Odds 'n' Ends: Punch Finger Puppet

Here is where I take the opportunity to show off some of the toys and paper models I have collected, that are only tangentially related to tabletop theater.


This Punch finger puppet was a birthday present from my wife on my thirtieth birthday.

It was created by the German toy company Trullala. Trullala Spielwaren GmbH sells a wide variety of children's dress-up costumes and puppets. This Punch/Kasper finger puppet is approximately six inches tall. Made of cotton and felt, the head is papier-mâché covered in cotton fabric.

I cannot seem to find the exact finger puppet on the Trullala website, but they have a number of other Kasper/Punch dolls. Including the hand sized version of my finger puppet seen below.

Odds 'n' Ends: This is not a pipe!

Here is where I take the opportunity to show off some of the toys and paper models I have collected, that are only tangentially related to tabletop theater.

Like the two matchbox size theaters, this Magic-Puzzle comes from the German publisher Wetzel. Taking inspiration from Magritte one of the most famous paintings in his "La trahison des images" ("The Treachery of Images") series it was designed by Richard Wetzel.

The picture above of the matchbox puzzle's cover comes from the Moduni website. The pictures below are are of my own Magic-Puzzle.

The puzzle is composed of five cards. Each card has a different cut out silhouette images. The profiles on the cards are distorted to the extreme and I'm hard pressed to say that they are all actually faces.

By stacking the five cards together in the correct order the negative space creates the image of a pipe.

Odds 'n' Ends: B Movie Victims

Here is where I take the opportunity to show off some of the toys and paper models I have collected, that are only tangentially related to tabletop theater.

This last Christmas I received a set of Horrified B-Movie Victims. The photo above was found online and I post it only because it is a better representation of the set than anything I could muster. I was inspired to post the set of figures after seeing Tiny Ninja Theatre's production of Romeo and Juliet.

The back card says, "We provide the victims, you provide the terror!" This terrified crew of hard plastic three inch figures look like a lot of actors I have seen, especially ones leaving my rehearsals.

The Horrified B-Movie Victims come from the novelty company Accoutrements. I am a big fan of their products including zombie finger puppets. If you aren't a wholesaler though I recommend checking out their retail division Archie McPhee.

Professor Frederick's Punch and Judy

I have had the pleasure of seeing Professor Frederick's Punch Van Winkle Show during Historic Hudson Valley's Legend Weekend for a number of years now.

Puppeteer Fred Greenspan and his wife have designed and published a finger puppet adaptation of Punch and Judy. I picked up a copy of their book a few years back, and spent a pleasant afternoon cutting and coloring the nine characters found inside. Also included in the book are a stagefront that can be mounted onto a box to create a theater, and a short Punch script to get people started with their own show.

You can pick up a copy of Greenspan's Punch & Judy Color & Cut Finger Puppet Theatre at Greg Johnson Books.

A Defensive Note Regarding My Photos

So I have been spending the last couple of weeks taking photos of various pieces of my collection, working in advance of my entries. One thing has become quite clear. I’m no photographer. There is a branch of commercial photography called tabletop photography it is what makes ice cream look so good in the advertisements. That is a skill and it also involves things like lights, and filters, and tripods. My little theaters look like they were captured on film in a police line up. So let me apologize for the pictures ahead of time. But imagine, if these are the photos I kept, you should have seen the ones that got cut.

Tiny Ninja Theatre's Romeo and Juilet

Originally published on the Playlab NYC Playground Blog on January 18, 2009.

You are moving into a land of between classic drama and found object puppetry. You've just crossed over into...Tiny Ninja Theatre.

Chris Head and Melanie Hipchikz as Romeo & Juliet

(promotional poster)

Armed with the company’s motto of “There are no small parts only small actors” founder and puppeteer Dov Weinstein uses miniature plastic toys to present forty-five minute versions of some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays.

Founded in 1999 Tiny Ninja Theatre made its debut with Macbeth at the 2000 NYC International Fringe Festival. In the nearly ten years since then Weinstein has added Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet to the troupe’s repertory. Tiny Ninja Theatre has also created a backlog of original shows as well including A Brief History of D.U.M.B.O. and The Effects of Nuclear War, and they have presented their performances all over the world.

