National Puppetry Festival: Day 2

Kat and I’s paths divided today as we are both taking different workshops. I am in a molding, sculpting and casting workshop that will be tues-fri while Kat is taking a variety of workshops and then teaching one about shadow puppet improv on Friday.

Here are some photos from my workshop. It’s being taught by Fergus Walsh and the first day was intros and sketching ideas. We began by doodle sketching, which is a technique I learned from my friend Rachel Austin in high school, where you blindly doodle on a page and then once you look at it, you turn it into something recognizable based on the shapes you drew. I was a bit skeptical about how much I was going to like my doodles, but after my first one I was on a roll. I ended up picking this weird chicken-lady thing I drew and tomorrow we’re going to sculpt our amazing puppets.

We saw some amazing puppetry today as well. We saw the Dolly Wagglers perform The Woodchopper Opera. Their setup was great, cardboard puppets and a little folding stage with backdrops hung from it. It was simple and clean and fun. Then in the evening we saw another performance on Ada/Ava by Chicago’s own Manual Cinema and then got to see Silent Shadow Cinema perform.

I just want to take a moment to just show everyone how amazingly beautiful this campus is here. The director of the festival mentioned that the entire campus is designated as an arboretum. Here are some shots I took today while walking along.