USITT 2017 Tech Expo Guide - Public - 16

Tech EXPO 2017
Exhibit No. 4 Darzee the Bird Puppet
By Rachel Buechele
Florida State University

n Florida State University's production of The
Garden of Rikki Tikki Tavi, the costume designer
rendered beautiful and elaborate characters,
which brought life to the animals. The character
Darzee the Bird was portrayed as a puppet with
blinking eyes. This was a challenge to create
because the puppet's head was perched on top of
the head of the actress portraying Darzee. The eyes
of the puppet were designed to blink and were
operated by the actress. The blinking required a
trigger mechanism attached to hand-held, wooden
control handles (Figure 1).
The bird's body and head were constructed
from thermo-plastic materials including Wonderflex for the body and Veraform for the head.
A muslin drape was made over a mock-up puppet
to determine a general shape and to plan layout
of seams and lap-overs. The thermo-plastic was
then manipulated with heat and molded over
the mock-up, which was covered with aluminum
foil. The pieces were constructed in two parts so
that the form could be removed from the inside
of the body and head. The head was never completely sealed, even in the finished form of the
puppet, so that mechanical issues could be accessed and corrected during the run of the show.
The puppet's eyes are plastic, hemispherical
vessel heads of nesting sizes: two for the eyeballs, two for the eyelids. The eyelids were cut
down slightly with a Dremel, leaving flanges on
each side of the vessel head where the holes were
drilled, and an additional flange at the top center of the eyelid for the extension spring to connect. The diameters of the holes for the sides are
exactly the diameter of a heavy coat hanger. The
eyeballs also had holes drilled across the middle,
close to the edge, with a drill bit that was slightly
larger than the coat hanger's diameter. Vertical
wire pegs were used to support and level each
individual eye when installed. The eyeballs and
eyelids were then nested together with a wire-pin
insert across the horizontal axis, leaving 3" for
the bent armatures. The wire was then adhered
into the eyelids using J-B Weld Epoxy while positioning the armatures in a horizontal orientation
with the eyelids closed.
Creating the eye mechanism was the most difficult aspect of the design. Approximately 3' of

United States Institute for Theatre Technology, Inc.

Figure 1
plastic tubing was inserted into the body at the
back base of the neck, traveled through the right
side of the body, exited just below the wings, extended down the hollow fiberglass rod, and out
through a hole drilled in the side of the rod. A
wooden brace was added to the rod to stabilize the tube above the trigger. Next, extension
springs were installed at the base of the lower
hemisphere of the head and attached to the flanges on the top of the eyelids, forcing the eyelids to
stay open. At the top of the upper hemisphere was
a smooth wire loop. Fishing line was attached to
each end of the armatures from the eyes, fed up
into the wire channel inside the top of the head,
through the tubing, and attached to the trigger
piece on the handle. Both lengths of the fishing
line needed to be tied to the trigger and checked
to make sure the eyes moved in tandem. When

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of USITT 2017 Tech Expo Guide - Public