CUSTOM BUILT SHOWS
Peter and Debbie of Parasol Puppets have been designing, building and performing original puppet shows tailored to the specific needs of their clients for almost 30 years. They have created puppets for community theatre groups, built and manipulated puppets for several local access TV programs and created a show about endangered animals for the Honolulu Zoo (which Debbie performed every Saturday for 3 years).
Peter and Debbie of Parasol Puppets have been designing, building and performing original puppet shows tailored to the specific needs of their clients for almost 30 years. They have created puppets for community theatre groups, built and manipulated puppets for several local access TV programs and created a show about endangered animals for the Honolulu Zoo (which Debbie performed every Saturday for 3 years).
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We enjoy creating new puppet shows for the Public Library Summer Reading Programs. Here are some photos from our hand puppet show, ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR BOOKWORM. The puppet heads are made from plastic shapes, then paper mached, then either painted or covered with fur, bodies and costumes added.
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Our most frequent client for custom-built shows is the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the largest fine arts museum in Hawaii. Their Education Department first approached us in 1992 to create a show based on an artist, John Webber, who was featured in one of their touring exhibits. We had a marvelous time researching the history of this artist, who sailed with Captain Cook when he discovered the Hawaiian Islands, and enjoyed creating and performing a puppet show that illustrated several of his works.
We have since built and performed 16 other shows for them, primarily for the Christmas season. Every year, the staff of the Education Department selected a theme for the Christmas gallery tours and we created a show around this theme. The theme was usually inspired by a work of art in the Academy’s extensive Medieval and Renaissance collection. Every year we eagerly awaited the assigned theme so we could start researching and writing the script.
Here are some photos from the show we built in 2005. The theme for that year was CHRISTMAS AROUND THE WORLD. We researched countless folk tales and selected “The Littlest Camel” from Syria and “The Christmas Flower” from Mexico as our inspiration. The show ended with all of the characters from the stories arriving at the stable on Christmas morning for a Nativity tableau. Thirty-eight puppets in a twenty minute show which we performed 108 times during the month of December 2005.
We have since built and performed 16 other shows for them, primarily for the Christmas season. Every year, the staff of the Education Department selected a theme for the Christmas gallery tours and we created a show around this theme. The theme was usually inspired by a work of art in the Academy’s extensive Medieval and Renaissance collection. Every year we eagerly awaited the assigned theme so we could start researching and writing the script.
Here are some photos from the show we built in 2005. The theme for that year was CHRISTMAS AROUND THE WORLD. We researched countless folk tales and selected “The Littlest Camel” from Syria and “The Christmas Flower” from Mexico as our inspiration. The show ended with all of the characters from the stories arriving at the stable on Christmas morning for a Nativity tableau. Thirty-eight puppets in a twenty minute show which we performed 108 times during the month of December 2005.
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We needed a squirrel for one of the stories in this performance. We knew that we wanted to perform with large rod puppets for this particular story.
We started with rough sketches of the character (see right). Heads were shaped from plastic shapes (plastic bottles, plastic easter eggs) and covered with paper mache. The heads and bodies were then painted or covered with fur. |
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Here you can see the completed squirrel in performance. One of the things we enjoyed about these performances at the Academy was the opportunity to use theatrical lighting. We could turn one of the galleries into a puppet theater and keep it there for 5 weeks. As traveling performers, this is a luxury. We had the freedom to use elaborate staging and focused lighting. Look at the difference between the "normal" lighting in the left photo and the "theatre" lighting in the right. A rear projected "forest scene" as well as focused lights on the puppet really creates the mood!
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