Spike and Fluff were from Duck Soup, a play held at Bindlestiff Theater in June 2024.
I worked on sets, puppet design, and construction at SOMArts studio.
Set Design
Because the setting was a black box theater, the audience would view this puppet from all angles and even in close detail. This democratization of theater reminds me of the work of the designer Es Devlin, who designed unique sets that play with light and time. The puppets in Duck Soup needed to reflect the magical forest, and had to be lit-up from the inside so that it would glow in the darkness.
Engineering of Spike, the dragon
Spike is a 15’-long dragon that lives in the magical forest with his best friend Fluff, a bunny. The director wanted Spike to be sitting and stuck in the cave, which was part of the script. In the final reveal, Spike would expand to be a 15’-long dragon that would parade through the crowd in an immersive theater production.
The dragon was puppetted by 3-4 puppeteers: One at the head, and three at the neck, body, and tail.
The dragon head and body is made of wood reed, cotton fabric, and battery-powered LED strips for inner lights.
Structurally, there are thicker diameter wooden dowels that help reinforce the 3D truss structure inside of the head.
The body had to expand from a seated position and end up fully extended at 15’-long. The mechanism is a spring, similar to the wooden kid’s play tubes, and the spring is covered with a somewhat stretchable cotton fabric. The spring is made of wood reed, which was put into boiling water so that it could be made more pliable. A lot of the tips I got were from Ramon, the director, and from visiting wood reed experts at the Caning shop in Berkeley. A lot of the fabric was also from secondhand stores in San Francisco. Valerie found a black mesh fabric which was for the inner mouth, and it was opaque enough to obscure the puppetter when the dragon’s mouth was opened. This was so that the audience wouldn’t be distracted by the puppeteer in the dragon head.
The fabric was secured to the reed frame using hand-sewn connections, hot glue, and zipties.
The head connects to the body using an embroidery hoop (tension from tightening the nut) and secured with zipties.
The head joint to the bottom jaw is felt. The eyes are also made with felt, and there is fur cloth throughout as decoration.
The claws and teeth are PVA foam which was cut using heavy-duty shears.
Engineering of Fluff, the Bunny
Fluff is the bunny and the best friend of Spike. Fluff was made using wood reed, cotton fabric, 3D-printed compliant mechanisms for the spine, laser-cut wood and dowels for the joints, and battery-powered LED-strips for the inner lights. There is also a bike brake with a metal cable that was repurposed to move the lower jaw of Fluff as the mouth movement. The lower movable jaw is connected to the metal wire, and uses laser-cut wood pieces to help guide the wire through the head.