films
giving voice with vision
workshop and community projects
puppetmasters Green Ginger offer a new form of cultural exchange.
An attempt to record attitudes to issues around the world with puppets.
The first -ACTING STRANGE-
In a school in the Rhondda Valleys, fifteen 17-year-old drama students were audio recorded during a puppet-workshop, talking and improvising on the themes of gender, sexuality and marriage.
Many hours of audio recording were distilled into a 9 minutes of filmable material. A set of teenage puppets was commissioned and a functioning video-studio assembled in an arts center nearby. Over a week the students manipulated the puppets and made the music for the film which was shown at their school on the final day.
The success of this video has encouraged us to give voice to other communities. The themes explored may vary, the intention is to make an entertaining record of young people’s lives, in the medium of a comic puppet programme.
Variations may include making the puppets with the group, or working with different age-groups or in languages other than english.
Each commission will involve an early audio team visit, leaving time to edit and prepare purpose-made puppets to represent the students.
There may well be a television company component in the future funding of such visits.
