1. Brad Williams.
I started out with puppetry pretty amateurishly, with my best friend in his basement, making lip-syncing puppet bands to pre-recorded music, but never managed to emerge past that during my high school years. Puppetry during college was pretty much non-existant, until I was offered an acting internship at Hope Summer Repertory Theatre in 1989. It was that summer that I met Brad Williams, a Holland, MI-area artist, graduate of Hope College, and Hope Summer Repertory Theatre alum. Brad had this alter-ego named Zabar, an alien from the planet Plootah, who crash landed to earth and had been with Brad ever since. The artistry of this puppet was unlike anything I had seen in person. Brad was a really good friend and creative mentor whose life was cut short by a tragic automobile accident.
Brad's creations: (L to R) Zabar, Brad's Alter-ego; Lady Liberty, who would serenade the HSRT company every July 4th at company meeting; and Ebenezer, the antagonist from the Nickelodeon TV production called Pinwheel.
The fall after I graduated from undergraduate school, I was offered the chance to assist Brad in the design and construction of the larger-than-life creatures for the Hope College Theatre/Hope Summer Repertory Theatre holiday joint-production of The Nutcracker/A Play. A room in the lower level of the theatre was converted into our sanctuary and Brad went to work, with me right behind him all the way. I learned so much in a very small amount of time.
One of my main duties was to lay out the patterns that Brad would create on the expensive air-conditioning filter foam (or Scott Foam) to make sure we were getting the most of each sheet. Budgeting and efficiency even make their way into the artistry of puppetry.
I patiently remove excess foam from the arm-hole of a mouse costume before assembly.
Brad would create the patterns by manipulating a cheaper white mattress foam into his various whimsical creations, pinching and folding it, then cutting and gluing until he got the desired effect. There was lots of trial and error, as there usually is with someone creative. I remember the first attempt at a mouse head came out looking something like a large foam wooden shoe. I would take this early prototype with me to school visit where we would talk about the process. Eventually, though, as you can see, he was able to match the crude materials to his vision.
The foam and Celastic under-carriage of the nutcracker doll (left) and the finished mattress-foam prototype of the mice. This would eventually be disassembled and mass-copied onto it's final form in the gray Scott Foam.
After the Scott-foam pieces were cut out, they were assembled with contact cement and were ready for the final phase, detail airbrushing. This is the three-headed mouse prince, nearly assembled.
The completed three-headed mouse prince. After airbrushing, motorcycle helmets were attached to the inside of the head to allow for movement control by the actors and to provide a space for the electronics (Yes, each mouse costume had red eyes that glowed in the dark!)
I, along with the master electrician, Erik Alberg, were responsible for the installation of the electronics for the eyes, as well as the recharging of the batteries (a time consuming challenge) and the maintenance of the mouse costumes. Meanwhile, Brad worked pretty much single-handedly on the large spider rod-puppet.
Rising at about 10-12 feet at it's full height, this fully-articulated rod puppet had 8 individually controlled limbs, swiveled at the abdomen and had a fully articulated mouth, all controlled by 4-5 muscular gentlemen and the woman who provided the voice.
Mouserinks and her brood trap the hero, Christian (Brian Byrnes) in the tunnels of Mousalia. From the Hope College Theatre/Hope Summer Repertory Theatre Production of The Nutcracker/A Play by David Hammond. (Photo credit: Louis Schakel)
Click here to learn about the next phase of my puppetry design education, designing on my own.
