Hello, friends!

In the previous post I talked about the Eurofurence Pawpetshow as a remote contributor (I was making subtitles for the PPS YouTube channel). If you missed it, here’s a short summary:

Eurofurence is Europe's largest furry festival, and Pawpetshow is the main event of its cultural program. It’s a full-fledged puppet theater that has been making shows for many years. The quality has long since reached a professional level, although the show is still performed exclusively by volunteers and enthusiasts.

First time I saw the Pawpetshow in 2022, and I immediately got captivated by it and offered my help as a volunteer. At the time I was living in Latvia, so I could only participate in the theater remotely. I started to make subtitles for Youtube channel, and only quietly dreamed that one day I will, too, stand on stage with a puppet in my hands.

In the spring of 2024 I found a job in the Netherlands and relocated to Amsterdam. Now I live only 4 hours away from the rehearsal location in Dortmund. Nothing could possibly stop me at this point.

Puppet created by https://bsky.app/profile/sunnymaolo.bsky.social

I was afraid that the theater might have a long waiting list of volunteers wanting to join, and the chances of immediately getting into the main cast were slim. Therefore, I was extremely happy, but also quite surprised when I was invited to a chat, given access to the script of a new play and offered a choise of the available roles.

On the one hand, maybe it was because they already knew me from before; but on the other, I found that not many people actually have the opportunity to travel to rehearsals in Dortmund every few weeks. There was (and still it) a staffing shortage, so I stepped in at the right time.

65 people are not only the actors themselves, but also sound engineers, painters, costume designers and so on.

The first step of the new theater season is the so-called script reading - a video call, where we recite the new play for the first time and decide who gets which role. Same scene can be run several times with different participants, so this process is slow and can take many hours. Once upon a time, this was all part of the first rehearsal, but live rehearsal time is precious, so now we try not to waste it on things that can be done online.

By the time of the script reading the play is supposed to be fully or almost fully complete, so the puppet makers can begin their part of the work: create new main characters. The supporting characters are usually puppets from previous years, sometimes slightly modified and re-dressed. But the main cast is almost always made anew, and this is a large amount of work, to which all Pawpetshow participants are invited.

The owner of the workshop and our main puppet maker - https://puppet.tioh.de/

The rehearsal calendar usually sets aside several weekends specifically for building puppets, and everyone who can tries to participate. For me, this is an opportunity to touch the magic, to partake in a miracle. Even if I screw up on stage later, I’ve already done something cool :)

Making puppets is difficult, but beginners will get all the help and guidance they could hope for. Everything that must be 3D printed is printed in advance, so at the workshops your main tools are scissors, a paintbrush, a needle and a glue gun. It's like putting together a Lego set, only ten times more fun.

The source materials are normally used to make pipe insulation, mattresses, floors, sports equipment - everything that can be light, durable and flexible.

In parallel with the puppet building the rehearsals begin. This is usually late spring - the busiest part of our calendar, when a lot of things are happening at once.

A rehearsal takes up the entire weekend: on Friday evening we assemble the stage and prepare the equipment, on Saturday we rehearse from nine in the morning until midnight, and on Sunday from nine until departure. The necessity to be at work on Monday limits available time, but those who do not need to travel far stay late on Sunday, too, and disassemble and pack everything up.

The stage is a scary engineering contraption that requires several hours of preparation every time.

And so, the rehearsals begin.

Long ago I have played in a student theater, so I thought I knew how it all works from the inside. But I was wrong. With puppets everything is different.