 Front of Marionette Stage, 2014, Geppetto's Theater | |
| Formation | 1991 |
|---|---|
| Type | Theatre group |
| Location |
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| Website | Official website |
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 (Geppetto's Marionette Theater) and as a touring group.
The theatre opened in Arlington, Texas, in 1992. The theater was founded by John Hopkins, a former puppeteer from Six Flags Over Texas and Pady Blackwood, of Howdy Doody fame and former Bil Baird artist. [1] [2] The theater was created by converting the former Greyhound bus station in downtown Arlington into a miniature stage that housed a bridge stage with a fly rail system, seating for 80 persons, concession counter, and a small retail gift shop. The theater catered to families and children, as well as welcomed child care organizations, schools field trips, and other youth organizations. Unlike most theaters, the company structure was for profit. The primary income source for the theater was ticket sales derived through group bookings. The shows the first season included Hansel and Gretel, Aladdin, and The Wizard of Oz. Although popular with local families, the theater experienced a sluggish start. In the 4th year of operation, the landlord raised the rent and the theater became financially unstable when sales stalled during non-peak seasons. In 1995, an agreement was made to move the theater to Dallas, and the Arlington location closed in 1996.
In 1995, Le Theatre de Marionette was invited to join NorthPark Center in Dallas. An agreement was made with the mall management and construction of a marionette theater began in September 1995. The theater opened the week of Thanksgiving in 1995, with Hopkins and Blackwood as the key managing figures, and Hopkins as the actual theater owner. In 1996, amidst internal conflicts, Blackwood left Le Theatre de Marionette to start his own company. In January 1997, Hopkins sold the NorthPark Le Theatre de Marionette to John Hardman [3] who continued to operate the theater with his other theatrical operations, including an annual marionette show, The World on a String, performed at the State Fair of Texas, and seasonal shows for NorthPark center. Hopkins and Hardman continued to work together with Hopkins maintaining a production role and Hardman tending to the day-to-day operation of the theater. In 1999, a second Le Theatre de Marionette was opened at Ridgmar Mall in Fort Worth, TX by Hopkins in a joint venture with Shopco Group of New York, as part of the mall expansion and renovation. [4] The theater was located in the newly-remodeled wing of the mall. Like the Dallas location, the theater was located directly next to prominent retailer Neiman Marcus. In 2002, amid fears arising from the recent 9/11 attacks, and subsequent loss of business, the theater announced a sudden and abrupt closure as a temporary measure. Within six months, it was decided to not reopen the Fort Worth location. In 2003, the NorthPark theater closed normal operation when the mall began a massive remodeling. The theater opened annually for Christmas for two additional years before closing permanently in 2005. In 2004, John Hardman sold his interests in Le Theatre de Marionette to a Dallas circus performer, Dick Monday, who attempted to open a similar operation at a competing Dallas mall, the Galleria. The new business was called Slappy's Playhouse and had no actual affiliation with Le Theatre de Marionette. [5] Slappy's Playhouse closed in 2010, citing lack of business to sustain the operation. [6]
In 2005, Kent Williams, a local Dallas voice actor, kabuki artist, and puppeteer entered into agreements with John Hopkins and John Hardman to retrieve and refurbish the shows and tour the programs in local schools, museums, and other cultural centers with grants made in part by ArtsPartners Texas Commission on the Arts. In 2006, Le Theatre de Marionette became a roster presenter for Big Thought. In 2007, John Hopkins regained control of the company and transformed Le Theatre de Marionette into a touring and production company with Kent Williams as the newly founded director of education. The duo teamed with Todd Haberkorn, a Dallas voice actor and film director who contributed audio and video production experience to enhance the stage quality of the productions and projects. The focus of the new company was larger stage shows and commercially viable events. The theater company continued to build on previous shows and launched their first large stage show, The Little Mermaid in 2013, at the Historic Palace Theater in Grapevine, Texas. [7] Le Theatre de Marionette continued to expand into markets beyond schools, libraries, and museums. Since 2013, Le Theatre de Marionette has produced shows for special events with an emphasis on holiday programs and restaged classic children's fairy tales.
In 2014, Le Theatre de Marionette entered into an agreement with Hilton Hotels and Crow Holdings to open Geppetto's Marionette Theater inside the Hilton Anatole in Dallas. [8] As part of the hotel's strategic move to cater to families, Hilton announced the collaboration in June 2014. [9]
Le Theatre de Marionette performs over 200 shows per year outside their theater home, Geppetto's Marionette Theater. Most of their performances are designed for schools, libraries, and museums. In 2015, Le Theatre started construction of touring stages and explored other puppetry mediums including black art puppetry, large body puppets and shows geared for larger arenas.
The Adventures of Pinocchio, commonly shortened to Pinocchio, is a children's fantasy novel by Italian author Carlo Collodi. It is about the mischievous adventures of an animated marionette named Pinocchio and his father, a poor woodcarver named Geppetto.
A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a marionettist. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms of theatres or entertainment venues. They have also been used in films and on television. The attachment of the strings varies according to its character or purpose.
Howdy Doody is an American children's television program that was created and produced by Victor F Campbell and E. Roger Muir. It was broadcast on the NBC television network in the United States from December 27, 1947, until September 24, 1960. It was a pioneer of children's programming and set the pattern for many similar shows. One of the first television series produced at NBC in Rockefeller Center, in Studio 3A, it pioneered color production in 1956 and NBC used the show to promote color television sets in the late 1950s.
