A working puppet and mask workshop on the R62. We make for theatre companies, for schools with a concert coming, and for church halls.
See what we have made
Poppekas is a puppet and mask workshop on Van Riebeeck Street in Barrydale, in an old fruit-packing shed with one high window on the south wall. Marlene Fortuin and Ashwill Arendse work here, and between the two of us that is the whole staff. A puppet starts as a block of jelutong, soft enough to carve with a gouge and light enough that an arm can hold it up for a full act. The head is cut solid, hollowed from behind, and sanded until the light stops catching on the tool marks. Paint goes on in thin coats of earth pigment mixed with size, never straight out of a tin, so the face keeps some depth under a stage light. Then the joints, then the strings, then a week at the bar getting the balance right, which is the part nobody watches and the part that decides whether the thing walks.
Anything on the shelf goes out within three working days by courier, in a box with the strings tied off so they cannot tangle. A commission runs four to eight weeks depending on what else is on the bench, and we tell you which before you pay anything. We repair puppets we did not make, including the ones held together with masking tape at the back of a school store room, and we charge those by the hour rather than quoting for them. What we will not do is make a puppet of a living person, or a copy of a character somebody else owns, and we would rather say so here than on the phone.
Poppekas, 14 Van Riebeeck Street, Barrydale. Open Tuesday to Friday, nine to four, and Saturday mornings in season. For a commission tell us the show, the date and the size.
