Unraku-ers Andrew and Robin were in the UK last week and had the chance to meet several puppeteers based in and around London and see to fantastic puppet shows. First was Warhorse, an incredible collaboration between the UK’s National Theatre and South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company. Warhorse tells the story of a boy named Albert and his beloved horse Joey set against the backdrop of World War I and features life-size, incredibly realistic horse puppets.

They were also thrilled to visit the Little Angel Theatre, “the home of British puppetry” and the only permanent puppet theatre in England. They caught a performance of the Little Angel’s current show, The Fabulous Flutterbys, and were treated to a backstage tour afterward.

They had a great time and hope that more of Unraku will be traveling across the pond with a show of our own sometime soon!

We made this fun little remix of Neil Cicierega’s The Mysterious Ticking Noise (one of the most popular YouTube videos of all time) as part of a demo for a puppet building video podcast we were developing last year. Since our inspiration was a YouTube video, we tried to shoot it in a style that would retain the feel of user generated content. The finger puppets in the video were hand crocheted and we tried to make the puppetry well staged, but slightly amateurish…which wasn’t much of a stretch since making finger puppets look good on camera is a lot harder than it looks!

Special thanks go out to Melissa Mall for developing the Pocket Potter Puppet Pals patterns we based these finger puppets on and of course to Neil Cicierega for The Mysterious Ticking Noise and all of his other hilarious “Potter Puppet Pals” videos.

Since the beginning of February we’ve been doing a series of weekly workshops with a team of eight new puppeteers we’ve recruited for some upcoming projects we’re developing at the Unraku Studio. Like the rest of the company, our new puppeteers come from a variety of backgrounds including theatre, dance, animation and puppetry. Each week they’ve been learning the basics of on-camera puppetry; how to perform using video monitors and how to use different types of puppets, including simple rod puppets, Bunraku-style full table top characters and more traditional hand and rod TV puppets.

The group recently did an exercise we (well, Andrew) dubbed “Monster Shakespeare” that involved each puppeteer selecting, memorizing and staging a monologue, sonnet or soliloquy by William Shakespeare. They then took turns performing each piece using some hand and rod Monster puppets we have at the studio for puppetry practice. You can see the results above.

Although a few of our group of eight have performed puppet theatre, none of them have any significant on-camera puppetry experience so it’s very exciting to see everyone steadily getting better and better each week. The workshops are scheduled to run through at least the end of August and we can’t wait to see how good our new recruits will be by the end of the summer!

All of us at Unraku were thrilled to see Stacey’s puppets featured on the U.S. morning talk show The View!

Last year Stacey – who outside of her work with Unraku is pretty much the reigning Finger Puppet Queen of Etsy – was commissioned by the web’s most popular handmade craft marketplace to create a set of hand puppet caricatures of The View’s co-hosts Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Sherri Shepherd and Barbara Walters. The puppets were a special thank-you gift for Joy Behar, who wrote an article for Etsy’s blog.

The puppets were put in to service on the show last  week in a segment sending up some comments that Ricky Gervais had made during a recent interview on The View (and no, it wasn’t Stacey or anyone else from Unraku performing them). You can watch the entire segment on The View’s official web site (the puppets come in at about the 1:30 mark). Stacey also has a photoset her The View puppets on Flickr.

All of the ladies of The View seem to love their puppets and Stacey even got a “Promotion consideration provided by staceyrebecca.etsy.com” credit at the end of the show. Way to go Stacey!

We wrapped up 2009 in style with the start of what we hope will become a tradition – the Unraku Christmas Party! And the studio has been buzzing since the start of the new year with the usual Unraku crew and a talented team of newfound creative collaborators who have joined us to help out with our latest project.

We can’t say too much about what we’re working on just yet, but we’re posting work-in-progress pictures on Twitpic and short videos on 12Seconds.tv. If you like to take a peek at what we’re working on follow @Unraku on Twitter.

It’s time for the One Of A Kind Show in Toronto again!

Unraku itself doesn’t have a booth, but you can come down to the Direct Energy Centre at Exhibition Place in Toronto and see the handiwork of several Unrakuers until December 6th. Robin has Sock Monkeys, Sock Puppets, T-Shirts, Buttons, and a whole whack of other intensely coveted items (including some Kristi’s knitted Knoggin puppets!) at booth V-09. Meanwhile, Kelly has her beautiful handcrafted puppets and lucky rabbits at booth U-31. Also keep an eye out for our friends Joanne Bigham (Open Door Designs), Joel Brubacher (Banjo Puppets) and Steven Barkley (Diablo Puppets) who are also there selling their puppetry wares.

Throughout the show the rest of the Toronto Unraku crew can be found floating around OOAK and ‘Boothsitting’ for Robin and Kelly, which is really just us playing with puppets and smiling at strangers – two things we excel at!

For more information on the One of a Kind Show (where it is and how close you are able to park in order to minimize present-overloaded trips to your car) visit www.oneofakindshow.com/xmas09/

See you there!

We spent this past spring and summer doing a series of improv workshops and rehearsals under the guidance of Robin and Stacey (who outside of Unraku is one of half of the improv puppet duo Die Puppet Die). Although most of the scenes we did were very rough and just for rehearsal and training purposes, a few of them like this one about time travel really cracked us up!

We’ve returned from our weekend at the Central Canada Comic Con in Winnipeg, where we spent three days hanging out with Stormtroopers, making friends with super heroes and performing puppets from our soon-to-be-released new show. Over 20,000 people attended the convention, which was a huge success for the organizers. The crowds were fun, the costumes were great and most of us even had a little time to explore downtown Winnipeg.

We’ve uploaded a small smattering of photos from Unraku’s weekend in Winnipeg on Flickr so you can see some of what we were up to.

Also, congratulations to Alyssa Carpio of Winnipeg, the winner of our free draw for an 8GB iPod Touch!

We’re hitting the open road, er, skies this morning and jetting off to Winnipeg!

We’ll be in The `Peg all weekend long injecting a little Unraku puppet zaniness in to The Central Canada Comic Con. We’ll be doing a little puppet improv, interacting with the crowds and riffing with some of the characters from a new show we’ve been developing since the summer.

If you’re in town for the convention, stop by our booth, say “hi” and fill out a ballot for your chance to win an iPod Touch and an iTunes Gift Certificate just because, well, you’re awesome!

Mathieu saving the day in broken lighting equipment armour.

Mathieu came from Montreal to help us get settled, and everyone in Toronto got down to business. Keys were lost. Keys were found, and when they weren’t, bolt cutters entered the picture. The point is, we had the tools to get the job done!

Highlights of our new space include a loft shop area, which is full of fabulous things like jars of eyeballs and much-coveted bags of fun fur and hands on sticks. We still need to make a shopping trip for some sewing necessities like black thread, but in general, it is a feast for a puppet-makers eyes!

On the main level we have an amazingly comfy couch, areas to film and edit and a mini-fridge and a mouse I affectionately call “Horace”. He likes pizza and potato chips. A lot. And he’s not so good at sharing.

So here we are, a big, slightly wacky bunch, with glints in our eyes, eyes on our hands, hands in the mini fridge, and a mini fridge in our new home.