PAGE 19 - PuppetMuseum.com

I
f someone had told us six months or a year ago that we
would have our first major film out, our first kid’s book out
as well as Portland Oregon’s first Puppet Museum and miniature
performing arts center, I would have said that they were stark
raving mad, and they’d eaten the wrong part of the mushroom
from Alice in Wonderland.
Yet, here we are. And HOW we got to where we are today is
our story.
•••
One of the things people always ask me is “How did you get
started in puppetry?”
Well, I crawled under the stage of a puppet theater in
Germany when I was about seven, and the puppeteer didn’t kick
me out, but let me watch the show from inside the stage. This
sparked my Mom, who is a very creative actress and artist in her
own right to start the Castle of Tiny Children, a performing troupe
at the military base where we were stationed in Germany. Using
Pelham Puppets and play books bought at the military store, we
began performing on the base and in the area surrounding it.
supplied the recorded voices and the music was taken off
my folks original classical records.
Enter Marty
In the mid ‘70s I met Marty, and that’s when his
involvement with puppetry began. He brought a technical
knowledge of building to the puppets and stages, and as
he says, “My best work is always covered up.” Moving
mouths and blinking eyes, stages made of plastic pipe
that knocked down to fit in the back of a Volvo Station
Wagon–these are all Marty’s doing. (Much of his work is
chronicled in the “Workshop” section of our website www.
puppetmuseum.com. This is a five year accounting of our
building and performing - a Blog before they were even
invented.)
Returning stateside, I continued doing puppetry until I was
in High School, and it wasn’t “cool” anymore.
Finding a Name and a Style
But needing money for the senior prom (our family was not
doing financially well at the time), my high school art and drama
teachers suggested I take up puppetry again since there wasn’t
anything like it in Port Angles, Washington, when I was 17. My dad
and mom helped me put the theater together and my sister-in-law
helped me with the voices, all recorded on a old Wollensak tape
deck. When we moved to Beaverton, Oregon the next year, I
advertised for birthday parties under the name of Olde World
Children’s Theater, and was hired by the Beaverton Mall to do
holiday shows. The mall folks though the name was misleading
since I was performing with puppets, so I changed it to Olde World
Puppet Theatre, and my sister did the original graphics for the new
name on business cards and fliers.
I have always been drawn to the fantasy realm of literature
and read Lord of the Rings almost yearly when I was younger so
it seemed to fit into the puppet theater. I wrote 12 interlocking
original plays in the fantasy theme for the theater; my family
Steve Overton and Marty Richmond
PAGE 19
We moved to Hawaii, opening a theater there, but after a year
returned to the mainland, moving to Pacifica in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Thus started the California years, probably the most formative years of our
lives and in the life of the Olde World Puppet Theatre.
Early Influences
We got to know the members of what we like to call the California
puppetry “Mafia”: First we met Frank Paris at a puppetry convention, who
in turn introduced us to Bob Baker, Sky HighChief, René and Tony Urbano.
We also had the chance to meet other superstars of the puppetry world,
such as Bil Baird, and Shari Lewis. Knowing and working with these major
artists opened up a whole new world of puppetry– to vaudeville, cabaret
and standup improv, quite different from my medieval and renaissance
puppetry.
I worked with René on his show for Knott’s Berry Farm; met Shari
Lewis at Disneyland and received the gift of a Lambchop hand puppet;
collaborated with Frank Paris on a number of projects, including his work
on Madame for Wayland Flowers (we refurbished her wig and put the stars
in her eyes, later going to see Wayland perform at a local LA nightclub.)
Marty and I lived in San
Francisco, but went down to
visit Frank in Los Angeles
over and over. I was in my
really early 20’s and became
the darling of the California
marionette artists. They were
very influential and weren’t shy
in any way; all of them were
looking to preserve the art of
marionette performing.
They told me that first of
all I built really ugly females,
and second of all, I was lazy.
Sure, I was a good artist and
a good sculptor, but if I would
just take more time, maybe
my puppets wouldn’t look like
they were costumed in ‘50s ball
gowns that were recycled from
my mom’s closet. I took their
advice, and my costumes have
become one of my trademarks,
both for their elaborate nature
and the attention paid to their
detail.
