After Marionette Monday and Troll Tuesday, here we are with our third day in preparation of the Carnival: Wizard Wednesday. Today I bring you a selection of marionettes and hand puppets of wizards, for your indoor street theatre.
Radagast the Brown
At Squeaking Tribe, Australian based artists Sol and Sara do handmade marionettes of fantastical creatures draw from different and multicultural sources of inspiration. They also did some Tolkien-based works and for our Wizard Wednesday I couldn’t help but mentioning their Radagast the Brown.
Radagast is one of the Istari and you probably know him as an absent-minded, rabbit-racing old guy if you have seen The Hobbit movies. His name literally means “tender of beasts” and he was a primordial spirit affiliated to the Valar of growing things Yavanna. He doesn’t appear in any of the published books: he is mentioned by Gandalf both in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings, but we could very well argue that our trickster of a Grey Wizard is making him up to impress us with more wizards.
Sol and Sara also did a Gandalf the White (out of stock), a Smeagol (the hobbit subsequently known as Gollum), and an unrelated Blue Wizard (or possibly related, since Gandalf mentions two of them as well).
The Whole Court
Are you tired of seeing stuff that’s already done? Are you bored out of your mind and do you want to do something yourself? Vintage Harvest Studio from Brisbane Australia has you covered: they have paper dolls of any kind and also schematics not only for the puppet doll of a wizard, but for the whole court: you can find it here. There’s the King, the Queen, a jester, the executioner, the wizard and a dragon. No knight, so I guess it’s up to the wizard.
I think they will be enough for some scenes from The Once and Future King by T.H. White (if you don’t know it, it’s the book that inspired Disney’s Sword in the Stone and it’s absolutely delightful).
From the same group on Esty, there’s also some rather uncheerful costume sewing patterns, some weird pirate stuff and schematics to make your own dinosaur toys.
The Red Wizard
Thomas Weber is a registered craftsman and the founder of Theater Didymus, a workshop for theatre crafts located in Antwerp, Belgium.
This is the place where I design and make all kinds of masks, puppets, props, small-scale scenography, decoration and so much more. For both professionals and other non-professionals.
There’s a beautiful piece he has available on Etsy, the hand puppet of a Red Wizard in wood paste on a styrofoam base (for the head), acrylic paintwork, the basecostume is in white cotton and the hands are made of wool. The upper costume is absolutely beautiful and the feather on the hat is just amazing.
You can’t have a Gandalf dressed in red and you cannot have a Merlin. What you can do, is Elminster. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you clearly never roleplayed. Elminster is one of the main characters in the Forgotten Realms setting of Dungeons & Dragons, I’m not even sure if that’s still a thing.I feel I should remind you, however, that the original inspiration for Tolkien’s Gandalf supposedly was a postcard with a red-robed guy. Just saying.
Prospero, the Witch and their Sons
Ágnes Ábrahám is the amazing creator behind the Etsy shop offering this Prospero hand puppet. Prospero is one of the three main characters in William Shakespeare‘s play The Tempest, often considered the main character and the symbol of the good mage. For some reason, he is the rightful Duke of Milan (the city where I was born and live), and he is marooned on a deserted island with his fifteen years old daughter Miranda. Prospero has learned magic and uses it to keep his daughter a prisoner, to enslave other being such as the spirit Ariel and to subdue his enemy’s son, Caliban, a monster to whom he promises the abovementioned Ariel. And yet, somehow, he is our hero.
Shakespeare aside, Agnes’ puppet is really beautiful and has wonderful details.
You are also going to need a Sycorax , the malevolent witch, mother of Caliban, and here she might be (if she didn’t bring you gifts on January, 6th.
Should you want a really terrifying Caliban, you might want to cast Malak the Troll (my favourite piece in all the shop).
Now all you need to find are Miranda and Ariel. For the first you could try and cast Queen Isobel. For the second, we’re going to need a fairy.
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