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It’s Saturday night above a pub in Thirroul NSW, and the band is playing Purple Rain. This little creature is bound for the Wollongong Art Gallery tomorrow and it needs some urgent attention, so I’m doing surgery with paper bags and school glue. It was made in 1997 for my first solo show, Pets and…
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I’m heading to NSW next month for a convergence of arts workers around the climate crisis. Julie’s Bicycle (UK) and the Australia Council for the Arts are hosting a week long Creative Climate Leadership program in the beautiful, wombat-riddled Bundanon grounds. It’s an incredible chance to share knowledge, ask questions, generate and refuel, and if…
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Our Puppet design and construction workshop wrapped up with some frantic safety pins and flying scraps of fur. There’s never enough time to finish a puppet just the way you’d like, but at least these makers have peered into the bewitching rabbit hole that is puppetry. On the last day everyone took turns to puppeteer…
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Thinking in multiple planes can really melt your brain. It’s Day 4 of our Puppet Design and Construction intensive, and everyone’s working on their mechanisms. Mads (pictured) set herself the challenging brief of swivelling eyeballs and moving eyebrows for her rabbit, all operated with one hand. The process of moving from a 2D drawing into…
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Puppet makers, meet puppets: Day 1 of an Intensive Workshop at Terrapin. Over the next five weeks I’ll be guiding six promising makers who have skills in a range of areas – painting, shoe-making, carving, feltwork – but haven’t had a lot of exposure to the obscure and miscellaneous skill-set that is puppetmaking. Using Jon…
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As a self-confessed Luddite I admit that there are some transformative apps out there. Since learning about the whiteboard app Miro in a Disaster Design course I’ve been applying it to collaborative creative processes, and it’s solving many issues. Working remotely or internationally, lack of contact between writers/designers/composers, ideas that fall by the wayside, performers…
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A small Terrapin contingent traveled to Nagoya this month to develop a new work with Japanese artists. Set in a possible future of rising seas and shrinking islands, it’s a work that demands climate-conscious treatment. The story will be told using objects found in any theatre – brooms, ladders, blocks – and the stuff of…
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Creative development for a new show begins with long-suffering performers, pegs and stickytape. You might not see it yet, but Greta Jean and Bella Young will eventually be two cockatoos and a ferret. The process of developing new work is iterative, with the design, script, and direction responding to each other as the storytelling becomes…
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When the time comes, this is where you’ll find Axlebone. I like to think of this blog as a quiet corner of the library. I won’t be shouting news at you on social media, but if you seek it out, I’ll be posting here occasionally about works in progress, resource conscious making and design, and…
