From: "Bell, John" <john.bell-AT-uconn.edu>
To: "puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org" <puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:27:32 -0500
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Architectural Puppetry


Yes, Tony Sarg's 1920s invention of the Macy's puppets is fully on the scale of Royal de Luxe, if scale is the important measure.  In fact, they are even taller than the Royal de Luxe giants.  And, as Simon has suggested and Ann reiterates, the organizational system behind the Thanksgiving Day Parade is quite complex and worth analyzing!
________________________________________
From: puptcrit-bounces-AT-puptcrit.org [puptcrit-bounces-AT-puptcrit.org] On Behalf Of Ann legunn [vtpuppet-AT-gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 8:25 AM
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Architectural Puppetry

Where do the Macy's ballons fit into this? I believe they are as big as the
Royal de Luxe but play NYC every year and they need hundreds of puppeteers.
The Macy's ballons are more a community event than our European neighbor's
cranes and ...do we call the people on the ground around the cranes
puppeteers? Tonight thousands of people will get up in the middle of the
night to control the parade ballons which were originally designed by Tony
Sarge and according to Bil Baird he got his start painting faces.

Every place everyone has their own approach and ideas about this art...isn't
it wonderful!

Thankfully, Ann Legunn -AT- the PuppeTree Inc.



On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 7:08 PM, Simon Palmer <simon-AT-illustrated-history.net
> wrote:

