Song of the North 1 Dispatch to David

I saw Song of the North on 1/20, which was absolutely incredible. I was absolutely inspired by their use of multimedia in the theatre. Something that felt particularly useful was their usage of music! It really amped up the atmosphere, mood, and culture for me. It was magical, and really made me feel immersed in the world.

It was also really cool seeing audience reactions, especially the wonder of the kids in this fairly intense and adult story.

I also really loved the party scene, and how they were able to manipulate the gel fills to make it look like disco lights over the puppets. I truly understood where we were due to the fast paced changing colors, and how they impacted the way that I viewed the characters, whose expressions did not change.

When thinking about the puppets in this show, and the idea that their faces cannot change, I really thought that the following strategies were particularly useful tools for storytelling:

• Movement of the puppets: By moving them, sometimes their full bodies or just their heads or jaws, up and down, this conveyed a lot to me, like the energy of the character and their motivations.
• Proximity: How close or far the puppets were from each other showed a lot to me about statues! The kings were always raised, and often times, if they were bigger, it was meant to show bravado or upper hand. It also showed who was doing asides.
• The way that the puppets interacted with color: Because the puppets were just black with holes, the way that they interacted with the color was really cool! It felt like it showed hope every time that they interacted with the sun in the background, with the white light being hope and the color being reality.

Inspiration or ideas for our production:

• I would love for us to look at using cultural music, not just for the few times that we are singing, but interstitial underscoring. We have so many beautiful cultures and instrumentalists in our class, we should make sure that that does not go to waste!
• Switching between humans with puppet heads/props and small puppets. I am not entirely sure how we could do this, but playing with a film screen and mixing humans with puppets could be really cool! Especially when thinking of the bigger monsters and mythologies, or traveling down the ocean. Could we mix puppets with humans on silks?
• Color! I am interested in how we can color grade different biomes, environments, and different things like that to show change (especially if we have a minimal set). I am also interested in how we can make the gods and god like figures stick out! I would be fascinated with almost a lack of color for them, versus the live human or aquatic world.