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!

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

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

Thank you, Herman, for documenting this!

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.

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

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

Originally, I thought this would be the most useless class in the entire series, and boy, was I wrong!

I was thinking: in the Beginning class we would learn all the basics; in the Advanced class we would learn about actually rehearsing for a show. In the Intermediate class? I saw it just as a transition since you would just be doing basically the same thing you did in the Beginning class, except you would be sharing the stage with other people. Not too different. But wow, was I wrong. I actually learned a lot from this class. You know what made all the difference?

The nitpicking.

Yup, nitpicking. The best thing about this class was that the instructor, Christian, was really nitpicking in this class. Though he kept apologizing for doing it, I really thought the nitpicking was great. I mean, I paid for the class, so please call out all my mistakes and help me fix them!

How this class was different from the beginning class was that, instead of having all these different exercises and choreography taught to you, you would come up with your own choreography. And then you kept refining it and fixing all the mistakes along the way.

What he nitpicked on was really nothing we didn’t know. Nitpicking reminds me of nose-picking, so let’s use that as an example. We all know (I think) that you shouldn’t pick your nose in public. But some of us will still do it unconsciously. It’s not until someone points out to you, “Dude! Gross! Stop picking your nose!” that you can be aware of it. After this habit is corrected, even if you had a relapse sometime down the line, it’s also more likely that you will catch yourself when your finger is about to violate the restraining order.

It was pointed out to me that there was something a little odd about my lip-sync. It wasn’t very precise and was a little stiff. I tried different things in class and I worked on it at home in front of a mirror. I realized that I probably picked up some bad habits while practicing with a puppet with a thumb-hold that I’ve been procrastinating on fixing, so my hand ended up having to be stiff and stuck in a certain position to grab onto the mouth plate. So I loosened up my wrist and the lip-sync was much cleaner and more natural in the next class.

It was also pointed out to me that I needed to be more specific in the breathing and gestures. As a human, taking a breath, whether through the nose or mouth, is relatively silent for the most part. And then when you talk, you move your mouth and make sounds. The primary thing you do with the puppet’s mouth is, of course, talking or singing. But if you remember to also do a breathing motion before the words, it makes the puppet look so much more alive, even though the addition is really subtle. I still don’t remember to take those breaths every time (and you probably don’t need to if you just have a short sentence), but I am a lot more conscious of it now.

Compared to TV puppetry, where you have a monitor and you are watching your own performance at all times, it’s harder to correct these things in theatre. The puppet is right next to you, so you can’t really see it. You can either use the mirror (which is eventually take away) to correct yourself, or you have to rely on the instructor. This means you have to be a lot more aware of what you are doing, because you don’t have a monitor you can watch to realize that you are doing something wrong.

Another cool thing about this class was that we got to work on those glove-hand puppets (like Cookie Monster, Ernie, and Trekkie Monster). The puppet would take two people to operate. One person would be doing the head and left hand, while the other person got just the right hand. My partner all these four weeks was Andrew. We started out with him on the right hand, but we ended up switching back and forth. It was very interesting to see, because the character seemed to take on a slightly different personality depending on who was on the left and who was on the right, even though we were doing the exact same choreography.

At the end of the last class, we filmed what we were doing. We did one wide shot with all the characters, and we did one close-up for each character. When we watched the clips on TV, I thought, “wow, that actually looked really good!” Things really came together and that was definitely quite a rewarding experience.

Related posts:
Theatre Puppetry Workshop (Beginning): Weeks 1, 2
Theatre Puppetry Workshop (Beginning): Week 3
Theatre Puppetry Workshop (Beginning): Weeks 4, 5, 6

We continued to worked on the specifics and doing improv. There were some fun games too. There was one where we had to pick a random (fictional) movie title out of a hat and have people guess what it was. And there was another one where we did impressions of one another and then had people guess who the person was impersonating. We ended up doing inside jokes for the most part, but that was fun. Apparently I’ve developed a reputation of showing up to class late because I stopped to grab something to eat. Hm, what do you know?

