NEW  PRODUCTIONS
at The Eric Carle Museum

Premiering November 10, 2012 is a new stick puppet show of Eric Carle's The Very Quiet Cricket. This story centers on the male cricket who cannot make a sound when he rubs his wings together until he matures. He meets many insects on his life journey including a locust, cicada, praying mantis and a dragonfly among others. Recorded narrator is Matt Roehrig.

Paired with this puppet show is a repeat of our 2008 dance and life-size puppet production of Carle's The Very Lonely Firefly, with five dancers  from Amherst Ballet, and three puppeteers. Recorded narration by Walter Carroll of WFCR. Both productions feature the recorded music of Karen A. Tarlow.

 PERFORMANCES TAKE PLACE at THE ERIC CARLE MUSEUM - AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS 2:00 and 3:00 p.m. Saturdays Nov. 10, 17, 24, and Friday, November 23.  Tickets are $5 available at the museum or by phone 413-658-1126. Suitable for all ages. Total running time 45 minutes.

    Cricket stick puppet

Finished Locust Puppet

An all new adaptation of Eric Carle's The Very Lonely Firefly   premiered at The Eric Carle Museum in 2008. This fifteen-minute remake of the original 2003 production featured the same music and narration but puppets replaced all but five dancers. The puppets and props  light up with LED lights worked with 9volt batteries. 

Costumes for The Very Lonely Firefly hanging in Donohue's studio that she hand-painted to replicate Eric's textures in his collage illustrations.

The owl puppet is attached to an 8' pole carried by a puppeteer. It has wings that flap up and down and eyes that light up.

ROOSTER'S OFF TO SEE THE WORLD PERFORMED NEXT IN 2015

Donohue started with the most difficult prop which is  ten fireflies that enter and scare the other characters. The fireflies have to light up and be operated by one puppeteer. Using LED lights and 9V batteries this has been  a most challenging prop. The fireflies are about 4.50 long and are suspended by coat hanger wire from a pole that has an operating board at its base. This board houses five door bell buttons and five 9V batteries. Two fireflies are wired to each battery in such a way as to create a random effect as the tails light up.

The second production that  premiered in 2008 with The Very Lonely Firefly was an adaptation of Eric Carle's A Rooster is off to See The World. This  program was also composed by Karen A. Tarlow, the official composer for PICTURE BOOK THEATRE. This book is about counting to five and back again. Although both these new programs are geared towards very young children, people of all ages will enjoy them for their creativity, costumes, engineering and effects, and the joy of watching talented young dancers perform. a revival performance will take place in the fall of 2015.

To the right are two of the three frog puppets worked on wires. The third is worked on the shoe of the puppeteer. Because Eric Carle does not like his illustrations animated they are kept as one dimensional as possible. For the frogs and the turtles the book illustrations were blown up, reversing each image as well, cut-out, decoupaged to heavy pellon, wire glued in the legs, and mounted  with a small piece of wood at the top to hold a piece of coat hanger wire painted black.

Below shows the mask in progress. All the feathers come next, made from pellon, dyed and painted to match the illustration.

There are two cats that are young dancers. The cat mask at right is for cat #2 who  wears a unitard dyed purple and textured with black paint to match the mask at right. The projected working cartoon is seen in the background.

Rooster tail feathers being hand-painted. There are fifteen tail feathers that have to be duplicated for each side (30 total), ten wing feathers, and 21 mask feathers, all individually hand painted to replicate Eric Carle's textures.

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