Superior Concept Monsters

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A twenty-foot caterpillar puppet designed by Alex Kahn spreads its wings to became a Luna Moth in the 1998 Halloween parade in New York's Greenwich Village. The shadow of another puppet can be seen dancing on the moth's wing.

Superior Concept Monsters is an ensemble of performing artists and theatrical technicians devoted to pageant puppetry and processional art. Located in upstate New York, it was "born out of" New York's Village Halloween Parade, in which it is a regular participant. Much of its work is produced with assistance from volunteers participating in puppet-raisings and community workshops.

[edit] Ensemble

SCM's chief artists and puppet designers are Alex Kahn and Sophia Michahelles. Kahn's training is in painting and sculpting. While at Harvard, he won a top prize which led him to Nepal, where he developed an interest in ritual art. Michahelles was a shop assistant for SCM, and began to co-design puppets in 2000. She is the designer of the celebrated phoenix puppet presented in the 2001 Halloween parade; the work was a response to the September 11, 2001 attack on New York.

SCM's team of builders, parade marshalls and technicians includes Meg Aldrich, Christopher Fox, Steffen Hyder, Moira Sauer, Kevin Taylor, Bess Williamson. Its choreographer is Sondra Loring. Logistics are handled by Howie Callies.

[edit] Its name

The company's name originated "...from an antique sign that hung on the puppet storage barn," the workshop at Rokeby Farm it calls home. The sign reads Superior Concept Corp. Kahn explains its meaning:

"The phrase captures the unpredictable moment when a giant puppet is first animated. At this moment we find that each puppet inevitably assumes a will and character of its own, transcending our original concept and design... In asserting their own identities within the carnivalesque realm of processional art the puppets become superior to the concepts or ideas of their creators."

[edit] Workshops

Superior Concept Monsters presents workshops in pageant puppetry at the Omega Institute, and each year since 2002 it has led a puppetry workshop in Italy, in the Alpine village of Morinesio. It has been invited to participate as artists-in-residence at Caribbean Contemporary Arts, an international studio program in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The trip was made possible by a research scholarship awarded to Kahn by the Fulbright Scholar Program. SCM hopes to create a puppet workshop there modeled after its work in Italy.

[edit] See also

New York's Village Halloween Parade

[edit] External links

• Superior Concept Monsters

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