Puppet Meeting

[acrouch]

[quote]I know some of you, and others were suggested to me as the sort of people that might be interested in this idea I have. For those of you I don’t know: my name is Connor Hopkins, I’ve lived in Austin about ten years, I build sets for some of the local theater groups like Salvage Vanguard and the Rude Mechs, and when I can I build puppets and put on shows. They’re mostly adult political / historical shows, but not all of them. To avoid boring you all right at the beginning, I won’t go into my pie-in-the-sky plans for establishing a nationally known puppet theater in Austin (or did I just reveal the whole plan?) but I will say this: I wasn’t a theater person before I got into puppetry, but now I’m like a freakin puppet evangelist. Not the Bible-stories-with-felt-hand-puppets kind, but definitely a believer.

In the last couple of years I’ve met or heard about a lot of people who are puppeteers themselves, or are in some tangential way interested in puppetry, or theater in general. So I thought I should try to get all these people together in an informal way, so we can meet each other, find out what interesting things other folks are doing, maybe recruit help for our various projects, and generally plot the overthrow of live actor theater by a new puppet regime. Or maybe just have a happy hour once a month. It’s a loose notion. Whether it’s the beginning of a guild, or just a list-serve, nothing but good can come of getting a bunch of Austin puppet/theater people together.

So, if any part of this idea tickles any part of your skeleton, please write back to me. Let me know a little bit about what you do, if I don’t already know, and what part of town you live in so that I can try to pick a meeting place that’s convenient for all. And please forward this to anyone you think might be interested.

“Puppets are not cute, like Muppets. Puppets are effigies, gods, and meaningful creatures.â€