People began recognizing us as puppet
curators, and other puppeteers were not afraid
to send us their puppets, knowing that they
would be well cared for as well as being lovingly
displayed. We’re proud of breathing life into our
exhibits, for after all, the skill of a puppeteer is
to create the illusion of life in a puppet, and we
brought that to our displays as well. This was
followed by displays for a P of A regional as well
as national festivals.
In the Movies
Living in California led to some work in the
movies as well. George Lucas was doing special
effects for a Blake Edwards movie called Skin
Deep with John Ritter. My agent at the time
called me and said that they needed a puppeteer.
I went up and interviewed for the position and
got the job. It turned out that they also wanted to
consult with me as well, since they were building
a very special type of puppet for the movie. What
they wanted was a glow-in-the-dark light saber
prophylactic for John Ritter to use in a scene in
the movie. It was to be used in a Busby Berkeley
type number in the film. I helped them design
and build the “puppet” and also helped direct
the scene. To this day, anyone who remembers
seeing the film remembers little or nothing about
it except for that scene. Kind of off the wall for a
children’s puppeteer.
We were featured on some local TV shows
including Evening Magazine as well as some
local cable access shows. We later found out that
one set of shows we did were sold to a foreign
network and were seen across Canada.
Coming Back Home to Oregon
Steve in his early 20’s
This was when Marty and I
took the time and learned the Neoprene casting technique from Frank and
Bob Baker. To this day, we still cast most of our heads, hands and feet and
sometimes torsos out of this material. Puppet parts we made from Neoprene
in the ‘80s still look like the day we first made them and are just as strong.
•••
During our 10 years in California, we were members of the San
Francisco Bay Area Puppeteers Guild, where we started a program for
teachers, librarians, mall event directors and others interested in puppetry
to come and meet puppeteers and to see just what their shows were like.
We opened our first indoor theater in Pacifica in the old firehouse. We
rashly promised a new show every six weeks (a goal we met for an entire
season) as well as performing in Ghiradelli Square in the heart of San
Francisco.
We were also Macy’s puppet company performing at their 11 Bay Area
stores setting up our shows surrounded by racks of pants, women’s scarves,
kids shoes or housewares.
Exhibit Curators
We also started doing exhibits for various clients, including the San
PAGE 20
Mateo County Fair. They had a lot of space to
fill, and they wanted lots of puppets. Our signs
included documentation about the puppets to
give the visitors a better idea of what they were
viewing.
In 1992, we relocated back to Portland. Both
of our families were living here by now, so it was
a giant family reunion. We almost immediately
opened yet another puppet theater, this one at
Mall 205. We were placed in a vacant store, of
which they had several, and were sponsored by
the Mall Merchant’s Association to draw visitors
into the mall. Every time they signed a lease for
our store, we moved down the mall into another
one. We were doing shows every other weekend
along with displays surrounding the audience.
Finally, a new mall manager was hired and
we were no longer in their plans, so we moved
across Portland to the Jantzen Beach Mall and
kept doing our series, The Tales of Belvuria,
sometimes in the middle of the mall, and
sometimes in yet another empty store. Each of
the tales stands alone and tells a bit about life in
Belvuria, but all of them feature the same cast of
characters, off on a new adventure.
We also continued doing the traditional
puppetry events like elementary schools, birthday
parties, church suppers, holiday bazaars, special
events, and grand openings.
“Puppet It All...”
In 1996, Portland had a flood. The rivers rose well above their banks
causing water havoc all around downtown. One of the places hardest hit was
the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, or OMSI as it is affectionately
known here in Portland. Although it was housed in a comparatively new
building, it had been built over an old electric generating plant, whose
basements had never been entirely cleaned out. The resulting mix of flood
water, old oil and goo fouled the entire first floor of the museum creating a
hazmat situation, and they had to close for several weeks.
