Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 18:04:30 +0100
From: Stephen Kaplin <skactw-AT-pop.tiac.net>
Subject: PUPT: Save the Cornstarch!


Dear Ellissa,
	I'm inclined towards my colleague, Mr. Bell's advise. Save on the
overpriced cornstarch and explore the relationship between the little box
proscenium of the toy theatre stage, and the full scale human beside it. In
our Great Small Works' productions of "Terror as Usual" we often play
between the figures inside and outside the frame. In the toy theatre
production of Chinese Theatre Workshop's "Peony Pavilion", we were even
more explicit in the play back and forth between large and small-- the
puppeteer/ actors had the same painted faces and elaborate Peking Opera
costumes as the flat painted figures. We used the effect somewhat
cinematically, so that focus would shift to a "close-up" for  dance
sequences that were performed in front of and along side the proscenium
stage, and then pulled back at the end of the dance to a "farshot" that
caught the little 8" figures strolling through the garden inside the box.
	So don't be so quick to mask yourself behind the scrim or the
organdy. Even if you don't want to play with  the effect, the human being
standing beside or behind the box doesn't break the focus of the audience
watching the toy theater stage, provided the actors maintain focus
themselves.
	BTW- If you are in the New York City area, you can see the above
mentioned "Peony Pavilion" show at the Queens Museum of Art in Flushing
Meadows/ Corona Park, on June 24 at 2:30 PM.
		Stephen




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