Basil Twist | |
|---|---|
 Twist with a "Video Puppet", 2007 | |
| Born | 28 June 1969 |
| Occupation(s) | Director, puppeteer |
| Website | basiltwist.com |
Basil Twist is a New York City-based puppeteer who is known for his underwater puppet show, "Symphonie Fantastique". [1] He was named a MacArthur Fellowship recipient on September 29, 2015. [2]
Originally from San Francisco, Basil Twist is a third generation puppeteer. He graduated from the École Supérieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mézières, France. He is founder and director of the Dream Music Puppetry Program at Here Arts Center in NYC, which supports and produces new puppet artists. He was a Fall 2015 MacArthur Fellow at the NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts. [3]
Twist has significantly contributed to the art of puppetry since 1998. He creates puppet works focused on their integration with music. His Symphonie Fantastique, is performed to the symphony of the same name. Twist's version of Master Peter's Puppet Show was created with the Eos Orchestra and later performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. [4] Twist's "Dogugaeshi" features original shamisen compositions created and performed live by master musician Yumiko Tanaka. [5] He also directed and designed Humperdinck's opera, Hansel and Gretel , for the Houston Grand Opera and the Atlanta Opera. [6] In 2010, Twist created the puppetry for the Broadway productions of The Pee-wee Herman Show and The Addams Family . [7] Twist is known for his original adult puppet mediums and use of abstraction in puppetry. "Symphonie Fantastique" takes place in a tank of water. In "Red Beads", his collaboration with Lee Breuer and Mabou Mines, he created wind puppetry. [8] In "Dogugaeshi" he uses the Japanese art form of sliding screens.
Other works include La Bella Dormente nel Bosco, Petrushka, Hansel and Gretel, Master Peter's Puppet Show, the Araneidae Show, Behind the Lid, and Arias with a Twist, among others. He has collaborated with such artists as Joey Arias, Lee Breuer, Pilobolus, Paula Vogel and Joe Goode.
He is considered an important theater artist by critics at The New York Times , The New Yorker , et al. [9] He has received national and regional recognition through numerous awards, including a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, an Obie Award, a Creative Capital Award in the discipline of Performing Arts [10] and a Guggenheim fellowship, and his work has been presented internationally. [11] [12] [13]
In 2006, he had a solo exhibition at the Lisa Dent Gallery in San Francisco, CA. [14]
In 2022, it was announced that Twist was leading the puppetry in the Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation of My Neighbor Totoro at the Barbican Theatre, London. [15]
Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance that involves the manipulation of puppets – inanimate objects, often resembling some type of human or animal figure, that are animated or manipulated by a human called a puppeteer. Such a performance is also known as a puppet production. The script for a puppet production is called a puppet play. Puppeteers use movements from hands and arms to control devices such as rods or strings to move the body, head, limbs, and in some cases the mouth and eyes of the puppet. The puppeteer sometimes speaks in the voice of the character of the puppet, while at other times they perform to a recorded soundtrack.
William Britton "Bil" Baird was an American puppeteer of the mid- and late 20th century. In a career that spanned over 60 years, he and his puppets performed for millions of adults and children. One of his better known creations was Charlemane the lion. He and his wife Cora Eisenberg Baird (1912–1967) produced and performed the famous puppetry sequence for "The Lonely Goatherd" in the film version of The Sound of Music. His son Peter Baird was also a puppeteer, and he continued his family's legacy until his own death in July 2004.
The Jim Henson Foundation was founded by puppeteer and Muppet creator Jim Henson to promote and develop puppetry in the United States. Since 1992 Jim Henson's daughter Cheryl Henson has served as the president for the Foundation.
Sophia Michahelles is one of the two chief artists and puppeteers of Processional Arts Workshop, makers of pageant puppets and other processional art in upstate New York. She works closely with co-director Alex Kahn. The couple's work, under the informal moniker "Superior Concept Monsters" has been commissioned each year since 1998 to lead New York's Village Halloween Parade, the largest puppet parade and street-pageant of its kind in the United States, drawing two million spectators.
Paul McPharlin (1903-1948) was a puppeteer who created some twenty productions in Detroit between 1928 and 1937. He is remembered as a skillful performer and inventive puppet maker. He is a founding member of the Puppeteers of America. In 1929, McPharlin established the Marionette Fellowship of Detroit. In 1933, he organized an important puppetry exhibit for the Century of Progress in Chicago. He was the husband and close collaborator of the puppeteer Marjorie Batchelder McPharlin.
Esser Leopold Breuer was an American playwright, theater director, academic, educator, filmmaker, poet, and lyricist. Breuer taught and directed on six continents.
