New Productions

NEW PRODUCTIONS
to premiere fall 2008
at The Eric Carle Museum

An all new adaptation of Eric Carle's The Very Lonely Firefly will premiere at The Eric Carle Museum on October 25, 2008. This twelve minute remake of the original 2003 production features the same music and narration but puppets replace all but five dancers. The puppets and props light up with LED lights worked with 9volt batteries. Donohue accepted the challenge!

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

New cat and dog puppets have legs and tails that move and eyes that light up. The cat's head also goes up and down.

This new production will have 13 firefly puppets, all suspended on black poles with tails that light up. The lead firefly will be worked by a young dancer dressed in black. She will use dance movements as she moves the firefly through the production. To complete this project Donohue had help from two assistant artists Joan Hanson and George Kokurewicz.

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.

CHARACTERS IN THE NEW PRODUCTION

Lonely Firefly puppet worked by dancer
mother and father dancers
boy and girl dancers
three puppeteers for cat, dog, owl
pole bearers for 12 firefly puppets

The second production that will premiere with The Very Lonely Firefly will be an adaptation of Eric Carle's A Rooster is off to See The World. This new program is currently being 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.

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.

To the right are two of the three frog puppets worked on wires. The third will be 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.

At left is the projected life-size cartoon of The Rooster that will be used as the pattern for making the mask for the dancer in the title role (see book cover above.)

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 will be young dancers. The cat mask at right is for cat #2 who will wear 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 costume on mannequin with unfinished tail.

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.

CHARACTERS IN THE NEW
PRODUCTION

Rooster dancer
two cat dancers
three frog puppets
4 turtle puppets
5 fish puppets
Dancer to change counting blocks

LOOK FOR PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE IN SEPTEMBER 2008 AT www.picturebookart.org

Contact Picture Book Theatre and Therese Brady Donohue at tbd@crocker.com

Picture Book Theatre is an independent production entity and not a subsidiary of The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Museum related references on this site are used with permission of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.