Tartuffe, or The Impostor, or The Hypocrite, first performed in 1664, is a theatrical comedy by Molière. The characters of Tartuffe, Elmire, and Orgon are considered among the greatest classical theatre roles.
Disney Theatrical Productions Limited (DTP), also known as Disney on Broadway, is the flagship stageplay and musical production company of the Disney Theatrical Group, a subsidiary of Disney Entertainment, a major business unit of The Walt Disney Company.
Loews Hotels is an American luxury hospitality company that owns or operates 26 hotels in the United States and Canada. Loews' hotels and resorts are located in major North American city centers and resort destinations.
Mangiafuoco is a fictional character who appears in Carlo Collodi's 1883 Italian book The Adventures of Pinocchio, serving as a secondary antagonist turning good.
Geppetto, also known as Mister Geppetto, is an Italian fictional character in the 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. Geppetto is an elderly, impoverished woodcarver and the creator of Pinocchio. He wears a yellow wig resembling cornmeal mush, and consequently his neighbors call him "Polendina" to annoy him. The name Geppetto is a Tuscan diminutive of the name Giuseppe.
Mary Gallagher is an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, actress, director and teacher. For six years, she was artistic director of Gypsy, a theatre company in the Hudson Valley, New York, which collaborated with many artists to create site-specific mask-and-puppet music-theatre with texts and lyrics by Gallagher. These pieces included Premanjali and the 7 Geese Brothers, Ama and The Scottish Play. In 1996-97, she directed the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, and she taught playwriting and screenwriting at New York University/Tisch School of the Arts from 2001 to 2010. She is a member of Actors & Writers, a theater company in the Hudson Valley, and the Ensemble Studio Theater in New York City. She is an alumna of New Dramatists, where she developed many of her plays and created and moderated the series, "You Can Make a Life: Conversations with Playwrights" from 1994 to 2001.
End of the Rainbow is a musical drama by Peter Quilter, which focuses on Judy Garland in the months leading up to her death in 1969. After a premiere in Sydney, Australia in 2005, the show has played on the West End in London and a Broadway production opened at the Belasco Theatre in 2012. The award-winning 2019 film Judy starring Renée Zellweger is a screen adaptation of the play for which Zellweger won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Garland.
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 uses 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.
Artisan Center Theater is a community theater based in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. The theater operates a 195-seat, theater in the round that features musicals. Additionally, it has a second stage of 150-seats where performances of comedies, light dramas, musical reviews and children performing for children in the Artisan Children's Theater. Artisan Center Theater is open year-round daily except for Sundays and Wednesdays. Artisan produces over 15 shows per year, from Broadway classics to some lesser known straight plays with over 100,000 patrons annually.
The Hilton Anatole is a Dallas hotel at 2201 Stemmons Freeway in the Market Center district just north of downtown Dallas, Texas. Featuring 1,606 guest rooms, it is one of the largest hotels in the South and is a major convention and meeting facility. Over 1,000 art objects, including a casting of Riding Into the Sunset and two sections of the Berlin Wall, are located throughout the resort setting. The hotel previously featured the five-star Nana Restaurant, but it closed in May 2012 due to decreased demand for fine dining restaurants and was replaced with a high-energy steak house, SĒR.
The Puppet Theatre Barge is a unique, fifty-seat marionette theatre on a converted barge in London. The theatre presents puppet shows for children and adults and is moored in Little Venice throughout the year and in Richmond-upon-Thames during the summer.
Disney's My Son Pinocchio: Geppetto's Musical Tale is a musical based on Disney's 2000 made-for-television movie Geppetto, which was in turn based on a book by David Stern, and features music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. Much like the movie, My Son Pinocchio is a re-telling of the 1883 Italian children's book The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, but the story is told from Geppetto's perspective. As in the TV film, when Pinocchio runs away to become a star in Stromboli's puppet show, Geppetto must negotiate through a maze of adventures and comic encounters to find him.
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.
The Adventures of Pinocchio is a 1972 Italian five-part miniseries directed by Luigi Comencini, which originally aired weekly on Rai 1 between April 8 and May 6, 1972. Based on Carlo Collodi's 1883 novel with the same name, the miniseries received a large critical success, and had an average of twenty-one and a half million viewers during its first airing. All the episodes together make up 280 minutes of runtime.
The International Puppet Museum - Peruchet is a museum in Brussels, Belgium. It is part of the Royal Peruchet Theatre. The theater has a history dating to 1929 and had its heyday in the 1960s when it staged hundreds of performances annually. The museum was established in 1938. The museum is located in an 18th-century farmhouse on Avenue de la Forêt in Ixelles, near the tram from the Boondael station.
Russian puppet theater appears to have originated either in migrations from the Byzantine Empire in the sixth century or possibly by Mongols travelling from China. Itinerant Slavic minstrels were presenting puppet shows in western Russia by the thirteenth century, arriving in Moscow in the mid-sixteenth century. Although Russian traditions were increasingly influenced by puppeteers from western Europe in the eighteenth century, Petrushka continued to be one of the principal figures. In addition to glove puppets and marionettes, rod puppets and flat puppets were introduced for a time but disappeared in the late nineteenth century.
Coordinates: 32°48′00″N96°49′45″W / 32.800001°N 96.829264°W