Puppet theatre
Some time in the mid eighties while studying in junior school, I was selected to participate in a ballet (I use the term loosely here. It was more like a play with light and sound and extremely colourful costumes) on India's struggle for independence. I played the minor role of a puppet representing a member of the royal family who starts fighting with another kingdom on being pulled by the pupeteer's strings. At that time, I remember, my parents joked that I was correctly cast, as they believed (wrongly of course) that I was always ready to let my fists do the talking.
Many more years passed before I mellowed down enough to stop using agression to settle disputes.
It has not occurred to me yet to stop being opinionated. That has caused me more grief than I care to mention. I'm slowly veering around to accepting that not expressing an opinion occasionally will not stunt my self expression.
They say the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree. So as can be imagined, my fiesty little one seems to be like me in her fearlessness in fighting against slights (real or imagined). Seeing that she was born on Christmas day, one would have imagined a sweet angel readily turning her other cheek. But she's more likely to give a karate punch. Anyway, so she was turning four and again we weren't doing a gala thingie, I felt a little guilty that my first born had been getting these themed parties where I had put in lots of effort whereas her parties were just random get togethers of assorted kids in the building.
My elder one has had a train themed birthday party and a construction crew birthday party complete with demolition games and obstacle races. The previous year, he had demanded a pokemon themed party. I had zero idea what happened in pokemon and spent a couple of hours researching before realizing the pointlessness of it all. I just modified whatever games I could think of using pokemon character names.
So I divided the kids into two groups named after pokemon characters that they chose and made one child in each team race against another in the other team; at the end of the race, each child, irrespective of whether they won or lost, got a pokemon card. They had the opportunity to win more cards if they were able to solve the problem wriiten on a slip of paper. So the problems ranged fom math quizzes, crossword puzzles to space and planetary systems. There were a couple more games The kids at any rate had huge fun winning pokemon cards at all the games.
The pokemon cake I baked for him.
I stuck a plastic ball with the centre cut out into which I put an led light with a battery for that wow effect.
We had organized carol singing with gifts for all the kids at a local shelter in lieu of my second one's birthday but my husband was clear that we should not take away from her memories by making her forego her birthday party. So it was a small do, with six kids accepting the invite. Most kids were traveling or had other christmas parties to attend. Unfortunately only three turned up so we had a crowd of five including my own two.
Even though it was small I was determined to make it unique. I decided I was going to put on a puppet show on the life of Pi.
I rummaged around for some cardboard boxes. Thanks to some recent purchases from Amazon, I found a couple of them and selected one that I liked. I cut out an opening in the front, top and bottom.
I found a thermocol sheet that fitted on to the cardboard box like a glove. But in case you don't have one, don't let it disturb your sleep (never let anything, including crying kids, disturb it. If you ignore anything for long enough, either the noise will stop or someone else will attend to it).
So to get back, you can just give an arch shape instead of a rectangular shape cut out for the front of the box.
I painted the thermocol. And stuck a colourful golden decorative on top. You could make it more elaborate if you plan a bit better unlike me. I was doing this at 9:30 pm the night prior to her big day.
I decided on four back drops and painted them in water colours. One was to be Pi's home in Pondicherry, the second backdrop was of a large tree in the zoo, the third one was a painting that my son had made during the vacations, of a ship on the sea. I used that to show the ship Pi traveled in. And the last one was just the sea and the sky.
I stuck each of these on thin cardboard sheets and then punched two holes at the top edge so that I could suspend them with threads that were tied to a stick like this.
It was then easy to lift these out once that particular scene was done with.
So all the backdrops were held in place from start and each was pulled out from the top once that particular scene was done with.
I also used as many of the soft toys as could fit in the box (individually) with strings threaded through their body. I tied these again to sticks so that it would be easy to lift them in and out. These soft toys were the zoo animals.
I made a thermocol boat and suspended it from the top, similarly animals on the life boat were smaller plastic animals. And last but not the least made Pi out of an old sock. I needed the bottom cut out in my puppet theatre to move Pi around since he was hand held and not suspended from above.
Didn't have time to make any of this fancier. Ideally I should have at least papered the insides of the box black. But there wasn't sufficient time. But it was good enough and the kids loved it. I bought a whistle as well to give sound effects for training the tiger.
Introducing Pi in front of his house
Zoo animals who might have made farting noises causing the kids to guffaw
I forgot one very important point -Assembly of the whole structure: In order to have access from the bottom I inverted a small stool on the table on which I had planned my puppet theatre. I covered this with a black cloth to hide it but now I had complete access from the top and bottom.
And finally the cake that I baked for her.
Being a puppet master, is like playing God. You can do your own thing. So I omitted the hyena from my script simply because I didn't have it.
My type of God, if he exists, is a funny, crazy ol' man with a smiling, wrinkled face, an almost bald head and even teeth (that's a must) and a whacky sense of humour.
