
Wolf eye experiments
Two piece construction 3 pieces...

Hanging in there...
First assembly of Peter (in his underwear)

Peter as Andy Warhol...
#summer #cool #sunshine

View from the stage...
Ruth Paton makes some notes: "Blimey it's huge!"

Design has to tell a story
Audiences ask immediately what family are these objects a part of? Who is missing? Who are we expecting to see? Here Peter and the bird are in a ballet of some kind the duck seems to be from Toy Story 1914... So not sure we're there yet!

Experiment as much as you can before rehearsals
Daniel hay Gordon and Patricia Langa spend a day in the studio figuring out some movement sequences for the characters in Peter and the Wolf.
Performance is reverse engineering.
The job of performing is to take a 2D script and turn it into a 3D performance. The script is like a footpath marked on a map. There is just a line. The question for the performer is why does it go this way? Why that way? Why does it go up and down when it goes up and down? Why does it go left or right? Why does it wiggle? The answers of course are it goes left to avoid these rocks, it goes right to avoid that house, it goes down to cross that river, it goes up to reach that
Acting is...
“Acting is doing things truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” As Meisner said.
Always say yes to artists - they give you a new perspective
US photographer Maundy Mitchell emailed me to ask if she could take my photograph for
her series "Life's Work". It would take a few minutes out of the day and she would give me a copy. On the day I turned up without a puppet and of course she wanted me to have a puppet so I cycled to the studio and got a puppet and cycled back. So in the end it took a little longer. The photo-session itself took seconds. I saw them yesterday. To be honest all I see is that my hair doesn't lo

If you can "name the look" then you're going in the right direction
This is the latest Peter head. Sculpted by Ruth Paton and cast in fibreglass. He was painted by Fiona Clift inspired by ballet make up which accentuates the contours and uses highlights and shine. At first he had red lips and he looked like Joan Collins - not quite what we were going for. Then she painted the lips silver and he looked like a boy again. And a bit like Bowie. Bowie Ballet Boy. That sounds like a thing. A direction. Soviet realism meets space futurism meets pop.