Three Chairs Theater Company

THE MAKING OF MADNESS

Our very own Daisuke Tsuji recently directed his original play Monkey Madness with the Los Angeles Theater Ensemble at the Powerhouse Theater in Santa Monica. It is not a Three Chairs show but many of our talented members where involved and it was quite the event. This page is dedicated to giving a behind the scenes look at the process and the puppetry.

Monkey Madness opened on june 25th and ran 26th 27th and July 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 9th, 10th, 11th and 16th, 17th, 18th at the Powerhouse Theater 3116 Second Street, Santa Monica, CA

If you are curious to know what the show was about, Monkey Madness mashed satire, clowning, pantomime, dance, music and puppetry together into a wild and grotesque theatrical event with monkeys. Written and directed by former Cirque Du Soleil clown Daisuke Tsuji. The play follows the story of Monkey Boy, who wishes to evolve into a human being. This show was non-stop madness, assaulting, totally ridiculous definitely inappropriate for children and great fun to be apart of.

Here are the bones of both out incredible jungle gym set and one of the big puppet hands.

Here is one of the talking shadow puppets in rehearsal. They where a big hit morphing from human to monkey and back again.

Many of the puppets used in this show are shadow puppets most of which are made out of granola bar boxes. (Natures Valley and Nutragrain bar boxes are the best.)

There is lots of cutting involved.

Here is part of the imposter mom puppet before she had her arms attached.

Here is finished mom in action. Mom has an articulated arm and neck made out of soda can joints.

This is an example of the joints used on shadow puppets. The joints are the tricky part because they need to be flexible, flat, and strong.

The joints are made with small pieces of aluminum punched out of cans. The are sewn together like buttons on both sides of the arm to hold the pieces together and still allow for movement. (Be very careful cutting up cans.)

Next the aluminum pieces get button holes poked into them.

The last step is sewing the pieces together and tying them off tightly.

Here are some of the shadow gorillas that meet with a tragic end.

Here is what they look like in shadow.

Here is a unfortunate gorilla in action.
Float you mouse over the image and see what happened...

Here is one of the sheety puppets.

bigfaceprocess

Here is the face of big link mid process. you can see it starting to take shape before it got skin. The skin is made from a fitted bed sheet.

Here is a profile of the big head pre skin. After making the frame and basic shape of the head I used what was available to shape the features. What was available was a bag of costco coffee filters and a bit of packing tape.

matereals

Thank you to all of the talented puppeteers who worked on this show!

Now you have seen a bit of the making of Madness I hope that you try making your own puppets!

Thanks for visiting.

Check out our photos from past shows.