To bring visitors back after their reopening, we were contracted
by OMSI to stage a huge puppet extravaganza called The Incredible,
Fascinating Wonderful World of Puppets. They gave us their largest exhibit
hall, along with all of the hallways and corridors in the building and said
“Puppet it ALL”
So, we did! Included were three months of performances by
puppeteers from all over the United States in their auditorium, along with
lectures and demonstrations. Plus, they were all paid their full rack rate, so
it was a real boost to the local puppet economy. It was the largest puppet
event ever held on the west coast, drawing some 70,000 visitors at a time
when OMSI sorely needed them.
Perseus all over the shop
This was followed by a similar, albeit smaller event at the Cannon
Beach Historical Society, on the Oregon Coast, called The Magic World
of Puppets. The focus here was on the puppets of the Oregon coast, and it
featured shows and displays as well.
Puppetry On the Web
Around this same time, we started www.puppetmuseum.com,
pioneering puppetry on the Worldwide Web. Over the last 13 years, the
web site has grown to be one of the largest puppet websites in the world
with several hundred pages and visitors from over 100 countries. An early
feature was a week-by-week account of activity in our shop, starting in
early 2001 and ending in early 2007. It was a blog before they were even
invented. There are many pages devoted to plaster casting and working with
Neoprene for those who are interested, as well as moving eye and mouth
mechanisms. Just click on the “Workshop” tab on the top of the main page.
Marty Richmond & Bill Holznagel mixing plaster
There are also lots of pictures of exhibits we have done, especially for
Tears of Joy Theatre at their performing space in downtown Portland at the
Winningstad Theatre as well as at the Furstenburg Center in Vancouver,
Washington.
Collaborations
Here in Portland, we also began building puppets for commercial
clients like Nike, Barq’s Root Beer, and the puppets for Walt Disney World’s
Hunchback of Notre Dame stage show that was seen by over 21 million
people during its seven year run.
When we first located back here in Portland, the late Janet Bradley was
a little wary of us, afraid that we were going to steal business away from her
theater, Tears of Joy. Over time she came to realize that we weren’t going
after the same clientele at all; at first a tentative truce was established,
followed by a friendship that lasted until her death.
We were jointly responsible in holding up the Columbia Association
of Puppeteers (CAP), the local P of A guild, swapping the President, Vice
President, Secretary, and Treasurer positions at times when no one else
wanted to hold them.
The friendship led to our building the puppets for their show, The
Adventures of Perseus, which is being featured again this winter as part of
their family series in downtown Portland.
We had to step down from the CAP when we started working on our
first movie, Witch Key, a Prince’s Adventure, for we knew that it would be a
challenging project and we would have to devote all of our energies to it.
Our last gift to CAP was to shut down production on our movie for
three months and devote all of our time to CAPs adult Cabaret, Diamonds
to Duct Tape - a part of the Northwest Region’s Rolling Regional Festival.
Here in our studio, we laid out the stage floor exactly like it was at the
performing venue so that the acts could rehearse their segments. We also
Lots of Perseus Neoprene parts ready for painting
planned the lighting and special effects that
accompanied each of the acts. The cabaret was an
overwhelming success and it raised quite a bit of
money for the CAP scholarship fund.
Making Movies of Our Own
Why did we decide to film one of our
traveling shows as a DVD movie? Well, for a long
time, we tried to interest major studio releasing
organizations to bankroll our efforts to bring
one of our stories to DVD, but to no avail. So, we
decided to do it ourselves. Persons of influence
in the media told us that if anyone was going to
front us the money to proceed, we would have
to invest some of our own money to show that
we were serious, and to prove that we had the
capability to produce a DVD movie. Thus started
a four year adventure in filming one of our tales,
Witch Key, for release. This wasn’t a film of a
staged puppet show, but an actual movie using
marionettes as the actors in the story. We began
to build new puppets, storyboard the action in the
PAGE 21
movie, plan the camera
shots, build the sets to
fit the puppets, and then
film each scene or piece
of each scene until it was
just how we wanted it to
be on the film. Then we
took down one set and
replaced it with the next
one.
