Hello everyone! I’m Alex Strachota, one of three musicians composing music for Nature Boy. I thought I’d share with you all what we’ve been up to, as music will be an important part of the show. Nature Boy, like most of Bart’s shows, won’t use many words, but instead will speak through poetic images, movement, and music. Because the puppets in the show will be traveling through a diversity of landscapes and settings, we musicians have the enjoyable task of creating “soundscapes” that suggest these beautiful and strange places. Besides this, we get to create music for the unique cast of characters appearing in Nature Boy, including the boy himself, a beautiful pigeon, a friendly snail, and a host of mean-spirited “bullies”. Last week I met with Bart and Patrick Harison, another multi-instrumentalist musician working on Nature Boy, to dream up some music. After Bart shared with us the latest in the unfolding of the plot specifics we got busy playing accordion, piano, synth, guitar, glockenspiel, harmonica, flute, and other instruments around Patrick’s practice space, forming musical themes for scenes and characters in Nature Boy. Bart sat aside, working on puppets, occasionally giving us ideas, suggestions, and sharing his vision. We had a great afternoon filling the space with sounds and musical moods of all sorts. Patrick and I will continue to work on developing the music, which we hope will eventually be graced by rhythm elements from Martin Dosh, the third musician involved. Although Martin has lately been on tour he joined us earlier this spring for a couple brainstorming sessions. Returning to Minneapolis soon, he’ll be collaborating with us in the weeks leading up to the show. I can’t wait to hear how the music evolves over these next weeks… Make art! Peace, Alex

Nature Boy Drawings- imagination biodiversity- Wild!

Students drew pictures of Nature Boy while listening to Dosh's music. We know he rides a skateboard of some kind, possibly magical, and he has a pigeon and snail for friends. They imagined different scenarios including 4-5 earth biomes we have studied a bit, with some bullying themes included also, and then took it from there. They have wild imaginations. So does Nature Boy. We are headed towards themes of imagination power, biodiversity, and bullying for our Nature Boy show. The young artists are on Spring Break this week and I hope absorbing this amazing weather, soaking up some nature time, and dreaming big. We will resume next week and start in on the process of stencil art and making the puppets using this medium and a lot of cardboard. Nature Boy is coming to life in my studio also. Stay tuned for that update soon. Then I think I'll hand some blog entries over to some of the other artists working on the show. Peace Out. Bart

nature boy puppet head sculpture

Nature Boy will be a bunraku puppet, which is a traditional Japanese form of puppetry employing three puppeteers on one puppet. The effect is fine articulation of a puppet's movements. I am attracted to bunraku for that reason and because I love to watch the relationship between puppet and puppeteer. The actual hands-on handling and group coordination of the puppet is beautiful to me. I love watching the relationship of the puppet to the puppeteers appear and disappear as you watch the movement.

I start the process of making the bunraku by sculpting the head out of clay. Then I papier mache brown paper and newspaper over the sculpture. After the papier mache has dried, I cut that off and put it back together, which is the puppet's head. Here is the sculpture before I papier mache, and was trying out materials for the hair also. The body is being made by one of my favorite visual and textile artists in Minneapolis, Amber Jensen. She will be collaborating on designing some of the textiles/puppet costumes in the show and making them also. In the interim, the adult puppeteers have been rehearsing and exploring movement with a similar bunraku puppet from a previous show.

bully portraits

The second session of Nature Boy development, we played an adapted theatre game in which students pose in a static portrait of a situation. We explored the theme of bullies, specifically thinking about how can someone bully your imagination. The students broke into groups and were given different categories of bullies. Then they were given a few minutes to get posed into their portrait of how this bully situation goes down, what it looks like. The group pictured here portrayed a bully that always knew the right rules and etiquette and made all their friends obey these rules. Their picture showed people resting their feet on the table and being corrected for doing so. I don't think the bully won this one from the looks on the boys' faces.

The first day of the Nature Boy Exploratory Residency, I gave an overview of our puppet show journey, we watched the movie The Red Balloon, and listened to Dosh's music. Local music whiz, Martin Dosh will help to design our music for the show. I explained in my process as an artist I start with things I am inspired by, like music and movies. I wanted to watch The Red Balloon with my 4th grade artist collaborators to set the stage, as it uses almost no words, like my shows, and also is a story of a boy kind of on a journey, and bullies that he encounters, which both will be aspects in Nature Boy. I am honored to work with these kids and teachers. They are smart, sensitive, and spunky. Over the next 4 months, we will be creating a puppet show together called Nature Boy. The young artists in this residency will be in coordination with adult puppeteer and a few musicians that I am working with. In May, we will all pull together to blend into the show for the Ordway's International Children's Festival. This is a dream project. Let the dream begin. -Bart Buch, Puppet Artist