Monkey attends first Baba Shakespeare rehearsal

This afternoon I took Monkey Number One along to rehearsal for the first time, and although the strings and control still need tweaking and the puppet needs to be decorated and the joints soldered, we were able to get a feel for how the monkeys will fit into Act One Scene Three and interact with the rest of the cast.  Emma and I were delighted to meet our Monkey Wallah, Asif, and to begin working with him and to hear his suggestions as to what the monkey performance might entail.  Just to explain, a monkey wallah is a man who earns his livelihood from busking with performing monkeys, and is a common sight in India.  In Baba Shakespeare the monkey wallah appears with his two monkeys when the Buckinghams' car has broken down by the side of the road, and he wants them to pay for a performance, which they eventually agree to, despite being hard up themselves.

Our Monkey Wallah, Asif, has first-hand experience of monkeys, having had one as a pet, so we're confident he won't mind having puppet monkeys jumping on him, and will also be able to give us useful feedback about whether the marionettes are moving and behaving like real monkeys.

Emma, Asif and I will rehearse separately from the rest of the scene in order to devise our five to ten minute monkey performance, which will then slot into the main rehearsals, but it was important today to get an idea of how it will all fit together.

Stringing the monkey

I want to get Monkey Number One on its strings today, to see how it works as a marionette and whether I need to make any alterations before I paint it.  It's an exciting moment when the puppet comes to life for the first time and you begin to find out how it moves and see its character emerging.
Here is Monkey Number One admiring herself in the mirror for the first time.  There is still work to be done (painting, adding ears, soldering the joints and so on) but it is encouraging to discover that all the work so far has been along the right lines and that the puppet does look and move like a monkey.  I'm going to take her to a Baba Shakespeare rehearsal tomorrow to meet the cast and to walk through Act One Scene Three for the first time with Emma, who will be operating her, and Asif, our newly found Monkey Wallah.

Losing weight

Now comes the slightly scary step of hollowing out the head and torso in order to reduce the weight of the puppet.  This involves splitting these parts in half with chisel and mallet, drilling out the middle sections and then sticking it all back together again with wood glue.  This makes the puppet significantly lighter, which is good news for the puppeteer.

The head just after splitting in two

Hollowing out the centre of the head

Recovering post surgery

Splitting the torso in half

Torso before hollowing out

The Birth of Monkey Number Two

Today I am cutting out all the pieces required for Monkey Number Two, which is going to be the slightly larger male monkey.  It will be much quicker to carve this puppet, since it is essentially a scaled-up replica of the first, and I have already solved all the technical conundrums.  Here is Monkey Number One (still to be named) reclining on the block of jelutong from which her companion will emerge.  A curious mutation of the Genesis creation story!

I have found the enlargement function on my photocopier to be an invaluable tool for scaling up my original designs.  These are then transferred on to the wood using carbon paper and tracing paper.  It takes some thought to determine the configuration that makes best use of the wood.

A good few hours later, here are the bandsawed parts on the right, still very heavy and bulky but ready now to be carved.

First Steps

Hurray! The feet are now attached to the legs, which makes a big difference to the monkeyness of the puppet.  It's a beautiful day, so we've gone outside to try some first steps :o)

Standing, knees slightly bent

Detail of feet

Soles of feet

Sitting posture

Crawling posture

Me and the monkey

Carving the feet

Although the majority of the puppets are carved from jelutong, I am using lime for the hands and feet, as it is denser wood so should take the extra wear and tear from contact with the stage when walking or crawling.  Having cut out the hands and feet this weekend on a bandsaw, this morning I have been working on the feet.  Whilst carving, they are kept joined together so that it is easier to clamp them.

The cut out feet before starting to carve

Sloping the toes down from the high points of the knuckles

Defining the separate toes and knuckles

 I have also sloped the wood up towards the toes on the sole of the feet, which helps the puppet to walk without catching its feet on the floor.

The importance of not losing your head!

Here is the monkey a week later, with the right contours starting to emerge, the elbow and knee joints operational and the neck sitting nicely inside its socket within the torso and moving in the way I envisaged.  That makes it sound easy!  It is very much a cycle of trial and error, always balancing the form of the monkey against the functional requirements of each joint.  Anyway, you can see from the photo below the socket in the top of the torso that the rounded neck sits in.  The socket is pretty deep and the neck is correspondingly long.  Why?  Well it's so that when the monkey cranes its neck backwards or forwards you don't see a gaping big hole between the body and the head.  There is a largish screw eye embedded into the neck and the bottom of the socket.  They are embedded so that they don't protrude into the joint and stop the neck sitting at the bottom of the socket.  I experimented with fastening a loop of wire between the two screw eyes, but the problem was that its rigidity didn't allow the neck to move enough within the socket to achieve the range of movement required.  I found that strong elastic cord worked better, pulled tight and tied in a double knot.  This is fine during the development of the puppet,  but when it is finally assembled I think the elastic will need to be sewn or glued or both so that the head doesn't fall off during the show!  A big no no!  Apparently though some Chinese marionettes don't actually have the heads fixed to the bodies, and they just rely on gravity to keep them sitting in their sockets.  Hmm.  Tempting, but these monkeys will be rather athletic and may even do handstands, so yes, we will need elastic.