Puppet Bike is a small street performer group in Chicago. The bike, which is complete with a fully mobile stage, is a common sight on the streets of the Andersonville neighborhood and in downtown in the Loop. [1]
Puppet Bike is a small street performer group in Chicago. The bike, which is complete with a fully mobile stage, is a common sight on the streets of the Andersonville neighborhood and in downtown in the Loop. [1]
The puppet bike concept was created by artist and inventor Jason Trusty [1] [2] around 2002 [3] and started publicly performing around 2004. [4] The bike itself consists of a large custom-built (by Trusty and his brother Eric) [5] tricycle complete with a small box on the back which serves as a stage for puppet shows. The box is brightly decorated with images of the puppets themselves and other designs. Solar panels on the roof help power the boombox (which provides music for the shows), as well as fans inside the box that help cool the performer. [1]
Originally, the concept was developed for a bipolar friend of Trusty who was unemployed. The bike allowed this friend to make some extra money at his own pace, and to simply stop and go home when he was tired of it. [1]
The original bike was generally parked outside of the Chicago Cultural Center and was subject to a significant amount of vandalism when not in use. It was sometimes painted over with graffiti, tipped over, and broken. [1] According to Trusty: "We get just as much a kick out of people who don't like the bike, or think that it's scary." [1]
Initially, Trusty himself and 8 other performers rode the bike around Chicago, stopping at strategic corners to climb inside the box. [2] Each performance lasted 2 to 4 hours and consisted of several different puppets with an animal theme. The puppets generally danced to various kinds of music and interacted with each other in other ways. The puppets also interacted with the audiences, waving to people, giving high fives, and sometimes popping out from a small door at waist height to gesture towards the tip box. [1] Performers worked for tips only (generally placed in a locked box attached to the front of the enclosed staging area). [2]
By 2019, Trusty had sold the bike to Chicago artist Wendy Beyer, who operated it with Michael King, a longtime Puppet Bike performer of about 10 or 12 years by his own estimate. [6] According to King in 2019, he had performed almost exclusively himself for the prior 10 years. [6]
The popularity of the bike has increased to the point that Trusty has had to turn away people interested in performing. [1] The summer 2007 lineup included the bipolar friend, an artist from Ontario, Canada, bicyclists, teachers and theatre buffs. The performers keep the majority of their earnings, while Trusty keeps a small portion for bike maintenance.
In the summer of 2008, Trusty had planned to take the bike through Canada to the Arctic. [1]
The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which involve the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Performing arts include a range of disciplines which are performed in front of a live audience, including theatre, music, and dance.
A unicycle is a vehicle that touches the ground with only one wheel. The most common variation has a frame with a saddle, and has a pedal-driven direct-drive. A two speed hub is commercially available for faster unicycling. Unicycling is practiced professionally in circuses, by street performers, in festivals, and as a hobby. Unicycles have also been used to create new sports such as unicycle hockey. In recent years, unicycles have also been used in mountain unicycling, an activity similar to mountain biking or trials.
A game controller, gaming controller, or simply controller, is an input device or input/output device used with video games or entertainment systems to provide input to a video game. Input devices that have been classified as game controllers include keyboards, mice, gamepads, and joysticks, as well as special purpose devices, such as steering wheels for driving games and light guns for shooting games. Controllers designs have evolved to include directional pads, multiple buttons, analog sticks, joysticks, motion detection, touch screens and a plethora of other features.
A tricycle, sometimes abbreviated to trike, is a human-powered three-wheeled vehicle.
A trapeze is a short horizontal bar hung by ropes, metal straps, or chains, from a ceiling support. It is an aerial apparatus commonly found in circus performances. Trapeze acts may be static, spinning, swinging or flying, and may be performed solo, double, triple or as a group act.
The crankset or chainset is the component of a bicycle drivetrain that converts the reciprocating motion of the rider's legs into rotational motion used to drive the chain or belt, which in turn drives the rear wheel. It consists of one or more sprockets, also called chainrings or chainwheels attached to the cranks, arms, or crankarms to which the pedals attach. It is connected to the rider by the pedals, to the bicycle frame by the bottom bracket, and to the rear sprocket, cassette or freewheel via the chain.
