In 2009 I filled in for a friend who was working for the Snuff Puppets. He couldn’t make it for a couple of days. They couldn’t get rid of me after that.
SHOWS: Snuff Party, Everybody
ROAMING: Human Body Parts,
WORKSHOPS: Swan Hill, Thailand, Korea, Whittlesea
One night, after a beer, Andy set up to paint a crazy 14mt long rolling backdrop. I offered him a hand, we started late at night and stopped two days later! It was 1998, I’d just arrived in Australia and Snuff Puppets gave me the chance to build [myself] a family. That was the Boom Family and it came with a full herd of 6 Cows a Bull and 2 calves.
Alongside my main role as designer, builder and giant puppet performer I contribute to the company also as roaming shows’ director, PPP’s artistic director, production manager and tour manager. Building new puppets and progressively developing designs and techniques with Andy for the past 15 years I was also member of the original team that developed the People’s Puppet Projects format making Snuff’s performance style and giant puppets spawn around the globe.
Main puppets designed, co-designed and built:
Boom Family, The Cows, Kareem the Elephant, The Snail, The Seagulls, Bungee Bungee, Yaroma, The Hand and Human Body Parts
SHOWS: Forest in The Night, Scarey, Circus Ole, Nyet Nyet’s Picnic, Skulls, Cows, Butcher, Boom Family, Seagulls, Bunyips, Snail, Kareem, Snuff Clubb
WORKSHOPS: Taipei, Yilan, HiSeoul, Thailand, Aarhus, Whyalla + all before Indonesia’s Wedhus Gembel (except Osaka 1999)
KT has a few different hats she loves to get about in. She began driving down a dirt road into the visual arts, took a sharp left into the visceral and nitty gritty side street of theatre and giant puppets, and then got lost and found herself in a cul-de-sac at The Tiny Top Sideshow. Nowadays she can be found speeding along in fifth gear up an endless highway of visual arts, performance, film and theatre, often combining them in a feat of dexterity.
KT was first enticed into the world of Snuff Puppets by the lure of $40 to come and “get in a puppet” at Wangaratta Jazz Festival in 1992. In a tight uncomfortable Baby puppet, she ran from A to B pretty much blind and confused. She then decided this could be a suitable career to pursue. KT has roamed the roads, dispersed crowded streets and graced theatres all around Australia, the Asian continent and The World. She has been in pretty much every show created since 1997, claiming fame to such things as the Original Guts and the Original cow and the ONLY performer to have played the coveted Doughman role from Forest in The Night. Highlights include performing as a dancing rigamortis corpse, a potato rotting into compost, licking a puppet ice cream, playing an emu lady, the cleaning Mambo scene in Snuff Clubb , dying a horrible death as a colonial English captain, …and recently…an active Vagina in Everybody.
These days she is often introduced as “one of the oldest surviving members” to the newcomers, by the actual oldest surviving founding member, Andy Freer.
Rebecca Rutter has worked as a performer/set designer/costume artist for twenty years. During this time she has worked across varied media and theatrical disciplines encompassing traditional theatre, puppetry, design, fashion and large-scale spectacle. Rebecca has been working with Snuff Puppets since 2003 as a performer, maker and workshop director as a part of Boom Family, Forest in the Night, Human Body Parts, Brown Brothers, The Dancing Cow Show and various international tours, Peoples Puppet Projects and Snuff Parties.
You can see her work at – www.fizzyfingers.com.au
Zita is a writer, performer and theatre maker who has been working as a seagull, cow, hairy man, giant human, disembodied body part, disembodied inner organ, and as pooh with Snuff Puppets since 2006.
Projects: Various local, regional and interstate festivals including Melbourne International Puppet Festival, Random Acts Festival, Auckland, 2012, Kaohsiung Puppet Festival, Taiwan 2011 and Commonwealth Games Festival.
SHOWS: Snuff Party
ROAMING: Human Body Parts, Boom Family, Seagulls
Puppet Designer/Builder, Workshop Facilitator (PPPs) & Performer, 2006-current.
Creative Development of Snuff Clubb, EveryBody, Human Body Parts, Durer’s Rhinocerus, Snuff Parties.
SHOWS: Wedhus Gembel, Snuff Club, Nyet Nyet’s Picnic, Forest in the Night, Dancing Cow Show
ROAMING: Human Body Parts, Boom Family, Seagulls, Kareem the Elephant
WORKSHOPS: LOHAS Festival, Taiwan; TCAF, Taipei; Herning, Denmark; ComeOut, Adelaide & Whyalla, Art Is…, Horsham; Fairfax Festival, Swan Hill; Mildura-Wentworth Arts Festival; Gertrude St Projection Festival, Melbourne Fringe Festival.
Rosalind Hall works with a multitude of sound technologies and instruments such as a modified saxophone, home made instruments, percussion, field recordings and processing software to create soundtrack, live music and performance work. Rosalind performs with local experimental and improvisatory musicians such as David Brown and Jim Denley and releases solo and collaborative work independently and through labels Avant Whatever, Corpus Collosum Records, pan y rosas discos, Swarming Records and EcoSono.
Shows: Everybody, Wedhus Gembel, 21st Birthday Show
Sounds: rosalindhall.bandcamp.com
Ryan is a performer-composer, improviser, teacher and sound designer. Ryan’s passion for the recorder has led him on a journey full of cross-artform collaboration, engaging performance and exciting improvisation.
Ryan studied with Ruth Wilkinson (University of Melbourne), Genevieve Lacey (Australia), Natasha Anderson (Australia/Berlin) and Jorge Isaac (Conservatorium van Amsterdam). Between 2013-15 Ryan recorded and released four albums of original music which includes his first solo album, Wanderings.
Ryan’s major performances include the production of Venus & Adonis with Bell Shakespeare, Everybody with Snuff Puppets and his own work Life As It Should Be with the cross-artform ensemble Any Kind Of Creature (Amsterdam) performed at the Antwerp Fringe Festival and the Melbourne Fringe Festival.
Between 2012-14 Ryan was the Artistic Director of the Robert Exiner Recorder Festival in which he designed and implemented recorder workshops in schools as well as produced new performance works.
Daniel is a multi-faceted performance artist and creator, with a formation in Fine Art and Cinema Realisation. He is a professional exhibition designer, installer and builder for institutions such as The State Library of Queensland, Museum of Brisbane, and QAGOMA. He has directed Memetica giant puppets at Woodford Folk Festival for the past 2 years and recently co-directed “Love Stinks!” giant puppet theatre for Snuff Puppets in Penang, Malaysia.
Olga is a Spanish multidisciplinary arts practitioner based in Australia. She specialises in Improvisation and Playback Theatre and has worked internationally, performing and teaching theatre processes for self-discovery, growth and empowerment for individuals and communities in Sri Lanka, Spain, Malaysia and Australia. Olga is an experienced Director and creator of site-specific theatre, a visual artist, musician, explorer and instigator of social/collective initiatives. Motivated by a strong inter-cultural curiosity, Olga continues travelling the world, learning, sharing and creating.