Each week, we were also introduced to a different kind of puppetry. Week 4 was puppets with glove hands, like Cookie Monster, Ernie, or Trekkie Monster. One person controls the head/mouth and left hand, while another person controls the right hand. It was fun working with a partner. Little did I know that it would become my main focus in the intermediate class.

Since I was in this class, there was an extra type of puppetry that was introduced… by me. I did a little show-and-tell with some Taiwanese puppets in class. I brought several puppets and showed videos of a recent performance I went to (more on that later). Always glad to share the art form that made me fall in love with puppetry, and performance arts in general.

In Week 5, we played with a marionette. It was heavier than all the other puppets we’ve played with, since the puppet needed to have enough weight in different parts of the body to be balanced properly and have a good illusion of weight. I wish we spent more time on this. If there were a whole class on marionettes, I would be interested in taking it. Probably not this year though, unless I get really rich.

In Week 6, we played with black-light puppets. This kind of puppetry is performed in the dark. UV light is used to shine on puppets covered in fluorescent materials. The puppeteers are supposed to dress in all black, and the background is supposed to be all black too. And then you’ll just see puppets floating around. When that’s done properly, it’s very cool-looking. But of course, we didn’t really dress in all black. And we couldn’t block out all lights completely and the curtain was not black-black. So it didn’t really work well, but at least it kinda worked. That goes to show you that how important it is to prepare the venue properly when you do this kind of puppetry.

Overall, the course was a fun introduction of different types of puppetry. I think I would still recommend the TV puppetry class more. However, I am totally biased. Since I already took the TV puppetry class first, naturally I would not learn as much in this class. It’s simply the law of diminishing return. Also I am part of the Los Angeles Guild of Puppetry so I already have opportunities to be exposed to different kinds of puppetry. So perhaps it’s not entirely fair to judge which class is more valuable. I would say that it’s probably better to start with the TV class as the beginner, because you get to see your own performance on a monitor while you are doing it. You get immediately feedback for what you are working on. In theater puppetry, you have no monitor so eventually you’ll need to learn to trust your hand to do the right thing, even though there’s no visual feedback to verify it. So maybe it’s better to get the basic mechanics down in the TV class.

Related posts:
Theatre Puppetry Workshop (Beginning): Weeks 1, 2
Theatre Puppetry Workshop (Beginning): Week 3

In this class, we worked on this short musical number some more. In the last two weeks we were only doing lip-sync, but this week we were playing the karaoke track. That meant we all had to sing (or find some other way to make it interesting if we couldn’t sing). We also did some other singing exercises in different voices. It was fun to hear everyone’s non-talking voice.

I also learned this little trick of following the notes on sheet music. This means when your puppet is singing a high note, its head will point upwards and when it’s singing a low note, the head will point down more. Of course, this rule is not something that’s set in stone, but it definitely helped making the performance more expressive.

And we learned another piece of choreography that’s focused on rod manipulation. Speaking of rods, we also got to play with some Wayang golek (Indonesian rod puppets). These has some pretty unique movements and it wasn’t something that I immediately got a hang of. And I had no idea that those heads just sit on the main rod, and it wasn’t really attached so you could remove it quite easily. Who knew?

We also played with a Bunraku-style puppet (the simplified kind, not the Japanese kind). We had been working with these Muppet/Avenue Q style puppets that has no legs, so people really jumped on the chance to play with a puppet that has legs. We made it dance. We made it run. We made it leap through hurdles. And once again, although it took three people to control one puppet, somehow we all worked pretty well together.

I really enjoyed the fact that we are covering a wide range of topics. But one of the things that I enjoyed the most was when the whole class let out an enthusiastic “Yayyyyyyyyy!” after every little performance. It made the whole environment very encouraging and welcoming. Perhaps we should all do this yay thing more often.

Related post:
Theatre Puppetry Workshop (Beginning): Weeks 1, 2