Puppet Kaos - where Kelvin Kao plays with puppets and tell random stories

This past Friday, we were invited to the WhiteFire Theatre to do one more night of the show that we did in December. Since we already performed the show three times (and certain portions seven times) before, we didn’t really rehearse for this one. We just met up a few hours earlier for a review.

The show went well and it was pretty fun for me. I thought it was better than the ones we did six weeks ago. Not sure why. Perhaps it was because that everyone already knew full well what exactly was going to happen next. At least that was how I felt after the first performance of this show. I didn’t feel rushed with anything. I knew the order of the show by heart and I knew how much time (plenty) I would have to do costume changes and so on. I’d say most of the cast members had that too. Besides, I have performed with these people and I know I can trust them to improvise if something happens to go wrong. I was pretty relaxed overall. And the show went really smooth.

I did, however, flub my lines in one of the songs. I performed “Hound Dog” as performed by Elvis Presley, with a dog puppet, of course. This is a song that’s really repetitive. There’s very little to memorize but somehow I forget the lines all the time. I guess I just couldn’t get my head around how repetitive it was. Basically you sing the first verse. Let’s call that A. And then you sing the second verse. Let’s call that B. And then you sing A again. And then there’s an instrumental interlude (dance break!) and you sing B again. Really simple. But I guess this is what goes through my mind:

I would sing A correctly. I would then sing B correctly. And then I would want to sing A, but then I would second guess myself: “Wait, didn’t I sing that part already? Maybe I should sing the other one.” And then I would proceed to sing B, which I just sang like, two seconds ago. And then I would be thinking “ah, crap” and now I got a decision to make after the interlude. Do I sing A again, since I accidentally left it out? Or do I sing B again, since that’s what the lyrics said? But then I had just finished singing B twice. Maybe I shouldn’t do it a third time?

Maybe that’s why I often messed up there. So this time, I started singing B and thought “ah crap, I am just repeating myself”. And that’s when I started making up new lyrics while interacting with the audience. After the interlude, I actually forgot to resume singing, so I ended up making up more stuff. The audience seemed to really like it though, more than the original, since it became really silly. Oh well. Although that was kinda unprofessional, it somehow worked out for the better, in my opinion.

I had a lot of fun, but initially, I was somewhat ambivalent about doing the same show again. I was excited to see everyone together again, but didn’t care as much about what we would be doing. To me, I just feel like seeing and hanging out with these people. Everyone looked like they had fun at the end of the night, but before the show, some of us were feeling like “this again? can we do something else now?” I guess we will never make it in a professional theater career where we do the same show over, and over, and over, and over again. It seems to me that it’s time to shelf this one for now and do a new show. And then we shall be more excited to bring Puppet Jukebox back sometime down the line for Puppet Jukebox 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and to the infinity and beyond.

And it was always good to see friends swing by to see the show!

Comments(2)

This past weekend, we did another three performances. Two nights, and one matinee. Around half of the cast are people that did the previous show in May and the other half are people that just finished their classes at Puppet School. I thought that was a good mix, and we have some very capable performers.

Here’s a video of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way”, as performed by the very talented Keith Ferguson.

http://youtu.be/rkmgSOOZRUI

Isn’t that fun?

Really, at this point, I was just there to have fun. Since I already did the show in May for four performances, this felt more like performances #5, #6, and #7 as opposed to a new show. And from experience, I knew that I could trust it to work out fine so I was very relaxed the entire time, possibly a little too relaxed. I knew exactly how much time we had for costume and puppet changes and so on, so I never felt rushed about anything. And really, I felt like I was just hanging out with friends. There just happened to be people watching.

And we had a very nice theater to perform in. The audio was set up so much better and there was an actual backstage. And we had really good people running tech. The lighting and sound was just run so smoothly. As someone that’s seen and done many student productions throughout college, I have lots of appreciations for this. The crowd was small (since we only did one week of marketing) but they were so enthusiastic that they sounded like a bigger crowd than they really were. Having a mix of old and new materials allowed us to do a lot more ambitious things, since we already had a foundation to build on.

One of the new number we added this time was Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Because of that, we had to learn this:

http://youtu.be/AVvnBiBYcvY

It was a fun challenge, since I am not, and have never been much of a dancer. But the dance instructor in that video got a series of videos that really broke down every single section of the dance and I was able to learn it through lots of Youtube watching and practicing. It actually turned out to be quite fun. Some of the stuff I learned I was able to apply to another song I was performing. So, hm, I probably learned more about dancing than puppeteering having done this show. Hm, didn’t expect that. And I am starting to pay a lot more attention to how people dance now. I also lost weight.

