Blair Thomas

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Saint John’s University: Puppeteer Blair Thomas presents ‘The Hard Headed Heart’

January 10, 2012

Preview of Hard Headed Heart, from www.csbsju.edu

High art meets low when the words of 20th century writers are given voice in puppeteer Blair Thomas’ production of “The Hard Headed Heart,” a cabaret that features wooden puppets, rolling paper scrolls and a one-man band.

The CSB/SJU Fine Arts Series presents Thomas’ production at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 10, in the Stephen B. Humphrey Theater, Saint John’s University. Using a variety of traditional puppetry techniques, this solo performance presents a trio of interconnected solo shows:

The Puppet Show of Don Cristobal: Based on the bawdy script by Federico Garcia Lorca, this play, performed with wooden hand puppets and a drum kit, is a humorous retelling of the traditional trickster Don Cristobal’s wooing and marriage to the delectable Dona Rosita.

St. James Infirmary: Based on the traditional New Orleans folksong, this is a clever, romantic show whose main character is faced with the death of his lover. This piece is performed with rod marionettes, a motorized paper scroll and a one-man pit band.

The Blackbird: Based on the Wallace Stevens poem “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” this play is an inventive shadow puppet show that examines what happens when doubt inexplicitly finds its way in between the love of a man and a woman. This piece is performed on a set of four rolling scrolls, lit entirely by lamplight.

As founder of the highly successful Redmoon Theater in Chicago, Thomas spent a decade leading a vision to create large-scale spectacle theater. He was the principal creator behind productions such as “Frankenstein,” the Winter Pageant, and All Hallow’s Eve Halloween parade until he left in 1998. Blair then served as co-curator for both of Chicago’s International Puppet Festivals in 2000 and 2001 and became an associate adjunct professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 2002, Blair founded Blair Thomas & Co., which has built a repertoire of work for adults and for children. He was awarded the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for New Performance in 2002 and 2004, and was hand-picked to serve in the inaugural position of Jim Henson Artist-in-Residence at the University of Maryland in College Park for the 2006-07 academic year.

Tickets to “The Hard Headed Heart” are $30, Senior $27, and Student $10.  Contact the Box Office at 320-363-5777 or online atwww.csbsju.edu/fine-arts.  Please note: this performance contains adult themes.

Related Event: Thomas, an ordained Buddhist monk, will lead a Buddhist meditation workshop from 9:30-11 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 11, at the Oratory of Saint Benedict’s Monastery in St. Joseph. This workshop will be an introduction to Buddhist meditation in collaboration with the Saint Benedict’s Monastery Spirituality Center. The workshop is free and open to all. Contact 320-363-7112 to register.

via Puppeteer Blair Thomas presents ‘The Hard Headed Heart’ at SJU – CSB/SJU.

The Huffington Post: Behind the Scenes With Master Puppeteer, Blair Thomas

May 24, 2011

Blair creates sophisticated puppet theatre for adults (and kids) and often does everything from puppet building, the costume creation, and music to the performances themselves. A bit of a one-man-band, through puppets Blair is able to tell deep and complex stories with the various characters often being different extensions of his own personality. Right! Not your average puppet show!

via Elysabeth Alfano: Behind the Scenes With Master Puppeteer, Blair Thomas.

Puppetry tales have ‘Heart’ – Chicago Tribune

July 16, 2010

Here he is literally a one-man band — the inventive small-scale sets (designed by Thomas) for two of the pieces, “The Puppet Show of Don Cristobal” and “St. James Infirmary,” include drum kits and other musical instruments that Thomas plays as he simultaneously manipulates the puppets. (“The Blackbird,” based on Stevens’ modernist “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” incorporates Ben Johnston’s gorgeous “String Quartet #4,” recorded by the Aurea Ensemble.)

via Puppetry tales have ‘Heart’ – Chicago Tribune.

Chicago Tribune: The Theater Loop: Blair Thomas & Co.

October 30, 2008

Blairthomas

CHRIS JONES, CHICAGO TRIBUNE THEATER REVIEW: “Cabaret of Desire,” through Nov. 8 at the Storefront Theater, 66 E. Randolph St.; $19 at 312-742-8497 and www.dcatheater.org. Original review here.

Nobody puts more riveting faces on puppets than Blair Thomas.

The creations of Chicago’s leading puppeteer vary in magnitude, materials and mechanics. He does babies, huge-headed girls and creatures made out of shoes. They all reflect the human condition with creepy accuracy.

Most of Thomas’ puppets are sad misfits with big noggins who clearly resent being puppets. Like most of us, they doubtless dream of a life with fewer strings and more dimension. At one point in Thomas’ new show, “Cabaret of Desire,” on Wednesday night, I swear I saw an especially feisty puppet sneer at his handler. Maybe there’ll be a revolution by the weekend.