He will trip you as you rush about importantly and make you fall on the cat who has been waiting as if just on purpose in your way. But after you fall you will realize that you left the stove on. So even though you may hobble for a week, you didn't at least burn the house down.
Many more years passed before I mellowed down enough to stop using agression to settle disputes.
It has not occurred to me yet to stop being opinionated. That has caused me more grief than I care to mention. I'm slowly veering around to accepting that not expressing an opinion occasionally will not stunt my self expression.
They say the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree. So as can be imagined, my fiesty little one seems to be like me in her fearlessness in fighting against slights (real or imagined). Seeing that she was born on Christmas day, one would have imagined a sweet angel readily turning her other cheek. But she's more likely to give a karate punch. Anyway, so she was turning four and again we weren't doing a gala thingie, I felt a little guilty that my first born had been getting these themed parties where I had put in lots of effort whereas her parties were just random get togethers of assorted kids in the building.
My elder one has had a train themed birthday party and a construction crew birthday party complete with demolition games and obstacle races. The previous year, he had demanded a pokemon themed party. I had zero idea what happened in pokemon and spent a couple of hours researching before realizing the pointlessness of it all. I just modified whatever games I could think of using pokemon character names.
So I divided the kids into two groups named after pokemon characters that they chose and made one child in each team race against another in the other team; at the end of the race, each child, irrespective of whether they won or lost, got a pokemon card. They had the opportunity to win more cards if they were able to solve the problem wriiten on a slip of paper. So the problems ranged fom math quizzes, crossword puzzles to space and planetary systems. There were a couple more games The kids at any rate had huge fun winning pokemon cards at all the games.
The pokemon cake I baked for him.
I stuck a plastic ball with the centre cut out into which I put an led light with a battery for that wow effect.
We had organized carol singing with gifts for all the kids at a local shelter in lieu of my second one's birthday but my husband was clear that we should not take away from her memories by making her forego her birthday party. So it was a small do, with six kids accepting the invite. Most kids were traveling or had other christmas parties to attend. Unfortunately only three turned up so we had a crowd of five including my own two.
Even though it was small I was determined to make it unique. I decided I was going to put on a puppet show on the life of Pi.
I rummaged around for some cardboard boxes. Thanks to some recent purchases from Amazon, I found a couple of them and selected one that I liked. I cut out an opening in the front, top and bottom.
I found a thermocol sheet that fitted on to the cardboard box like a glove. But in case you don't have one, don't let it disturb your sleep (never let anything, including crying kids, disturb it. If you ignore anything for long enough, either the noise will stop or someone else will attend to it).
So to get back, you can just give an arch shape instead of a rectangular shape cut out for the front of the box.
I decided on four back drops and painted them in water colours. One was to be Pi's home in Pondicherry, the second backdrop was of a large tree in the zoo, the third one was a painting that my son had made during the vacations, of a ship on the sea. I used that to show the ship Pi traveled in. And the last one was just the sea and the sky.
I stuck each of these on thin cardboard sheets and then punched two holes at the top edge so that I could suspend them with threads that were tied to a stick like this.
It was then easy to lift these out once that particular scene was done with.
So all the backdrops were held in place from start and each was pulled out from the top once that particular scene was done with.
I also used as many of the soft toys as could fit in the box (individually) with strings threaded through their body. I tied these again to sticks so that it would be easy to lift them in and out. These soft toys were the zoo animals.
I made a thermocol boat and suspended it from the top, similarly animals on the life boat were smaller plastic animals. And last but not the least made Pi out of an old sock. I needed the bottom cut out in my puppet theatre to move Pi around since he was hand held and not suspended from above.
Didn't have time to make any of this fancier. Ideally I should have at least papered the insides of the box black. But there wasn't sufficient time. But it was good enough and the kids loved it. I bought a whistle as well to give sound effects for training the tiger.
Introducing Pi in front of his house
Zoo animals who might have made farting noises causing the kids to guffaw
We turned our back on the audience probably by mistake but more likely cause we were putting you in your place.
Art credit: my son
The tiger and the zebra on the lifeboat
I forgot one very important point -Assembly of the whole structure: In order to have access from the bottom I inverted a small stool on the table on which I had planned my puppet theatre. I covered this with a black cloth to hide it but now I had complete access from the top and bottom.
And finally the cake that I baked for her.
Being a puppet master, is like playing God. You can do your own thing. So I omitted the hyena from my script simply because I didn't have it.
My type of God, if he exists, is a funny, crazy ol' man with a smiling, wrinkled face, an almost bald head and even teeth (that's a must) and a whacky sense of humour.
He will trip you as you rush about importantly and make you fall on the cat who has been waiting as if just on purpose in your way. But after you fall you will realize that you left the stove on. So even though you may hobble for a week, you didn't at least burn the house down.
Comments
Post a Comment