People who helped
us in the project were
Steve’s Mom (Bobbi)
and Dad (Ken), Dan
DeMoy, Jason Ropp –a
very skilled marionette
and rod puppet
animator,and one of the
younger puppeteers to
whom we had taught
the skills of neoprene
“Witch Key, a Prince’s Adventure “
casting, computer wizard
DVD Cover
Geordie Humphrey,
and Samantha Anne Maggio, a gift from heaven who has
an extreme art background and who dressed the sets to
perfection.
Enchantra’s front garden set for the Witch Key DVD,
One of the difficulties of making the movie was the
limited ceiling height in our studio. Since we were working
with marionettes and their strings, we had to be suspended
over the sets to manipulate the puppets, and the ceiling was so
low that we had to crouch on the bridges to perform.
Once the movie was finished, we sent it off to our media
contacts and found all the doors were locked and bolted. The
earlier expressions of interest had turned to dust.
We also found out that the music rights that we had
performed under as a traveling marionette company were not
valid for use in making a DVD movie, and the music owners
wanted extortionate amounts of money for their use in this
way. One of the music owners wanted $7.00 per DVD for the
music rights to 11 minutes of music. So, yet another roadblock.
Since the music and dialogue had long since been mixed
together, the only thing we could do was to find new music
and re-record the vocal soundtrack, and mix it all together to
replace what we already had.
PAGE 22
Since most of the music we have used over the years
is classical, often a child’s first introduction to it, we went
searching for free classical music on the web. We found a
wonderful resource in www.musopen.org, which has a great
repertoire of classical selections with no copyright restrictions
or royalties to pay. Just download your favorites and they’re
yours to use in any project you may be working on. In most
cases, the overall quality is really hard to tell from other more
famous orchestras.
We used local actors and actresses from here in Portland,
and by listening to the old soundtrack we were able to match
the dialogue to fit the old one. We were also able to fit in a
few new lines which helped to explain the story a little better.
Then we went into the recording studio and recorded the new
voice track which we married to the existing film. Although
the new voices and music took a bit of getting used to, the new
music propels the story along in a much better way and we’re
really pleased with the results. We were able to release the film
independently last summer. It is available for purchase on our
web site, www.belvuria.com, at the P of A book store and for
rental or purchase at www.amazon.com.
Opening the Museum
Once we had finished the movie, we were left with an
empty studio, and we decided that it was time to implement a
life long dream of ours and open Ping Pong’s Pint Size Puppet
Museum. The room is only 16 x 32 feet big, so each exhibit is
pint size, but so far each has had over 100 puppets on display.
We planned each exhibit to last two months, since we didn’t
have glass cases to house them all, and we were concerned
about light fading the costumes of the puppets, if they were on
display for too long.
We discovered that most visitors to the museum expected
that there would also be puppet shows as well, and since we
happened to have a nice-sized back yard, we turned it into
a performance garden to hold about 50 people at a time.
Here in Oregon that space can only be used some of the year,
before it gets too wet and cold. So, in the winter months (i.e.
October to June)
the performances
are held inside the
museum itself, with
seating for about
25-30 people. So far,
shows from Jason
Ropp’s Dragon
Theater Puppets,
Tendrak Theatre, The
Olde World Puppet
Theatre and Emily
Alexander have been
presented.
We opened the
museum in May,
2012. It is open
four days a week,
Thursday through
Sunday from 2:00
- 8:00 pm. The
highlights of the
Olde World building with Puppet Museum
first exhibit, Stars
signs in place.
of Stage & Screen
included the first puppets (built by Frank Paris) ever seen on
the Howdy Doody Show, a lighting double of Topo Gigio, the
Lambchop hand puppet that was given to us by Shari Lewis,
and an original Will Vinton diorama. There was also movie
memorabilia like the original program from the Dark Crystal,
girls to read about another little girl who took responsibility
of her own and meet the challenges that were put in front of
her as she went on her own adventure. I did a part of a chapter
a day and sent it over to Marty to edit, which he did and then
sent it back to me. This process helped me set out a clearer
version of the story. The book ended up being much more
elaborate than the original
play, with many more
characters than what we
could perform live in a half
hour.