You can see several of Thomas’ gorgeous, provocative, homemade individuals at the Storefront Theater. “Cabaret of Desire” is a 70-minute exploration of six short pieces by Federico Garcia Lorca, a renowned writer who actually penned works specifically for puppet theaters in the Andalusian tradition. He was a fan.

Thomas has performed some of Lorca’s puppet repertoire before, including “Buster Keaton’s Stroll,” a fascinating play performed inside a kind of oversized toy theater with fully playable brass instruments built into its structure. Lorca was compelled by Keaton’s sadness and Thomas skillfully picks up that note of the grotesque. Perched inside this eye-popping fantasy theater of his own creation, he looks like one crazy, obsessed puppeteer—which, for a puppeteer, is a compliment. It’s a great piece.

I wouldn’t compliment the entire show (which is co-directed by Sean Graney). Although visual theater geeks will be fascinated, the show is something of a stylistic jumble.

One appreciates the retro hipness of the intimate ambience, but the five cast members seem uncertain of their bodies and themselves. The show needs a deeper sensuality to fully do justice to Lorca and more visual cohesion. In this kind of work, we have to feel the pain and pleasures of the human cast members, as well as that of the puppets.

Thomas has long had a latent desire to miniaturize his shows almost to infinity—he’s never happier than when a scroll of images on a piece of paper moves past a single light source. That’s both the source of Thomas’ brilliance and his Achilles heel. The more of his work you see, the more you want him to interact with life as it is really lived.

Michael Zerang,
composer, percussionist

Michael Zerang was born in Chicago, Illinois, and is a first-generation American of Assyrian decent. He has been a professional musician, composer, and producer since 1976, focusing extensively on improvised music, free jazz, contemporary composition, puppet theater, experimental theater, and international musical forms. Michael has collaborated extensively with contemporary theater, dance, and other multidisciplinary forms and has received three Joseph Jefferson Awards for Original Music Composition in Theater, in collaboration with Redmoon Theater, in 1996, 1998, and 2000. Here is a list of music/sound collaborations with dance and theater.

As a percussionist and composer, Michael has over eighty titles in his discography and has toured nationally and internationally to 34 countries since 1981, and works with and ever-widening pool of collaborators. Michael founded and was the artistic director of the Link’s Hall Performance Series in Chicago from 1985-1989 where he produced over 300 concerts of jazz, traditional ethnic folk music, electronic music, and other forms of forward thinking music. Michael has been a Board Member of Links Hall Since 1989. He continued to produce concerts at Cafe Urbus Orbis from 1994-1996, and at his own space, The Candlestick Maker in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood, from 2001 – 2005.

Michael has taught as a guest artist at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in performance technique, sound design, and sound/music as it relates to puppetry; rhythmic analysis for dancers at The Dance Center of Columbia College, Northwestern University, and MoMing Dance and Arts Center; courses in Composer/Choreographer Collaborations at Northwestern University; music to children at The Jane Adams Hull House. Michael currently tours and holds workshops in improvisational music and percussion technique, and teaches private lessons in rhythmic analysis, music composition, and percussion technique. Shows with BT&Co: 108 Ways to Nirvana, Buster Keaton and the Buddha, The Ox-Herder’s Tale, Moby-Dick.

Shoshanna Utchenik, puppet designer

Shoshanna UtchenikShoshanna Utchenik is director of Interstate Arts, bringing creativity to the center of everyday life through interdisciplinary and collaborative art projects, based in Detroit. She earned her MFA from Northwestern University in Art Theory and Practice, and BFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was introduced to contemporary puppetry as a student of Blair Thomas, and intern of Redmoon Theater.

Shoshanna has served as Artistic Associate of Redmoon Theater and Links Hall, Chicago. She curated the ‘Winterroot Puppet Festival’ and ‘Cucaracha Cabaret.’ Teaching experience includes SAIC, Gallery 37 and Urban Gateways. Performance/exhibition include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Steppenwolf Studio Theater, Links Hall, Rowland Contemporary, kasia kay art projects, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Block Museum, Evanston; The Herron, Indianapolis; Public Theater, NYC; Ana Desetnica Festival, KAPSULA gallery, and Puppet Theater of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Awards include Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in New Performance Forms, CIRA and GRG grants from Northwestern, and a Jeff Award for Redmoon’s ‘Hunchback.’ Follow Interstate Arts on twitter @interstatearts

Shows with BT&Co: Hard Headed Heart, A Kite’s Tale, With Love From Edgar Allen Poe.

