 On January 27th, Monkeybear's Harmolodic Workshop fulfilled the contingency on our MRAC Community Arts Grant!!! We raised $3,000 so MRAC funds were released to us to begin the New Puppetworks program, where 12 Native/POC artists get to create 5 to 10 minute puppet theater pieces.
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  Using Masa's masks in the final showing. Love how happy everyone is afterwards in the pics below!       That's Andrew Kim on the right. He, along with his wife, run Thingumajig Theater, based in West Yorkshire, England. He's an amazing teacher, and we can't imagine anyone else teaching this Intensive!
 Getting ready to go on stage.  I love this photo by Charissa Uemura of our last night of the 2016 Summer Intensive, it captures perfectly the complete focus and channeling of energy into inanimate objects/figures thatAndrew Kim taught us, and that Kurt Hunter imparted to us with string puppets specifically.  Giving thanks to the amazing teacher, Andrew Kim of Thingamujig Theater.   Dameun Strange improvised music the last two days of the 2016 Intensive, we were preparing a final showing of vignettes highlighting the styles of puppetry we had learned. Music is so important to puppetry.   I think we're missing 7 people in this photo. Our first Intensive was an amazing learning experience. So many emerging Native and POC emerging puppeteers in our midst now! it's not that we think everyone that takes this is going to be a puppeteer, but now they all have another notch in their tool belt with which to tell stories.
 This was about midway through the Intensive. Everyone got into groups, cut out their own shadow puppets and imrpovised some scenes. Everyday, play and improvisation!   Ended this workshop with exercises on performing with masks, everyone really inhabited their characters! How to perform when you yourself become the puppet. Masanari Kawahara and Heart of the Beast let us use their masks since we didn't own anything yet.     Making some makeshift rod puppets to practice with, with the same bamboo sticks we balanced with, some fabric, kraft paper and masking tape   Everyday we improvised with each style of puppet.
 Been meaning to get a blog started for Monkeybear since we began last year, and finally doing it a year later! This pic is from our first day of our first Intensive last summer, August 2016. Andrew Kim is an amazing workshop leader! He had us balance a bamboo stick on the tip of a finger to learn about focus. If we focused well, we balanced better: importance of total focus on the puppet. One of the many things we learned last night. I couldn't get everyone in the photo, but in the pic is Kathy Haddad, Sha cage, Jordan Hamilton, Kenji Okumura, Charissa Uemura, Eric Avery (he was just visiting, he's already an amazing puppeteer!), Brenda Bell Brown, Andrew Young, May Lee Yang, Selah, Salyy Nixon and Lil' Mike. Monkeybear Summer Puppet Performance Intensive is a 7-day long intensive on the fundamentals of puppet performance so we can have more Native and POC puppeteers. Puppetry is so white here in the U.S., we're trying to change that!!!  08/11/2016 Sha, May and Jordan bringing a piece of fabric to life....  08/11/2016 Eric Avery talking about object/abstract puppetry, he's an amazing Advisory Board Member!
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November 2023
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