Mark Down - Puppet workshop -2 days

Mark Down is a puppeteer and puppet maker from Blind Summit. The first part of the lecture is rather boring to me, and slow. Just brief discussion on puppetry. While Michael Vale thinks it is good to discuss, probably. But I felt we wasted two half days already, one is Grant Hicks talking about us going into the puppet show, the other one is just watching a video on Ted talk on handspring puppetry. I have searched that video in my last unit. So to me is a total waste of time of still talking and no doing. The second half of the day he finally opens his pandora boxes and show us and explain his puppet. Excitement! The puppets are well made with mechanisms on their joints on some of them, which I am very keen in doing. He also checked with us with each of our drawings or puppets what we want to do. Mine is the mythical creature that I've drew earlier. (see fig.1)

He then explains the key thing is the joints of the puppet. And he asks me to draw the actual size of the puppet on cardboard and bring it in the next day.

I have done that, and the second day he thought me to use gaffer's tape and make a handle, beheaded my monster, cut open the mouth into halves, do a v shape as the inside of the mouth, and I can move the head and mouth. As my wings are quite big, I might have to scale it down. I also need a rod to run through the whole body. I wasn't able to do that, as I have to spilt myself to two classes, which is Dick's class. Mark wanted to see our 3 min performance despite unfinished like a rehearsal. My group, which is Karolina, Marielle, Hannah and me. Hannah didn't show up...again... so just the three of us. All four of us wanted to do our own puppet, so originally it started with Karolina's poem of animals. And we all kind of have a animal, Karolina a fish, Marielle a singing lady with a bird in her head, Hannah's elephant and mine a dragonlion/sea monster. The rehearsal was quite ridiculous but tremendous fun. The other group, Goncalo, Tianhong, Janna and Marta(Marta wasn't here) did a monstrous bird, and their performance was creepy and funny at the same time. The last group, May, Eva, Xiaochen, and Livia, have a balletaria and two musicians and a little stage. Quite classical but I prefer our ridiculous over their piece.

Mark is quite good in helping us and even direct us how to perform when we don't know what we are doing. I am very happy with him, and I think this is the most fun class next to Sophie Jump. A good working pace. He is also a very witty and charismatic guy. I notice that when he added Marielle's singing lady with a flat boobs, and he was cutting it as we speak and add on it already. Love it. :D