Michael Peter Smith, singer/songwriter, composer

Michael Peter Smith was born in South Orange, New Jersey in September of 1941 and raised in the area, attending Catholic schools later referenced in a few of his songs. He bought his first guitar at age fifteen (for $5) and was soon playing in a group called The Kalypso Kids, whose first and only recording is lost in antiquity. College in Florida brought a quartet dubbed the Wanderers, with gigs on the beach and at local coffeehouses, then touring in The Talismen, a duet. It was Folk Music, and Folk Music was happening. Three years at The Flick in Miami followed, six nights a week. There he met Barbara Barrow, who would become his wife, and they traveled with a quartet called the Baker Street Irregulars, signed a contract with Decca under the group name Juarez, and produced an eponymous vinyl recording that you can still sometimes find in the ‘used’ bins of obscure record stores. The couple’s next recording was called Mickey and Babs Get Hot, followed by an acoustic recording of an evening at The Raven Gallery in Detroit (where they briefly resided), called Zen. Steve Goodman had recorded “The Dutchman,” and Chicago music lovers were discovering other of Smith’s songs. Michael and Barbara relocated to the windy city and became regulars at venues such as The Earl of Old Town, Somebody Else’s Troubles, Holstein’s, No Exit and Orphan’s. They played the Philadelphia Folk Festival, worked with Corky Siegel and John Prine, taught at the Old Town School of Folk Music, organized a benefit in commemoration of their friend Gamble Rogers, and separately and together continued to record. In the late 1980’s Michael was asked to write the music for the Steppenwolf production of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and he toured with that production for two years: Chicago, La Jolla, London, England, finally Broadway, (the Cort Theatre— where the Marx Brothers played) and was thrilled by two Antoinette Perry awards (Tonys) for that production. Michael began to record for Flying Fish, initially produced by Anne Hills, whom he had met when he was playing bass for Bob Gibson. He began to tour more frequently doing exclusively his own material and continued to write songs, now increasingly being recorded by other artists. He created essentially a one-man show entitled Michael, Margaret, Pat & Kate, which played at the Victory Gardens in 1994 and garnered four Joseph Jefferson awards, Chicago’s equivalent of the Antoinette Perry. This was Michael’s musical autobiography, and it won every Jeff it could but one. With Jamie O’Reilly, Michael created, performed and recorded Pasiones: Songs of the Spanish Civil War, followed by Hello Dali (songs about art), Scarlet Confessions (with Anne Hills), and years later, a holiday CD/show collaboration of The Gift of the Magi. All enjoyed runs at various theatres. Michael self-produced an album of his songs called There in 2000 with the able assistance of Pat Fleming, then, with spouse Barbara Barrow, created Weavermania, celebrating the works of the Weavers. A highlight, if not the pinnacle of the Weavermania experience was a concert where Pete Seeger played onstage with them. More albums followed, including Live at Dark Thirty, Such Things Are Finely Done, Just Plain Folk (recorded with John McDermott), Michael Peter Smith-Anthology One, Love Letter on a Fish, and, in 2008, the soundtrack to a childrens’ production he wrote and performed in called The Selfish Giant, which featured the puppet wizardry of Blair Thomas. Amidst all of that, he composed the score for a production of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, in which both he and Barbara performed beginning in 2006 and enjoying additional runs in subsequent years at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, under the direction of Frank Galati. Michael Smith continues to travel, playing concert halls house concerts, clubs and festivals, and his prolific songwriting has never waned, with now close to 500 original tunes in his impressive catalog. Shows with BT&Co: The Selfish Giant, Snow Queen, Moby-Dick.

Jesse Mooney-Bullock, puppet designer

Jesse Mooney-BullockJesse Mooney-Bullock has an interdisciplinary approach to art-making. Fusing his abilities in woodworking, sculpting, painting, engineering, performance and sound; puppetry is the perfect medium for combining these skills and interests. He works in wood primarily because of its versatility and beauty, allowing fine art carving and structural construction, balancing form and function. His figures maintain a rough sense of realism, as he draws his inspiration from the natural world and the living machines that inhabit it. His formal artistic training occured at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA 2001), where he made and performed puppetry collaboratively. During and after his schooling, he worked in the studio of Blair Thomas, building sets, props and puppets. He still works with Thomas as a member of his company designing puppets. He also has done work commissioned by Redmoon Theater, his puppets appearing in a number of their productions. After college, Jesse worked at a small cabinetry shop in New Hampshire, an experience he refers to as his graduate education. Shows with BT&Co: Buster Keaton and The Buddha, Hard Headed Heart, A Kite’s Tale, Selfish Giant, Moby-Dick.

Andrea Everman,
puppet designer

Andrea EvermanAndrea Everman has been making puppets and other tedious items since 2006. She splits time between her company “Owly Shadow Puppets” and designing for Redmoon Theater, Blair Thomas & Co, and Chicago Children’s Theater. Andrea graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2001 with a BFA and Art Education Certification. She teaches teaches workshops in shadow puppetry. In her spare time she screenprints at Spudnik Press and makes teacups at Penguin Foot Pottery. Shows with BT&Co: A Kite’s Tale, Selfish Giant, The Houdini Box Workshop, Moby-Dick.

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