Castlemaine State Festival ‘Let me hear your body talk’ Puppet shows
Terence Jaensch invited me to perform two short puppetry pieces for the Castlemaine State Festival ‘Let me hear your body talk’ Literary Program. Lachlan Plain and I revised ‘Adam’s rib’ that I created for a Puppetry slam and we created ‘Blue Skies’ especially for this event. Terence curated a fabulous array of performers to tell stories through art forms other than written narrative, the program included dance, poetry and a male soprano. In ‘Adam’s rib’ I tell the story of a childhood friend with two skeleton baby puppets I made and ‘Blue Skies’ is set in a nursing home with Lachlan and myself playing nurses to an elderly man writing his memoirs. I become the elderly man puppet’s young love in a dance hall and Lachlan becomes the puppet’s younger self. I made this puppet for my show ‘Death at Intervals’ and he was so popular I wanted to give him another life. I think both works utilise puppets’ ability to take an audience to emotional depths that they may resist with human actors. The festival is well worth visiting and Castlemaine is a beautiful town. The photos are by Julie Millowick.