And I want to thank everyone for coming, whether you are here to support me or our mutual friends: Jay, Edmund, Angela, Clara, Alan, Terri, Heidi, Natalia, Kyle, Jenn.

And finally, this is a video of an exercise / practice from class (I think… I wasn’t in that class) of a song that ended up in the show. The version from the show was better, of course, since the video was from a few months earlier and things have since been polished more.

Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/SHAhwL5URcU

Comments(5)

This video is made by fellow cast member Herman Gonzales. This gives you a glance of what the rehearsals are like and also let you take a peek backstage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhMU45oDLBo

Thank you, Herman, for documenting this!

Comments(7)

On Saturday, we did two shows. The first one was the matinee, which was supposed to be family-friendly with all curse words and adult jokes cut out. The second one was the closing performance where we got to go back to saying fuck (yay?). And they were both sold out as well! The theater seats about 50, so all four sold-out shows would be around 200 people that had seen the show. Not too shabby at all.

Before the matinee, we went over our lines to make sure we didn’t say anything that we shouldn’t say in front of kids. For example, I was debating whether to replace the “shit” in “your dress looks like shit” with crap, poop, doodie, or booger. Eventually I went with doodie. When we were done, I was relieved: “Yay! We didn’t slip!” And if you’ve been in our class, you would know that it was a challenge given how many inappropriate things we’ve said in class.

What really surprised us was that none of the kids were kicking, screaming, or crying. I mean, in all these movies and shows I’ve been to, if there were a certain number of kids, at least one of them would start crying and the parent would have to get the kid outside somewhat embarrassed. Well, none of that in this show. And once again I realized: Wow, puppet shows are magical.

After the show we brought out puppets to talk to the kids. The kids really loved the puppets. I can definitely relate. My family came to see the show too (though they are all adults). Yay!

At night, we got back to our regular uncensored show, yay! It was the last show, so for sure there was the “Yeah! Let’s go out with a bang!” attitude in everyone. I don’t usually use curse words very much when I talk, but somehow found it liberating to be able to say fuck again. However, when we got on stage, we realized that there was a 10-year-old in the first row. Well, we did already say that the show would be adult-themed so I thought “fuck it” and went on to say the aforementioned “shit” without censorship. It was not until after the show that I realized that I had the honor of being the first person to curse in every performance. Even if anyone had any reservations about cursing (I doubt it), it was basically green light the rest of the way after I let that one out. And we proceeded to say shit and fuck numerous times throughout the show. Hooray!

And finally, we did The Hustle without a hiccup! I did have another hiccup though when I was singing “She’s A Lady”. I wasn’t sure how it happened. At one point, either the music skipped, or it was turned much lower than the microphone, so I wasn’t hearing the music well. Or maybe I just got too excited? I was singing ahead of the music, which never happened in any rehearsals or previous performances. But at some point I caught myself doing that and found my place in the music again and finished it correctly the rest of the way. I hope the audience was distracted enough with the subsequent singing, dancing, and bright colors to remember that.

And really, it was the last night and everyone just wanted to put on their best performance and this led to many amazing performances. There was a camera recording the show, so we were watching the performances backstage via the video feed, and man, many of these performances were simply amazing. Many high-fives backstage after each number.

We closed out the show with an opera. Well, it was really us singing (painfully obvious) fake Italian to a background track. The four of us theatre puppetry students played the main characters, while the TV puppetry students joined in as the chorus. Every student was on stage at the same time. There was just something beautiful about that. Now, though there were character descriptions and a general plot line, everything else was improvised. We weren’t singing the same words every night. We weren’t singing the same notes every night. Every night it went slightly different. So we were all very happy afterwards with that crescendo we did. Without rehearsing and agreeing beforehand, Libby, Keith, and I all reached for that same high note towards the end, and wow, that felt just great.

And at the end of the last scene of the last show, my prop broke. What great timing! Now that’s a sign telling me that, yes, that’s a wrap. I had a wonderful time performing with this amazing group of people. More on that later.

Comments(7)

Second night was much better!

Actually, I am not sure if the performance was better, but it certainly felt better than the first night. Since we already performed it once, we were more relaxed and more comfortable with it. Knowing what worked and what needed to be fixed from first night was a very good thing. I mentioned that the first night was sort of a blur to me. Tonight it felt so much better. Nothing felt rushed. I knew where things were. I knew what needed to be done. And I was ready, standing by, and prepared long before each entrance. We also got a video feed to see what was going on out there (some of it, anyway) so that made it even more enjoyable. But really, the best thing was being relaxed enough to actually enjoy it.

