Monster Rave: puppetry workshop with Theun Karelse
Monster Rave: puppetry workshop with Theun Karelse
May 24: 10:00 – 17:00
May 25: 10:00 – 16:00
Monster Rave: 16:00 – 18:00
No prior expertise is needed, but it helps if you are happy to collaborate with others.
This workshop explores the artistic, scientific and political relevance of puppetry. In small groups we’ll make and embody various creatures using various materials, inflatable pumps, movement, and sound. These could be monsters that can help us banish forces that haunt us in our lives, or summon forces that we need.
Puppets can represent a great variety of subjects; they can embody animals, ghosts, forces of nature, or even quite abstract ideas, they can convey dreams. As physical objects they can give access to what is invisible. Even if you know actors are moving them, their movement is incredibly effective in triggering us. Working with a puppet can also be a method of embodied research: what does it feel like to work with a foreign anatomy?
Puppetry is an ancient cultural form; small figurines were already common in prehistoric Europe. In a contemporary context puppetry is like robotics without engines to power them. In theatre productions like “The Lion King” puppets are like exoskeletons extending the human body. Teams of actors bring beings to life, and music can help establish its movement. That is the main starting point for the Monster Rave.
Day 1 (May 24)
In the morning we’ll explore some basic principles of puppetry.
We’ll work in small groups to develop, test, sketch and prototype bodies/entities; a day of weird creatures coming to life.
Day 2 (May 25)
Teams build, test and refine. At the end of the afternoon (16:00 – 18:00) the floor opens for the Monster Rave. Where each team presents their creature. Invite your friends to witness their birth!
Takeaways?
This workshop hopes to give participants some insight into what puppetry can bring to your practice as a mode of expression or a means of embodied research.
What to bring?
Music can form a great means to get ‘into character’, so please bring any musical instruments or sound systems you think might be useful.
Theun studied fine-arts at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam before joining FoAM, a distributed group of transdisciplinary laboratories operating at the interstices of art, science, nature and everyday life. His interests and experimental practice explore edges between art, environment and technology, taking the last 10.000 years as a frame of reference. In 2022 he explored puppetry during a projectweek at Breitner Academy, and has recently started experimenting with puppetry as an artistic and ecological research method.
This workshop is presented by iii with financial support from Creative Industries Fund NL and The Municipality of The Hague.