“Nuts about Nutcracker” exhibit - Ping Ping’s Pint Size Puppet Museum
2012
and the first Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog hand puppets
ever produced as toys, as well as some larger puppets that we
built here for other companies that were seen on local Portland
Stage. This exhibit was extremely popular among seniors
and people in their fifties because we took them back to their
childhoods.
The next exhibit was Favorite Fairy Tales, where we
enchanted the building with props and sets from Witch
Key and kids had to look around bushes and fountains and
waterfalls and peek through trees to find dragons, and witches
and even the puppets from Tears of Joy’s Perseus. So it was a
really fun exhibit for the little kids. It also included puppets by
Albrecht Roser and early Steiff hand puppets.
Puppets from our first book and movie, including
Enchantra the Witch were there as well. She’s a collector of
fairy tale memorabilia, and the rafters of her house are lined
with her collection. Enchantra’s Fairy Tale Challenge was
a big hit with kids and adults alike. They had to guess the 12
fairy tales depicted in miniature on the museum wall, with
prizes awarded to those who could guess them all.
Legends of the Exotic East came next. It featured puppets
from Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Myanmar
(Burma), Nepal, and Vietnam. We set up QR Codes so that you
could see 12 examples of the exhibits come to life on the screen
of your Internet-capable cell phone. We believe we are one of
the first museums anywhere to offer this special capability.
A Book
We also found time to write a book featuring one of our
other Tales of Belvuria. The Enchanted Ring, A Princess’s
Adventure was the retelling of a show of ours that we used to
perform for little girl’s birthday parties. Our movie, Witch Key,
a Princes’ Adventure, focused on the Prince of Belvuria, so we
figured that we should also have something for little girls as
well. Like JK Rowling, Ursula LaGuinn, Terry Pratchett, and
Lloyd Alexander’s series for young readers, we decided to set
up the book at third and fourth grade reading level, because
we figured that that was where they could begin to get into
adventure.
We shot photos of the
puppets that were in the
stage show in sets from the
old live shows. This gave
the book the same feel
as the movie. The newer
characters that were in
the book but not in the
original story–like the
Pixies who think they’re
all little pirates and the
fairies who think they’re
all Lord of the Rings
elves, and the Witches
who are all extremely
crazy– I had to do in
paintings to match
the other characters. The printed version
of
the book is available as an 86 page laser-printed, spiral-bound
edition on our website. Kindle, Nook and other e-book and
.pdf download versions are available. A free sample chapter
as well as ordering information are available at: www.belvuria.
com.
We are also lurching our way forward into social media
where Olde World Puppet Theatre Studios is on Facebook, and
www.youtube/user/pingpong97202 is our YouTube address, and
our websites are www.belvuria.com and www.puppetmuseum.
com.
•••
Changes
We’ve seen the face of puppetry change a lot over the past
30 years.
When we began there was no Internet, no YouTube, no
Facebook, no e-mail, no DVD’s and digital photography was
still over the horizon.
To contact clients, letters were written and mailed; if
photos were included, film was first taken down to the local
kiosk for developing and printing (with most pictures thrown
away as unusable). Make your own DVD or movie on a desktop
computer? Surely you jest -- You hired people with cameras
and editing equipment to film your performances and paid
them a lot of money to put them on VHS tapes.
With all these changes, the only constant has been the
puppets themselves. They still hang around patiently waiting
for their time on stage – ready to delight and amaze children of
all ages.
I decided to write the book as if it was the screenplay of
our next movie. In the original story, the little Princess sat in
her ivory tower as the Knight went off to rescue her favorite toy
that had been stolen by the Witch. However, in the book, she
straps on a set of her brother’s armor and goes with the Knight
for an adventure all her own. Since this is the age of the girl
power story, I thought that the plot twist would empower little
PAGE 23
OLDE WORLD
PUPPET THEATRE
Scenes from their video,
“Witch Key, a Prince’s Tale”
Left: Sterling and Prince Aaron in
the garden
Charlemagne the Dragon has Prince Aaron in a cage
Enchantra, the Witch
Scenes from the shop. Olde World worked with Tears of Joy (also in Portland) to create puppets for the TOJ production of
“The Adventures of Perseus.”