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A new year, a new opinion about the pawpetshow

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Fairlight:

--- Quote from: ANTIcarrot on 03.09.2012, 01:02:58 ---One final question though: Was one of the puppeters *really* wearing leaves on their head during the tree scene? ;)

--- End quote ---

Yep! ^.^

LeTigre:
I've been on the EF Pawpetshow since EF 12. And I would say that the show got better and better, reached it's peak on EF 14 (truly magnificent) and got a bit worse from that point every year.
I would like to give a feedback on that show because I think I noticed one or two things.

The technical aspects get better. The backgrounds and the stage probs where made with a lot love for the details.
The puppets are truly the work of a professional. The puppetry and the voices are doubleplusgood too ;)

But what I heard a lot was critic on the story itself.
A lot other guests asked about the ending or said that they didn't understood the whole plot at all. The story was a bit twisted and rushed. First the Fox is rational, calm and boring. The rat is careless and easy going. Just two or three scenes later they completely change their personality with the rat beeing all the responsible and reasonable person and the fox beeing risky and careless. It happened a bit fast and couldn't really convince.
Also to the end it got a bit indecisive: Rescue her! Leaver her alone! Hero dies! erm .... Hero decides for not dieing! Everyone else dies! Everyone else is saved! Loose girlfriend in big romantic scene but be reunited in the end! >.> It felt like: we got ending one and ending two ... let's take both!
Also the scenes itself where a bit off. But that's something where I can't clearly point my finger to it. I would say the scenes usually end in a big blast, a good joke or something. But this year a lot just faded out and left the feeling that there is still something to come. I'm sure others felt the same way because this time there was only a restrained applause after each of the scenes which started usually when the curtain was almost closed.

I also missed the creative part between the scenes. Usually there where animations and videos or fading photos or something ... this year, except for the extremely cool intro, there was only a picture of the coin and a guy reading a wikipedia article.

For the dialoges I would ask for ... less screaming please^^" I got the feeling that there is more of it than needed^^"
Also please reduce the amount of Shitbitchfuckingasscuntslutdick. I have absolutely no problem with this kind of stuff but the growing use of such "strong language" hurts the atmosphere a lot, the characters appear shallow-brained and it's more difficult to empathize with them.
And, as much as I hate it to point at someone directly, I had only one person who I almost never understood. I can't say if it's just Pinky's voice, the accent or the low variation in her accentuation but I's very hard to understand what she is saying.

... And there was no singing. I always liked the songs :P

Overall I had the feeling that the whole plot was ment to be more serious. But that led to the point that the few jokes which where made, like the Freeze Frame scene appeared a bit abadoned and couldn't really take effect.
If I would have to give an advice on that, it would be: try to keep it more funny and entertaining. Serious topics can be shown in a funny way; like the war of the two kitchen tables for oil from EF 12 (if I'm not mistaken) ;)


I hope I could express my thoughts on that topic in a non-assulting way^^"
Despite all of these points I will attend the next show, if possible. Because I've seen in the past to what great shows the PPS-team is capable of :)

Suran:
Great story, great play, very professional show.

Some czechnological trouble. It may have been better to close the curtain and start over with the scene that started with a soundless dialog.
...happens. Unavoidable.

The cameras feeding the projectors where placed very high, so often the full head of a puppeteer was right in view when they where invisible at slightly-above-head-level. I guess they have to be at that level to work when everyone is giving standing ovations at the end.

In one scene a pupeteer had a GoPro on his head that really stuck out in it's shiny, reflective plastic. (No idea if it recorded anything usefull as they are terrible without lots of light.) Maybe that could be concealed in black or placed elsewhere.

One of the supporting roles stuck out a bit with his voice acting. Sounded like reading from a sheet with a bit of trouble speaking english. I think it was in the bathroom.

I think you found a good mix of serious and easy to follow story and humor.
Not as much a grand drama with impressive closing song as the Deamcatchers.

I miss the original cast but really like the new, larger puppets.
They are so much easier to see and have so many more ways to express themself.
Things have grown so much since singing "sweet like chocolate" behind the overturned table and shooting back when being bombarded with chocolate from the audience. Back in the days...

The arena- and inn-backdrop serving as 2 locations worked well too.
Certainly cut down on intermissions.

So: Great show! You're still outdoing yourself. I expected a lot more things to go wrong then the few bits that where noticable from the audience.

Jake R:
I am far from being an expert. The only thing I know anything about in this context, due to choir experience, is standing on a stage and trying to remember your lines under pressure. And there were only a few, hardly noticable, tiny hiccups on that part so you totally have my respect there.

Toying around with the puppet (Marcus, right?) in front of the bar a bit last night also showed me first-hand how hard it is to properly control one of those puppets, and that was while sitting down on a chair while looking straight at it. I can't imagine what it's like doing it for long periods of time, with the puppet stuck above your head, while crouching down, under the hot spotlights. More respect.


I loved learning more about old Roman times, and Shay's voice is lovely to listen to. I do agree that just the same picture of a coin over and over again gets kinda old, though - I understand it might be hard to get a full animation for each intermission, but showing some pictures to support the story being told might help hold the audience's attention longer. ... what was that thing about phalluses all over Pompeii again? >=3

Gero:
First I can only agree that it was an awesome story and a great play, specially when you think it was done for one performance only and done in such a way it could almost be played at west end or broadway, or at least off broadway. But it still has both pros and cons.

Pros: Great characters and puppets, great acting and both entertaining and educational story. Amazing scenerys and detailed settings. Without hearing any of theyre singing skills I am preatty sure that the cast could put off Avenue Q if they want to, or Lion King.

Cons: The choosen setting made for unnessery long waiting time between scene changes and thus it made the story longer than neccesery, or with fewer scenes than possible. For such a epic story I would have choosed a fixed scene where a few props moving around would have been the indivdual sets for the different scenes, basicly the starting scene of pompeii but with added things to illustrate different settings and time, thus you wouldnt have needed to change the whole sets and could have spent more time on characterisation and action and less on set changing. Take a look of how its done on major multiscene shows like Wicked, or even one stage shows like Cats.

I also agree that you could have gived the villain more character depth, and maybe made a few more changes in who had the overtake for the scene, now it was fairly "simple" and predicteble, if you got what I mean, but no less great anyway. I also got loss off that the gladiator games was staged like modern wrestling games with good and evil guys, so I missed why the tiger suddenly got so angry. You also had a bad mic on one of the bar scene that made the story hard to follow at that point, but its minor details.

Overall a great show and if you need help with writing and or other creative work for next year I would be glad to help!

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