Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545257
PROPERTYMASTERSGUILD.ORG 27 M y love of puppetry started at a very young age. I was a member of my church's puppet ministry and even owned my own puppet, Esther. We would fabricate new types of puppets and fun little props, but it was never anything serious. Many years later, puppets reemerged in a professional context through animatronics and foam fabrication. Some of the most talented artists in the business came out from Los Angeles, CA, to Charlottesville, VA, and joined with the Stan Winston School of Character Arts in teaching a bunch of students from the University of Virginia how to make movie monsters. Shane Mahan (Legacy Effects), Ted Haines (Legacy Effects), Peter Weir Clarke (ADI and Legacy Effects), and Shannon Shea (Stan Winston Studio), alongside Matt Winston, brought industry-level expertise in practical puppetry and effects into the classroom, shaping my foundation in the craft. We built Winston, a giant antlike creature, that we walked all over the UVA campus one night. That was the moment I truly fell in love with puppetry. Soon after that course was over, I was asked to build and design three puppets for a new play called The Forgetting River. Though there weren't a ton of puppet props in the play, the actors interacted with the puppets almost as props themselves. It was a challenging process to work with the performers on how they needed the puppets to move, but also how the puppets were going to be used in the play itself. Charon, the boatman, ended up being the most complicated because of the two puppeteers manipulating him, as well as the props that Charon had to hold. I ended up sculpting his head, hands, and feet out of foam, and used the body of a skeleton covered in expanding foam to build out his form. I then covered his entire body in latex to give it an aged, withered look. Cerberus was the most fun building. I decided that he was going to be worn by his puppeteer. I sculpted the head (L-R): FRANK LANGLEY, CATHERINE ADELL, ADRIAN LEONARD OF YAMASONG: MARCH OF THE HOLLOWS PUPPETEERING GETA