Saturday, May 24, 2008

Frank and Wes

08-taunting-thomas
I was a little distressed last night for a couple of reasons. I have discovered a problem with glove puppets that I have never faced before. That would be prop items. You see, with string puppets you can count on one thing above all others—gravity works in your favor. Including but not limited to the fact that props and scenery have a floor to sit upon. Thus that lovely pumpkin carriage in Cinderella may fall over but there’s absolutely no chance of it dropping off the face of your little planet. In this way gravity works with you. Don’t get me wrong…in Marionettes there are ways gravity is not your friend…say perhaps if you should drop the controls for example.
So I suddenly was distressed by two realizations last night:
A. There is no floor—rolling stock is gonna have issues
B. If a puppet must walk through it…there can’t be any supports in the way. So forget that fence through the middle of the stage.
Both of the above I had already included in my script. I just couldn’t get passed it either. It was such a reverse idea…I tossed out my original stage design because it just couldn’t handle what I wanted to do. Distressing!
Last night, while Wes, Frank and I were playing games and polishing off the last of Frank’s Birthday cake I poured out my deep distress to them. Between the two of them and a sheet of paper, they solved all my problems. The design of the stage was just added to, not changed entirely and now I can see how to do things bottom up a little better. It was such a road block before. So I must say: Domo Arigato Gozaimashita to both Wes-kun and my husband Frank.

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