> It's difficult to imagine Royal de Luxe in New York. The city that
> has already absorbed so many giants and monsters from King Kong to an
> animated Statue of Liberty via the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man...
>
> Simon Palmer
> Illustrated History
> +44 (0) 161 611 0739
> +44 (0) 7944 804414
> www.illustrated-history.net
> www.doodleblog.co.uk
>
>
>
>
>  On 23 Nov 2009, at 15:18, Stephen Kaplin wrote:
>
> > Dear all,
> >   I find Simon's critique extremely interesting. I believe that
> > puppetry in general, and mega-puppetry forms in particular are
> > distillations of core sets of cultural values. Thus the giant figures
> > of industrial Europe reflected the social order of the day-- being
> > assembled and operated by church groups, guilds, unions or political
> > parties.
> > Contemporary social order has rapidly shifted and so the nature of
> > mega-puppetry in contemporary Europe has naturally shifted with it.
> > Does Royal De Luxe-- with its swarms of lilliputian operators of vast
> > hydrolic  hoisting systems-- not give shape to the present social and
> > political structure?
> >
> > Architectural puppetry on the scale of Royal De Luxe does not seem
> > possible in New York City. And that's not just because the street
> > lights and overhead wires would impede the figures. There just does
> > not seem to be the requisite cultural and support network in place to
> > make an event of that scale happen. I believe Lincoln Center was in
> > negotiations with them-- but that it fell through due to the immense
> > monetary costs.
> >
> > Well, I guess it's up to us lilliputians.
> >
> > Stephen
> >
> > On Nov 23, 2009, at 2:40 AM, Simon Palmer wrote:
> >
> >> Very interesting film. I was particularly impressed by the giant
> >> Bayard carrying the Four Sons of Aymon...
> >>
> >> However, I still can't see more than a very generalized link between
> >> these performances and those of Royal de Luxe. The Sultan's Elephant
> >> is 15 to 20 feet taller than the horse in the Pathe newsreel, it's no
> >> longer at an heroic but at an architectural scale. This is a new but
> >> rapidly expanding tradition of architectural marionettes: the Royal
> >> de Luxe figures differ in scale, scope and ambition from Catalonian
> >> gigantes, Meyboom giants, Brazilian carnival figures and so on. They
> >> are not just 'big,' or 'larger than life,' they are monumental (they
> >> even make architectural interventions - the giant bursting through
> >> the roof of an apartment building in Le Havre or sitting on top of
> >> Gaudi's Pedrera in Barcelona) and this already differentiates the
> >> work from historical precedents; but it isn't the only difference...
> >>
> >> The second difference follows from the first and is again
> >> quantitative.There is (must be) a huge administrative machine behind
> >> the machine. I don't think it's too much to say that the Royal de
> >> Luxe event in London a few years ago made a far bigger impact on
> >> administrators than on puppeteers. This sort of work offers a huge
> >> opportunity and challenge to the administrative class. This is
> >> puppetry as itinerant architecture and, like architecture, you cannot
> >> get your idea or design into production unless you work with and
> >> through various bureaucratic structures. Suddenly the "cutting-edge,"
> >> "imagination capturing" work in puppetry requires a budget of
> >> hundreds of thousands, even millions of pounds (dollars, euros).
> >> Discounting the special needs of cinema, puppetry is tied to capital
> >> as never before. Before we are aware of any specific content a
> >> performance of this type represents primarily a triumph of the will.
> >>
> >> "The history of architecture is not the chronology of architectural
> >> form but the genealogy of architectural will," writes Jeffrey Kipnis
> >> in "In the Manor of Nietzsche" (1990), and a similar genealogy, a
> >> constantly renewed generational struggle with scale, the fight for
> >> "very big" ideas, will certainly form a significant part of the
> >> forthcoming landscape for puppetry (European puppetry at least).
> >> Unfortunately the vast majority of this expansive and expensive new
> >> work will not be made by Royal de Luxe. Demand far exceeds supply:
> >> every British city and regional council now has some variant of the
> >> Sultan's Elephant on its cultural wish list, but there's also demand
> >> from advertising agencies, events management companies, concert
> >> promoters and others (for instance, pop group Take That's recent
> >> "Circus Tour" features a somewhat flimsy pastiche of the Sultan's
> >> Elephant). There is obviously a risk in producing work of the
> >> required size but losing the mystery and pathos of the original, of,
> >> in other words, failing on an unprecedented scale. Are we going to
> >> extend the limits of puppet performance or simply extend the platform
> >> on which we deliver mediocrity? I'm reminded of this chilling, tragi-
> >> comic excerpt from Arthur Drexler's Transformations in Architecture
> >> (1979): "In 1960, some months before his seventy-fifth birthday, when
> >> Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was asked to describe his working day, he
> >> answered: "I get up. I sit on the bed. I think, 'what the hell went
> >> wrong? We showed them what to do.'"
> >>
> >> There is certainly hope, however, because the third difference
> >> between traditional forms of giant puppetry and the new possibilities
> >> opened up by Royal de Luxe is qualitative. We are not just faced with
> >> the logistical and economic implications of the Elephant or the Diver
> >> and his Niece but there are also stylistic innovations. In his
> >> "Mediators" essay (Negotiations, 1995) Gilles Deleuze makes a
> >> distinction between quantitative and qualitative developments in,
> >> among other things, sport: "Sports [...] have their quantitative
> >> scale of records that depend on improvements in equipment, shoes,
> >> vaulting poles... But there are also qualitative transformations,
> >> ideas which are to do with style: how we went from the scissors jump
> >> to the belly roll and the Fosbury flop." The differences between a
> >> processional carnival figure and Big Bird are not incremental but
> >> delivered via a stylistic leap, a transformation forced by new
> >> demands, increased flexibility and an absolute engagement with the
> >> puppet's mouth. The conception of Big Bird represents a Fosbury flop
> >> moment in the history of puppetry (they were both popularized and
> >> perfected within a year or two of each other).
> >>
> >> The Royal de Luxe puppets are not just bigger than most puppets,
> >> their size also demands new forms of control - pulleys, hydraulic
> >> lifts and multiple (as many as twenty) operators. These "lilliputian"
> >> operators swarm the figures, they create a vague turbulence into
> >> which gestures rise and fall; they don't control the character, they
> >> attend to it; they don't move the character, they let it to move.
> >> They "busy themselves about the puppet, but without any affectation
> >> of competence or discretion, or any advertising demagogy" (Roland
> >> Barthes, "On Bunraku").
> >>
> >> Finally the narrative itself escapes from the usual totaliziing frame
> >> - instead of the transparent festival, we have discontinuity,
> >> occlusions and fragments. These are seismic events that cannot be
> >> understood at once. Things happen simultaneously in different parts
> >> of the city, the whole cannot be grasped, it overflows and floods our
> >> capacity to perceive with *authority*. It is necessary to piece the
> >> story together via a communal retelling, a sharing of segments.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Simon Palmer
> >> Illustrated History
> >> +44 (0) 161 611 0739
> >> +44 (0) 7944 804414
> >> www.illustrated-history.net
> >> www.doodleblog.co.uk
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On 22 Nov 2009, at 22:04, Bell, John wrote:
> >>
> >>> Here is another Pathe video, showing rare (I think) footage of
> >>> giant puppets in Brussels in 1935: http://www.britishpathe.com/
> >>> record.php?id=6338.
> >>> It's good to keep this in mind when thinking of the recent and
> >>> amazing work of Royal De Luxe in Berlin...
> >>> jb
> >>> ________________________________________
> >>> From: puptcrit-bounces-AT-puptcrit.org [puptcrit-bounces-AT-puptcrit.org]
> >>> On Behalf Of Robert Rogers [robertrogers-AT-robertrogerspuppets.com]
> >>> Sent: Sunday, November 22, 2009 4:55 PM
> >>> To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
> >>> Subject: [Puptcrit] Pathe videos
> >>>
> >>> Both are truly amazing!  Thanks guys!
> >>>
> >>> Robert Rogers
> >>> _______________________________________________
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