Yesterday was the National Day of Puppetry and World Puppetry Day, and what a better way to kick off Puppet Spot
What is National Day of Puppetry? Check out Puppeteers of America. and for a blurb on World Puppetry Day check out Union Internationale de la Marionnette UNIMA site. You can find out more about why and how puppeteers all-over are celebrating yesterday and the rest of the month with events and so many forms of puppetry and celebrations.
Felt-A Thon
Yesterday Rachel Jackson of Vox Fabuli Puppets and Chad Allers of Crash Boom Puppets celebrated with a Felt-a-thon raising money Habitat for Humanity – Seattle King County. Using Indiegogo they successfully met their $1,000 goal and are continuing to raise money through the weekend. Although there were some problems streaming the videos they fix the problems and shared the day of making puppet videos. You can view previews of their work and perhaps soon the final videos on their YouTube site Vox Fabuli and Crash Boom Puppets.
Muppet Madness Tournament
To coincide with March Madness, Muppet Cast, Muppet Hub and Muppet Central are having their third annual Muppet Tournament. They’ve taken people’s favorite muppets from tv and film as well actors appearing in a muppet movie and placed them into brackets. Round two begins today so vote now for your favorite muppet in each bracket here.
Possible Fraggle Future?
Then entertainment and many puppet related websites and groups were actively sharing the latest news that another attempt to bring back the fraggles was making the news. According to Variety, Joseph Gordon-Levitt will produce and star in ‘Fraggle Rock’ movie. This is in partnership with New Regency, The Henson Co. and Lisa Henson. This isn’t the first attempt to bring the Fraggles which had a show co-produced by British television company Television South (TVS), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, U.S. pay television service Home Box Office and Henson Associates in the mid 80’s. Ahmet Zappa worked on a treatment 2005-2006, and Ben Folds had a video with the Fraggles in 2012.
Other items
Getting Felt Up – A puppetry pod cast has posted recently an episode of their Petrifying Puppets this time with David Bizzaro. or back on March 12th the posted a standard episode with Sean and Patrick Johnson of Swazzle.
Nick Barone’s memorial was held yesterday. Friends and Family were in attendance, along with examples of his work. While I only met him once, he and his site PuppetBuilder were a great resource for so many in the bay area and elsewhere starting out.
If you have any other news about activities on the web or near you, let me know by sending a suggestion.