The pedal is the part of a bicycle that the rider pushes with their foot to propel the vehicle. It provides the connection between the cyclist's foot or shoe and the crank allowing the leg to turn the bottom bracket spindle and propel the bicycle's wheels. A pedal usually consists of a spindle that threads into the end of the crank, and a body on which the foot rest is attached, that is free to rotate on bearings with respect to the spindle.
Bicycle messengers are people who work for courier companies carrying and delivering items by bicycle. Bicycle messengers are most often found in the central business districts of metropolitan areas. Courier companies use bike messengers because bicycle travel is less subject to unexpected holdups in city traffic jams, and is not deterred by parking limitations, fees or fines in high-density development that can hinder or prevent delivery by motor vehicle, thereby offering a predictable delivery time.
Sesamstraat is a Dutch television series in the Netherlands, and a localized version of the U.S. children's program Sesame Street. In its early days, the show was broadcast in Flanders (Belgium) as well. It is the second longest-running foreign adaptation of Sesame Street without interruptions, behind only Sesamstraße. It targets children between 3–7 years old.
Children's Fairyland, U.S.A. is an amusement park, located in Oakland, California, on the shores of Lake Merritt. It was one of the earliest "themed" amusement parks in the United States. Fairyland includes 10 acres (4.0 ha) of play sets, small rides, and animals. The park is also home to the Open Storybook Puppet Theater, the oldest continuously operating puppet theater in the United States.
Pinwheel is an American children's television series that was the first show to air on the then-rebranded Nickelodeon, as well as the first to appear on its Nick Jr. block along reruns until 1990. The show was aimed at preschoolers aged 3–5. It was created by Vivian Horner, an educator who spent her earlier career at the Children's Television Workshop, the company behind PBS's Sesame Street. The show was geared to the "short attention span of preschoolers," with each episode divided into short, self-contained segments including songs, skits, and animations from all over the world.
Street theatre is a form of theatrical performance and presentation in outdoor public spaces without a specific paying audience. These spaces can be anywhere, including shopping centres, car parks, recreational reserves, college or university campus and street corners. They are especially seen in outdoor spaces where there are large numbers of people. The actors who perform street theatre range from buskers to organised theatre companies or groups that want to experiment with performance spaces, or to promote their mainstream work. It was a source of providing information to people when there were no sources of providing information like television, radio etc. Nowadays, street play is used to convey a message to the crowd watching it. Street play is considered to be the rawest form of acting, because one does not have a microphone or loud speakers.
Sawing a woman in half is a generic name for a number of stage magic tricks in which a person is apparently cut or divided into two or more pieces.
Shadow play, also known as shadow puppetry, is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment which uses flat articulated cut-out figures which are held between a source of light and a translucent screen or scrim. The cut-out shapes of the puppets sometimes include translucent color or other types of detailing. Various effects can be achieved by moving both the puppets and the light source. A skilled puppeteer can make the figures appear to walk, dance, fight, nod and laugh.
Freestyle BMX is bicycle motocross stunt riding on BMX bikes. It is an extreme sport descended from BMX racing that consists of five disciplines: street, park, vert, trails, and flatland. In June 2017, the International Olympic Committee announced that freestyle park was to be added as an Olympic event to the 2020 Summer Olympics.
Karnataka has a variety of traditional arts, including folk dance and puppetry.
The namsadang is a Korean itinerant troupe which consists of male performers who present various performing arts such as acrobatics, singing, dancing and playing like a circus. It is said that namsadang was spontaneously formed before 1900 during the Joseon period and used to wander about marketplaces and villages. The troupe was considered the lowest class in society along with cheonmin or baekjeong (butchers), so that very few historical documents remain on them. However, since a record that a puppet show was performed during the Silla period has been found, it is assumed that similar types of itinerant companies appeared in Korean history a long time ago.
A puppet is an object, often resembling a human, animal or mythical figure, that is animated or manipulated by a person called a puppeteer. Puppetry is an ancient form of theatre which dates back to the 5th century BC in ancient Greece.
A wheelchair is a mobilized form of chair using 2 or more wheels, a footrest, and an armrest usually cushioned. It is used when walking is difficult or impossible to do due to illnesses, injury, disabilities, or age-related health conditions. Wheelchairs provide mobility, postural support, and freedom to those who cannot walk or have difficulty walking, enabling them to move around, participate in everyday activities, and live life on their own terms. []