AUDITIONS!

We're looking for new puppeteers...

Every couple of years we hold auditions to find a new group of puppeteers that we can draw upon for a variety of projects that we have coming up. Here are some brief thoughts on how we audition and what we look for that might be helpful...

How do we audition?

We try and see as many people as we can. We do some simple exercises: asking the performer to walk across the room with a head in their hands and make it look as if the head is leading them. Then asking them to do a short improvisation with a puppet. Sometimes with two other people on a three person puppet. Using we ask them to make the puppet speak and to use their voice. We push a little and usually we ask the performer to express some emotion. We try to explain what we are looking for, and demonstrate how to do it.

Having done a simple trawl through lots of people we will narrow down a small group of people that we will ask to see again. We recall people in two ways:

Sometimes we will invite you to come and join us in rehearsal for half a day or a day. You will join in and are treated not as "auditionees" but as participants in the rehearsal. We hope this is an opportunity to be get to know us and for us to get to know you.

Other times, when we have to make a team of puppeteers on a puppet we may invite you in for recall auditions to try out different combinations of people in different positions together on the puppet.

What do we look for?

Humour. Pleasure in puppetry. The ability to express yourself through a puppet. The need to have a puppet to express yourself. Occasionally someone comes along who just loves playing with objects. When they have an object in their hands they are inventive, funny, amusing, amused by themselves. They come alive, have fun, and entertain everyone who is watching. Sometimes they know what they are doing, sometimes they discover it for the first time. Either is fine.

We look for skills: the ability to separate the puppet's movement from your own, the ability to make the audience look at the puppet, the ability to make the puppet walk and talk and look and listen, the ability to make a puppet act, and to make it act in genre. The ability to improvise with a puppet.

We love experience with puppetry but it is not necessary. Acting experience is necessary however. We are always looking for people who want to learn, who want to grow, who want to develop. We are looking for people who can work with character, who have good timing, who are willing to takes risks and express emotion. Above all we look for people who are interested. We look for enthusiasm.

if you think you might be better performer with a puppet than without, then we are looking for you.

How do we work?

Blind Summit makes new shows with puppets for adult audiences. We work through improvising, writing, devising. Our emphasis is on outstanding puppetry performance, humour, storytelling and deconstructing the nature of puppetry. We puppet in genre.

We never know what we are making when we begin and our process is a process of experimenting to find out. We work around a theme that relates the puppet to the puppeteer, and tease out a story that illuminates that theme. We look for things that make us laugh. Laughter is a sign that something is funny, but also that it is witty. That it is somehow true. Laughter is a sign of delight. A sign of recognition. The process can be frustrating at times, but it is always rewarding in some way. When we don't achieve what we want to achieve, we learn.

If this sounds interesting and like you might enjoy meeting us then please click here to find how to apply