The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
The Camden-Rockport Middle School, under the direction of Ellen Curtis, presented “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”. One of the characters in the play is Thunderbolt, an old but impressive horse. In pre-production talks, the tech director, Erma Colvin showed the director footage from “Warhorse” on Broadway. “Warhorse” is a play about the horses used in World War I. The horses were portrayed by life-size puppets, the creation of Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones, founders of the Handspring Puppet Company of South Africa. Ellen Curtis suggested that the CRMS tech crew make a life-size puppet modeled after Joey from “Warhorse”. After thinking that was impossible, they both agreed, “Why not!”
The creation of Thunderbolt began with chicken wire and flexible plumbing tubing, The CRMS Tech crew made the head out of paper mache and designed the moving tail mechanism. They then became the puppeteers. One student was the horse wrangler. Having had horse experience, she taught the puppeteers to do the proper horse gait ( created with coconut shells, of course) and designed the halter for Thunderbolt to wear. The horse puppet is controlled by two people in the body, moving the front legs, back legs and the tail, and one person outside the body controlling the head.
Thunderbolt was a huge success. Besides from his appearance in “Jumping Frog”, Thunderbolt has made guest appearances at the Owl’s Head Transportation Museum, the Camden Mini-Maker Faire and this fall’s National Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration at CRMS.
me arts ed 