I thought of is the puppet from all the Saw movies.  It is a very scary puppet that represents the challenge of life and death.  The puppet is usually on a tricycle and explains the rules of the game that jigsaw wants.  Then the players have to go through a very bad challenge that most people die in.

Blog #3

In reading the chapter four of our puppets book, what I found amusing was that the Royal de Luxe theater company made huge giant puppets for their shows and works.. The Sultan's Elephant was a show created by the Royal de Luxe theatre company, involving a huge moving mechanical elephant, a giant marionette of a girl.  Francois Delaroziere was a Frenchman who designed the huge elephant. It was made mostly of wood, and was operated by 22 manipulators that were using a mixture of hydraulics and motors. It weighed as much as 7 African elephants, which is around 50 tons, and also it is 20 feet tall.  The elephant had hundreds of moving parts and scores of pumping pistons, just to give you an idea; there were 22 pistons in the trunk of the elephant alone.  The giant elephant had more than 56 square meters of reclaimed poplar was combined with steel ribs to create the elephant's sturdy skeleton.

I found this really funny fact about the elephant you might not think its all that funny but here it goes, The elephant no longer exists: Helen Marriage of Artichoke, the company that produced the London performance, said "Royal de Luxe were so fed up with being invited all over the world to perform The Sultan's Elephant, they just destroyed it.”  The reason I really like the puppet production group Royal de Luxe is that they strive to make these huge puppets that people want to see all over the world, and they had to destroy the elephant puppet because it got too popular.  It gave me a chuckle, but yes their puppet work with the giant girls that they made, and also the giant man they made for the puppet show called the A Giant Dropped from the sky in Nimes, France, in 1994.

Blog #2

The movie we watched in class brought up a lot of different cultures and interesting things about them.  While watching the video I saw a lot of different people wearing masks out of wood.   Some of the masks reminded me of what maybe an African tribe would be wearing during a celebration, and the other masks were just of other faces.  I just thought out of the box and came up that puppets actually brought the United States of America Halloween.  I thought that since all the masks were used people picked up on it and started to derive a holiday from masks from other countries used in puppet shows.

Another part that I found interesting in the movie we watched was the puppet parades, and the place where puppet parades are most famous to me is in China.  You always see the all the people out in the street watching the big puppet dragon in the street weaving from side to side of the street.  Puppets derive from a lot of culture’s celebrations and traditions.  The people of China take a lot of pride in what they do during parades of there culture.  So, from China we as Americans picked up the idea of the puppet parade, along with the puppet dragon.  It is used in America just as it would be in China for our American traditions and celebrations.

Gymnastics is a crazy sport, and a lot of Americans participate in the sport but do they know where it comes from?  In the video it showed Romanian people doing gymnastics during a puppet piece put on this huge stage.  They were on this huge jungle gym deal doing different acts of gymnastics.  The Romanians take a lot of pride in their home sport and love doing it and sharing it all around the world.  I bet they are proud, because such many more countries are participating in the sport and are encouraged to compete in events.  It is just funny that gymnastics is such a big hit in America because it originated over seas and it has come across the ocean to explode in America.

Blog #1

The one performance that I happened to see was on the site you tube.  The puppeteer or should I say ventriloquist Jeff Dunham.  My came into my dorm room and convinced me to check out this video on the Internet of Jeff Dunham and Achmed the dead terrorist.  His act was astonishing; I really thought that Achmed was a real person and not just a skeleton!  He was fluent with his motions, and also his dummy was perfect.  Jeff Dunham is a comedian ventriloquist and his act was so funny.  After the first time I saw the video I watched it over and over because I loved the way his dummy had his own life and character. .  I was really drawn to the Jeff Dunham show because I really love to laugh, and he was great at making me laugh.  His shows are awesome and would love to go to one of his shows if he ever goes to the twin cities sometime soon.  I did some research of his other characters and everyone has a different personality as if the were actually real.  I saw another performance of him with his other dummy called Walter.  Walter and Achmed are my two favorite characters that Jeff Dunham has in his suitcase.  Let me tell you more about his dummy Walter.  Walter is an old grumpy man with bushy eyebrows and acts exactly like someone everyone can relate too.  Walter complains and complains about everything and anything he can.  Walter also likes to make fun of a lot of people like cops and dumb people.  The best part of Walter is when he complains about marriage and his wife.  He stands up in front of the audience and has a conversation with his dummies and he never skips a beat.  He is actually having a conversation with himself, but you would never know because he is so good at what he does and helps people understand that an inanimate object can really come to life at anytime.  It helps kids believe that a doll is not just a doll, you can make it your own give it a name, a personality, and even a voice of its own. Jeff Dunham gives puppet a great name and hope he puts more videos on you tube, because I have watched all of them but want to see a new show of his.  If we had to take a trip to a show I would really recommend to anyone to go to his show, because I want people to know what he has done for the puppet community.  He is such an influential person, and I know that people have watched his shows and the next day they tried to control a puppet, or even took a better understanding of theater and art.  He give kids the ability to believe and he is such a good role model for young kids trying to be a ventriloquist.  He is truly and inspirational person.

Puppets

I put up some videos and pictures that the class might like!