How to take the Shadow Puppet Renderings and Use them to make the shadow puppet Prototypes for [Dreamer] Project: an Undocuplay

UPDATE!: So, as of this week the test puppets were approved as the finished size, so the shadow puppets we are making will be done with 1 sheet of foam core (Ariadne, Theseus & Ship) or 2 pieces (Dionysus, Leopard & Minotaur). I have designed these for the “Ariadne’s Story” portion of the film version of Kathleen Normington’s [Dreamer] Project: an Undocuplay we are doing under her direction. (Images of my designs are available in printable PDFs below, or can also be accessed at Google Photos: The Dreamer Project.) Based on what was done in the previous stage play version at SJSU most of the shadow puppets were about the size of a sheet of foam core or slightly larger. The puppets will be used with rear lighting or projections on our scrim in our PAC Mainstage Theatre and filmed.

Shows the shadow puppet cut froom foam core with grid marks. — Ariadne Puppet by Aissa Simbulan before painting and sticks

What I’d like you Manifesto Interns to do will be to make a puppet each to that standard foam core size by printing out the renderings on paper as specified on each sketch. (mostly letter size 8.5×11″ but a few on legal size 8.5×14″) Jeremy should start with Theseus and Aissa should start with Ariadne for the “test” versions. Then the page 1 piece sketch should be gridded using the method below: Take photos of what you do for each of the steps for later posting to the Manifesto as a blog post for your internship projects and/or use in your portfolio.

After gridding up from the 8.5×11 to the full size piece of foam core, cut out the parts with a snap knife or Exacto blade and carve in the details as best you are able based on these two sketches:

If I get a third person, (Gwen or Ryan, I mean you) who is up for this, I’d like to start with you making Theseus’ ship: Which has only one page as it does not have moving parts:

Theseus ship with which he abandons Ariadne on Naxos.

This also can be gridded up and made the size of a full sheet of dollar store foam core. These don’t have to be perfect, but they would be desirable to have within a week delivered to the DVC Scene shop for Scott Heiden and the other light/film/director/etc folks to test out. After this test is done we can then find out if the shadow puppets need to be bigger, smaller or the same.

When we know what sizes we need, we will then need to make ones based on that plan for all the characters in Ariadne’s Story: We have the Minotaur who Theseus kills:

Cutting Diagram for the Main body parts of the Minotaur

Then there is the God Dionysus who finds the abandoned Ariadne on the beach in Naxos, marries her and makes her a goddess:

The god Dionysus you of course will know as the Greek god of Theatre, Wine and Orgasm. However he has an attribute that you may not know, of being associated with spotted cats like leopards and panthers. In some versions of the legend he comes in on a chariot pulled by leopards or panthers, in others he appears as a leopard, and Ariadne rides off on him in leopard form to Mount Olympus where they are married and live an eternal life. Other versions have him appear on the beach as a leopard and reveal himself to Ariadne as the handsome young god. Since the dreamers’ stories in the play are all of Central American childhood arrivals, our Dionysus more closely resembles the Mayan deity Tezcatlipoca who has many of the same attributes, most notably transforming into a jaguar/panther. We will be making a leopard/panther version that is jointed in a way to be able to stand up, and then switch puppets to transform into the handsome extra tall god Dionysus.