HERE Arts Center (HERE) is a prolific leader of New York City’s downtown performance art scene and a New York City off-off-Broadway theatre and organization that has been presenting groundbreaking hybrid performance, dance, theater, multi-media, music and puppetry since 1993.
The Long Christmas Ride Home is a one-act play written by Paula Vogel. It dramatises a road trip by two parents and their three young children to visit grandparents for Christmas dinner, and the emotional turmoil that they undergo. A significant element of the production schema is a Western contemporary employment of bunraku.
Count Franz Graf von Pocci was a significant official in the court of King Ludwig the First of Bavaria, best known as the founding director of the Munich Marionette Theatre where he was a shadow puppeteer and wrote countless puppet plays and children's stories.
Arias with a Twist is a collaborative play created by drag queen Joey Arias and puppeteer Basil Twist. It premiered on June 12, 2008 at the HERE Arts Center in the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre. Although the play is performed as a one-person show starring Arias, it also features the work of six nearly invisible puppeteers who manipulate traditional marionettes, hand puppets, and the scenic elements. It has been nominated for the 2009 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience.
Csodamalom Bábszínház is a puppet theater in Miskolc, Hungary. It was formed by puppeteer Tibor Korzsény in 1986 as an amateur company. The name "Csodamalom" preserves the name of Fábián Mill, the company that once operated there. The theatre was semi-official since 1988 and became official in 1992. The theater maintains 50 plays in repertoire and premiers two or three shows/year, usually a classical folk tale. Uniquely in Hungary, they play musical puppet shows, including puppet-pantomimes staged for adults, such as Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky, Bolero by Ravel and Carmina Burana by Orff.
A puppet is an object, often resembling a human, animal or mythical figure, that is animated or manipulated by a person called a puppeteer. The puppeteer buses movements of their hands, arms, or control devices such as rods or strings to move the body, head, limbs, and in some cases the mouth and eyes of the puppet. The puppeteer often speaks in the voice of the character of the puppet, and then synchronizes the movements of the puppet's mouth with this spoken part. The actions, gestures and spoken parts acted out by the puppeteer with the puppet are typically used in storytelling. Puppetry is a very ancient form of theatre which dates back to the 5th century BC in Ancient Greece. There are many different varieties of puppets, and they are made from a wide range of materials, depending on their form and intended use. They range from very simple in construction and operation to very complex.
Sue Hastings was an American puppeteer known for popularizing the ancient art of puppetry in the 1930s and 1940s. She was a protégé of famous advertising artist and master puppeteer Tony Sarg. She was known as a society hostess and for performing with her large collection of professionally made marionettes, which she created with the assistance of her large team of artisan puppeteers. Her many renowned performing companies were headquartered in New York City, New York, USA. During the height of her career, as owner and CEO of Sue Hastings Marionettes, Inc., she reputedly, in her inimitable "hands-on" style, was actively and very successfully directing over 50 performing companies, some of which performed worldwide for heads of Royalty, such as Queen Elizabeth I, and many other dignitaries and distinguished national and international diplomats and world leaders.
Le Theatre de Marionette is a marionette theater and production company that began in Arlington, Texas and, later, moved to Dallas, Texas. The theater, which caters to families and school groups, operates both in a physical location and as a touring group.
Paul Vincent Davis is an American puppeteer. For over 30 years, he served as Artist in Residence at Puppet Showplace Theater in Brookline, Massachusetts. In the 1980s, UNIMA-USA awarded Davis five Citations of Excellence for his work.
Micheline Legendre was a Canadian puppeteer. She performed on television and on stage with her troupe, Les marionnettes de Montréal. Her oeuvre spanned 1,170 puppets created and more than 16,000 performances for 2.5 million audience members. Legendre was a violinist by training and her marionnette troupe played with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, for Radio-Canada and the National Film Board of Canada, among others. She was also an art historian at the Université de Montréal.
Dr. Manuel A. Morán is a Puerto Rican actor, singer, writer, composer, puppeteer, theater and film director and producer. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Latino Children’s Theater, Teatro SEA,.
My Neighbour Totoro is a stage play based on Studio Ghibli's 1988 animated film of the same name by Hayao Miyazaki. It is adapted by Tom Morton-Smith with music by Joe Hisaishi.
Manual Cinema is a performance collective, design studio, and film/video production company founded in Chicago, Illinois in 2010 by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Julia Miller, and Kyle Vegter. Manual Cinema combines handmade shadow puppetry, vintage overhead projectors, live feed cameras, cinematic techniques, sound effects and live music to create film and theatre works.