Sophia Michahelles
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Sophia Michahelles is one of the two chief artists and puppeteers of Superior Concept Monsters, makers of pageant puppets and other processional art in upstate New York. She works closely with co-chief designer Alex Kahn. The couple's work is regularly featured in New York's Village Halloween Parade, the largest puppet parade and street-pageant of its kind in the United States, drawing two million spectators. Her work has also been featured in the Henson Festival of International Puppet Theatre, and in other festivals in the U.S. and worldwide.
Many of Michahelles' giant rod puppets, known as pageant sized puppets, are lit from the inside, making them suitable for night parades. They are operated, or "articulated," by teams of puppeteers. For the 1998 Halloween parade, Michahelles worked with Kahn and his team to build five 20-foot caterpillar puppets (designed by Kahn) which transformed into giant Luna Moths. In 2001, as a response to the attack on the World Trade Center, Michahelles herself designed an incandescent baby phoenix puppet for the New York parade. It was configured to spread its wings and rise out a fire, represented by lanterns lifted on poles.
For the 2000 parade, the Sci-Fi channel commissioned a giant "sandworm" puppet (photographs of which are available the Web site of Superior Concept Monsters). Michahelles describes it:
- "They wanted something life-size, and after reminding them that sandworms don't really exist, we build a 70' long worm, 14' tall with an 11' diameter, supported and operated by 40 people in Fremen costumes. A Worm Master rode on the top of a rolling tower incorporated in the body of the worm, controlling the beast's giant jaw."
Michahelles and Kahn often work in collaboration with other master puppeteers, such as Basil Twist, Jeanne Fleming, Debbie Lee Cohen and others.
Michahelles performed in Twist's off-Broadway show Symphonie Fantastique (1998 and 2004) presented at Dodger Stages. The Obie-award-winning work is a water ballet of 180 puppets choreographed to the five movements of Hector Berlioz's 1830 orchestral work. Unseen during the performance, she and the other five performers "...emerge from behind the scenes for their curtain calls... Each is wearing a wetsuit, looks exhausted, and is soaked from head to toe," according to theatre critic Matthew Murray of TalkinBroadway.com.
She also presents workshops in pageant puppetry at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. As a co-presenter with Fleming and Kahn, she provides instruction in the role puppetry plays in the history of pageantry, street-theater and ancient rituals, and the skills needed for "large-scale, lightweight puppetry, including how to form structural papier-mâché, shape rattan, and fashion armatures with articulated joints."
Since 2002, Michahelles and Kahn have taught a summer workshop in pageant puppetry and processional art in the mountain village of Morinesio, located in the Italian Alps. They draw on local history as an inspiration for the artistic themes of the puppet creations and folk festivals that are part of the workshop.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Superior Concept Monsters
- Faculty Profile of Michahelles at Omega Institute
- TalkinBroadway.com review of Symphonie Fantastique
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