A couple years ago I had tried to get tickets for a Tiny Ninja performance of Hamlet at PS 122, but the show had already sold out. In January I was finally able to check out Tiny Ninja Theatre, when 92Y Tribeca presented Romeo and Juliet. Located at 200 Hudson Street in New York City, 92YTribeca is the 92nd Street Y's new arts and entertainment venue.

Entering the playing area dressed entirely in white, Dov Weinstein leads a cast of not only tiny ninjas but an “assorted dime store figures” as well. A good puppeteer, Weinstein invests his performing objects with life by giving them total focus. He absorbs himself in the figures, like a child playing with his toys except with much better diction. It is difficult enough to clearly speak Shakespeare’s lines, but the performer makes it even more challenging by taking on 18 speaking parts himself.

There is a lot of wit to be found in the staging. The prince addresses the crowd from on high perched on the visor of a baseball cap. Outside Juliet’s balcony is a grove of trees made up of green plastic forks and spoons. The apothecary is a skeleton key chain, an obvious figure of death that got a laugh. Weinstein indulges in some pop culture short hand. The audience knows that the prince is ineffectual because he speaks with Elmer Fudd’s voice, just as they can tell Tybalt is a bad ass because a tiny figure of Bruce Lee takes the part.

I was startled by how low tech the show was. While the performance is very polished it maintains its low-tech charm, shunning a service gloss that would be easy to achieve after so many years of performance. White boxes suggest the different locals, sometimes opening up to reveal miniature sets contained inside. The unveiling of the Capulet’s disco ballroom yielded applause the night I attended. Each box is self-contained with doubles and triples of each of the cast members, allowing for quick transitions and a minimum of misplaced actors.

What surprised me was the lack of camp. Romero’s meeting of Juliet’s at the Capulet’s party is tender and intimate. When Romeo discovers Juliet in the crypt Weinstein cups a jewelry box with her body in his own hand and takes on Romeo’s role drinking the poison from a cup. Like all children at play the performance is very earnest.

I still want to see the Tiny Ninja cast in Hamlet though.

Theatre on a Tabletop

Originally published on the Playlab NYC Playground Blog on February 7, 2009.

Theatre on a Tabletop: Puppetry for Small Spaces
by Kuang-Yu Fong and Stephen Kaplin

“We do small shows because it gives us the chance to pursue our wildest ideas free from the costs and constraints of big-scale, big-budget theatre production without the burden of having to coordinate dozens of production, crew, and cast people. Using tabletop theatre techniques professionally give us the means to administer, produce, create, and perform a show within our own small organization”

The above excerpt from Kuang-Yu Fong and Stephen Kaplin’s book Theatre on a Tabletop serves a permission slip for my own theater company, Playlab NYC, to explore big ideas within our own small organization. It is a needed spark of inspiration to carry me forward into Playlab NYC's second year.

Using the term “Tabletop Theater” allows the authors to explore three different types of puppetry: toy theatre (a popular Victorian era children’s entertainment), found object theatre, and overhead projection theatre (a type of shadow puppetry). For each of the three forms, they provide a brief history, offer directions and diagrams for building puppets and theaters. Finally each section includes an excerpt of a script the authors have produced.

Theatre on a Tabletop: Puppetry for Small Spaces contains not only inspiration, but practical lessons informed by years of tabletop puppetry work by Fong and Kapin. There are diagrams, photographs, supply lists, eight “Basic Laws of Puppetry,” and a useful bibliography.

With a constant eye toward the classroom, the final third of the book shows what a powerful teaching tool tabletop puppetry can be. It includes outlines for workshops of varying length from two hours to two weeks, offering advice for each step of the development of a workshop production including: story boarding, design, rehearsals and presentations. There is also a short coda for puppeteers interested in creating professional tabletop productions.

It is safe to say that I will be taking some time to apply the lessons that Kuang-Yu Fong and Stephen Kaplin provide. More importantly it is their inspiration that I hope to instill into the work of Playlab NYC.