Looks like a great event......good luck with your workshops.

Daryl H

This year the competitions are held at a different time than the classes. I am teaching three workshops and there are a lot of classes on performing. Regional festivals are geared more toward perfomance and puppetry skills than construction. Construction workshops are generally held at IFest in July.

There was one demo class listed, but I don't know about anything else. Mark Rickle will be teaching that class, he has been building puppets for at least 15 years.

Hope to see some of you there.

Sue

Sue:

I plan to be at the Detroit regionals tomorrow with my son Peter.  Hope to see you there.  I'm going to wear my puppetlady T-shirt.  I'll try to stop and say "hi" if I see you first.

Pam

Does Vicki post here?
I loved the hair on the puppet she used for the Advanced Techniques class, and wanted to know how it was done.  I didn't get a chance to ask her if she made it or if she got it from someone else.


I LOVED the Lip Synch challenge!

Vicki Doesn't belong to the group. I don't know for sure which puppet she used for the advanced techniques class, but from the description of it I believe it is a Puppet Productions Inova. I think it was the orange/brown hair boy? If so the hair is thick rug yarn.

Lip sync challenge is always fun. I was teaching a workshop, so didn't get to see it. My daughter was in the challenge, she was the frog. She hasn't done puppets for four years, but still managed to do a great job!

My team, Higher Hands, competed in the song division, we were slated as #5 in the first half, but they changed us to the second group when they found out that I was teaching a workshop during the first half of the competition. There were 14 teams competing, so they had to break it down into two groups. The competition is not against anyone else, you are competing against a set of standards, kind of like a dog show. How you compare to the standard is how you are judged. So anyway, my team, which is my husband, son, daughter and myself, performed a song, Amazing Love, by Bebo Norman, using the bunraku puppet I built. It was the first time my husband had ever done any props or even performed and he did great. It was also the first time the four of us had performed together. My daughter came home from college last weekend to practice with my son, and then again this Friday morning we all practiced. It came together well for us and we ended up winning a Gold Medal and an award for Outstanding Puppetry Technique. I was so excited and proud of my son and daughter, they did an awesome job!!

 

Sue:

I plan to be at the Detroit regionals tomorrow with my son Peter.  Hope to see you there.  I'm going to wear my puppetlady T-shirt.  I'll try to stop and say "hi" if I see you first.

Pam

Pam, it was great to meet you and put a face to the name. I was so pleased to meet Peter and hope he enjoyed the festival. He is just the sweetest little boy. Thanks for coming to my workshops, I hope I was coherent! I know I had a lot of information to give out and sometimes self editing is difficult. But it appeared that most of the people in the workshops were new to puppetry so I hope that the information was helpful.

I was able to spend some time with a couple of the other presenters, Sandy Noe and Jill Bryan, aka Jilly Bean. These two are tremendous women, Sandy is such a gifted story teller and Jill is an outstanding ventriloquist. They both have so many talents they use that I can't list them all. While waiting for our table at Max and Erma's (40 min.) we laughed and talked and I listened to them coming up with new routines to put into their shows. Soooo funny. If ever you get a chance to see either of them perform, snap it up, you WILL NOT be sorry.

I could ramble on and on about the festival, but I must unpack all my workshop stuff and get it put back in the proper place. Wow! Good time to reorganize the workshop, thin out and find new homes for the puppets I don't use anymore. Make some room for new ones. Ha!

Sue:

Elisha (Sue's daughter) did great on the lip sync.  I was cheering for her.  Her characterization of her frog Ricky is really good.  It was a joy to see her ablib with you in your class with her Ricky puppet.  He's a very likeable character and so ADORABLE!

It was fun to meet Sue at the festival. CVZ I'm sorry I missed you.  Sounds like you were there too!

My son Peter (age 10) had a BLAST!  The little turtle balloon that Sue made for him is a cherished keepsake along with a finger puppet, Larry, who makes a regular appearance around the house with my daughter's favorite hand puppet, Ruffles.  My kids are slowly getting bit by the puppet bug.

I'm hoping Sue posts photos of her new bunraku puppet here.  He was well performed in their performance and combined the legs that Sue posted earlier with the head made using Dr. Puppet's techniques.

Pam

Glad the festival went well!!  I would love to see the video of the bunraku puppet in action!!!  Makes me excited for the regional spring festival that we always attend.

nice! Would be good that such a festival be here in NY! Nice. Good for you.
Hopping a lot pipcs from you (Of course being at the festival).

Miguel!

I was there for Saturday only, so I didn't get to see the song competition.

The puppet she had was an orange boy with no nose and multicolored hair.
I looked as close up as I could get, and it was definitely yarn, but it was very very fluffy and light and thick.

I loved the style and wanted to figure out how to do it.
I wish I had taken pictures now.

hopefully we'll get the pics of that momment here!

Miguel!