I've got City Head

You’re getting headaches. You go to the doctor. It turns out you have a fairly advanced society living in, and off, your brain. You suffer from City Head... now what? You make some puppets... and get lots of lego. And you make a show. Hi, my name is Naomi, and I have City Head... Let's get the run-down out of the way first... Presented by emerging theatre company Sticky Apple Legs, City Head explores the extremely rare condition of dealing with things living inside your head with the use of puppets …and lego... lots of lego. Did we mention there would be lego? A combination of comedy and musical theatre, City Head was written by Tom Taylor – winner of Short & Sweet Melbourne. Appealingly scheduled as matinees across every weekend, City Head will be a great snack at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2007. Ok, now you've been bored with the obvious plug for my show, on with the blog post! It's a few months since I started on this show. The hope was to create a one-woman puppetry show that was easy to tour. But last minute my actress pulled out; the playwright suggested using another script of his. Thus was born the puppet craziness of City Head. Included in the show are three 'moppets' (Anything like using 'muppetry' is a breach of trademark, so we use moppet), plus lots of lego in a little city. I'm making all the puppets from scratch (except of course, the lego), without any help from anyone. This is the first time I've produced a show pretty much by myself, plus directing it, plus making and designing all the puppets. Thank goodness for New Year's/Christmas holidays, otherwise nothing would have been made. It's been a great challenge, and lots of fun. The moppets are really an experiment, as I've never made any kind of puppet using this technique. I've been posting build-by-build blogs at www.freewebs.com/puppetsinmelbourne if you're interested. Anyway, from scratch, the moppet took shape; from the all important moving mouth, to the body, to the eyes and ears... Even the clothes are hand-sewn (due to an error with a sewing machine...). The city is where it gets really fun! A little city full of little people! Plus all sorts of fun, hidden moveable parts and features. My goodness, it's tough to produce a show all on your own; even though it's under my puppetry company's name, the two other members have other commitments. And I've been happy to shoulder everything, because it's a great experience to try and do it all myself. Especially doing the puppets. It's been great to have an idea on Monday, flesh out the design on Tuesday, experiment on Wednesday and by Friday, have the object made. I look at the puppets now, and it hardly seems real that the same face staring at me was once a bit of foam, material and glue. And though everything for the city was carefully thought out, seeing it built almost exactly as I planned as never happened with my other craft projects. What amazes me is how forgiving my puppets are - if I stuff something up, I can rethink how to do it, without completely ruining the rest of the plan. Here's a pic of Doc, one of my moppets. Unfortunately, to see the city, you'll have to come see the show. For more info about City Head, visit www.freewebs.com/stickyapplelegs.