The Lion King, as seen both on Broadway and in the West End features some spectacular masks, puppets and costumes. These were largely designed by Julie Taymor, an American Artist and theatre/film director. When designing the costumes and puppets for The Lion King, she didn't want to be limited to a single style and instead suggested a range of masks, puppets and costumes to create the scene. One type of puppetry used throughout the performances of The Lion King is shadow puppetry. Influenced by Indonesian Wyang Kulit puppetry, the dark, often 2D shapes are lit from behind which makes it appear as a 'shadow' which can then be moved via the puppets joints. Whilst they appear to be very simple, watching them can be quite mesmerising and extremely interesting to watch as you don't necessarily have the detail of a 'normal' puppet and yet they can tell the story just as well. Some of the puppets used in The Lion King are as big as the performers who manipulate them. For example, the Timon puppet weighs 15 pounds and has to be strapped to the person using it to get the best possible effect as they perform on the stage. There are more than 232 different puppets in the show, ranging from full sized puppets (Such as Timon) to rod puppets and of course shadow puppets.
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'Bunraku' is a traditional form of Japanese puppet theatre. It involve lifelike puppets that are usually sized between one and four feet tall that are manipulated by a number of performers; these people are sometimes hidden as was done before the 18th century however, it is much more common now to have these perfomers within the view of the audience. The 'principal' puppets are usually manipulated by three people, each of whom are in charge of either the head, the arms, legs or sometimes combinations of these elements. Having made our own versions of these puppets, I can really admire how much work goes into making the movements of the puppets as life like as possible. It takes a lot of co-ordiation and concentration to not only move your own part(s) of the puppet but to also make sure that it works in time with what the other performers as doing at the same time. We really noticed this when we practised making out puppet walk, and we had to watch and pay attention to how we walked ourselves in order to help us understand how we should move the legs of the puppet to make it as life like as possible.
Japan’s Bunraku Puppet from james n schlefer on Vimeo.
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January 2017
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