Another reason that it felt better was because we had a better crowd. Sometimes I don’t know why you get a better crowd one night than the other. This didn’t even have anything to do with whether the performance tonight was better or not. We started the show with a video, and from the response to the video, you could already tell what kind of crowd it was. Maybe it was because it was Friday? Or maybe this was within margin of error in sampling? I don’t know, but it certainly helped tonight.

Our theatre puppetry class instructor Christian came to watch the show. He loved it. We are glad.

The microphone stuff was still a little iffy. It seemed to work in some songs and not the others (probably intentionally turned off because of the feedback problems?). Well, I am just going to assume that we won’t have microphones the rest of the run. As long as the music wasn’t dialed up too loud, most of us should be able to sing over it without major problems.

The wig on my puppet almost came off in one of the songs. I just made a joke about it and kept on going. When mistakes like that happen, you can handle it one of two ways. You can just ignore it and keep on going. Or you can acknowledge it (by joking about it) so that’s done. We can move on. It probably ended up being more entertaining anyway, so that’s all good. Still though, that’s not really supposed to happen, so I brought the wig home with me to do some rigging. It usually isn’t a big problem but since my puppet did have a lot of head movements, it can be an issue.

Two sold-out shows in a row. The two shows tomorrow (Saturday matinee and closing night) has two and five tickets left, respectively, and is very likely to sell out soon. Grab your tickets now:
http://www.puppetschool.com/pj/tickets.html

Comments(2)

Just did the first night of the show. Went by really fast. Some glitches. Lots of fun, nevertheless.

The show was scheduled at 7:30pm and our call time was 5pm, which I was late for. I certainly underestimated the traffic. Though I was only nine miles away from the venue, it took more than an hour to get there. That’s Los Angeles traffic for you. The first thing I did was look around and walk behind the curtains to see how they are connected, and where the entrances and exits are. The curtains and walls form a narrow passage around the stage so we could enter from several different directions. And there is a small room on the side for the people, puppets, and props not on stage at the moment.

Not much of a backstage. Pretty normal for a small theater.

Then we went through the rack of puppets making sure that we got all the ones we needed. And we made sure the costumes (for both the humans and puppets) were there. Jordan led a vocal warm-up. We started doing a run-through but that was cut short because we were out of time and some technical stuff still needed to be figured out. So we went back to the dressing room. Pretty soon after, Lara the stage manager came and told us that the door was open and the audience was let in.

And then the show started. Really, for me, it was a blur. There wasn’t much down time. I felt like I was on stage performing, off stage doing costume change for myself and the puppet, and then back on stage again. Over and over. Rinse and repeat throughout the entire show. Waiting backstage listening to fellow performers do their stuff and hearing the audience respond to that is actually something that I normally enjoy doing when I am not up, but I was simply too busy for that in this particular show. The wig falling off a puppet and an arm falling off another didn’t help either, but at least we were able to rig them back to good enough conditions fast. But hey, the audience wouldn’t know.

Perhaps I am making this sound less fun than it was, but don’t get me wrong. It was a lot of fun. We performed in front of a sold-out audience (the theater seats only around 50, but still) and really, I think it’s going to be fun no matter what happens. I mean, here are 50 adults who voluntarily paid 15 dollars each to see a bunch of grown-ups sing and dance with puppets in front of them. These are the kind of people that will have fun with the show no matter what, so you really can’t go wrong with that.

And this is the kind of show where it’s great to sit in the first row. I was talking to Andrew after the show. He told me that he had some choreography that called for him to go to the side of the stage to sing to an audience member. He saw Chett, a former classmate, in the first row and decided to sing that part to him. I found that hilarious, because I also had choreography at the side of the stage, and gestured toward the same guy cuz I saw him there. Who knows? Maybe that would happen again in the three shows coming up if another former classmate ended up sitting there.

You know, I am expecting tomorrow’s show to be a lot more smooth. This is sort of what might happen with shows with short runs like these. There isn’t a lot of time to do tech rehearsals, so the opening night can be a little bit like a tech rehearsal and preview. I am sure it’s fun for the audience nevertheless, but you know, as a performer, you still want things to go better. Tomorrow, we will be more focused on putting on a good performance than just making sure things are happening on cue. We will probably have working microphones, which will help us sing over the music, but isn’t entirely necessarily given the small venue. We will have already gotten the jitters out, and will be more relaxed. We will be more familiar with the space, now that we’ve done one night, so we don’t dance into the monitor on stage or get lost looking for the opening between curtains.

Tomorrow’s show shall be a better one. Besides, it’s Friday, Friday, got to get down on Friday. Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend, weekend. Fun fun fun fun.

Tickets are running out fast! Get yours:
http://www.puppetschool.com/pj/tickets.html

Comments(3)