Hawk
It is always a pleasure to observe majestic predatory hawks as they soar, and as they scan from their perch with their keen eyes, and as they dive after their unsuspecting prey. Hawks are powerful and awe inspiring animals, but not instinctively nice and certainly not cute.
Gepetto modeled Hawk primarily after the red tailed hawk, although copious artistic liberties were taken as needs arose.
The Mortal Beasts and Deities’ Hawk was inspired by Geppetto’s frustration with the behavior of the executive branch of the United States government. The long range plan for Hawk was to contrast him with a yet to be built dove puppet, to enable theatrical explorations about predator/prey relationships, pacifism/violence issues and instinctive behaviors/civilized behaviors. Now, various combinations with Hawk, the Flock of Doves and Rooster puppets offer numerous creative opportunities, and the exploration of opportunities has only just begun.
Hawk is the first puppet in the Mortal Beasts & Deities stable (aka roost) to be designed around a construction helmet. The helmet answered the problem of how to securely fasten the puppet head to the puppeteer, and the helmet raised the puppet head well above the puppeteer’s head for the illusion of greater height. Since Hawk was built, half a dozen more puppet heads have been built around helmets.
Hawk has football style shoulder pads to bulk up his shoulders and raise his wings.
With the puppeteer on stilts, wrapped in the abundant fabric feathers and with a chest pumped up with foam and fleece, Hawk is impressively big, casting a huge shadow. With all the gear and padding it seems Hawk is a pretty safe puppet to operate, although puppeteer injury is unlikely anyway.
The Mortal Beasts & Deities has never aspired to become specialists in the circus arts, and we aren’t, but stilts have none-the-less became an important aspect of many Mortal Beasts & Deities’ performances. Initially all the puppets were operated by puppeteers on terra firma, but then Hawk was envisioned as graceful and impressive in scale, and after watching stilt performers at Bread & Puppet, the idea came to Geppetto to build Hawk so he could be performed by a stilt walker.
The goal from the beginning was to have Hawk finished for debut at the Project Troubador festival at the end of June 2002. It seemed in March that Geppetto would have plenty of time, but as often happens, the sand fell through the hourglass more quickly than expected. By the time the papier mache dried, the wings were sewn and the paint was dry, Geppetto had only two days left to learn how to stilt walk before the first public performance!
Fortunately Geppetto found stilt walking easy. He was a quick study, walking on stilts unassisted after only 15 scary minutes. Then came work on stilt walking endurance, and then trying to bear the weight of the puppet’s body and head. Not being able to see well through Hawk’s head was a surprise, but Geppetto quickly adjusted to it, discovering the ‘scan and predict’ technique. Thankfully, the debut performance at Project Troubador 2002, while short, went off without incident. Since Hawk’s debut, much work has been done and Hawk is quite secure for his puppeteer now.
Some of the best performances of Hawk, with a strong hawk-like gait and graceful smooth soar, have been done by Mark ‘Moti’ Zemmelman, Dan Hammond and Matthew Terrell, and more recently by Dan’s younger brother Jeff Hammond. All young guys in tip top shape who are natural dancers. Hawk’s performance requires strong triceps, biceps and trapezius muscles to operate the wings, so Hawk’s puppeteers need to exercise and stretch these muscle groups before performance.
An exception to the younger is better thing has been the numerous strong Hawk performances by big old bull-like puppeteer Rick Alexander, Geppetto’s much older brother.
Shortly after Hawk’s creation, Geppetto was spending a summer with friends at Bread & Puppet Theater, the puppetry Mecca of New England. During his stay there a skit was developed for Hawk with another puppeteer there named Laurent.
It was decided Laurent would act the role of a tall animal Trainer who had miraculously trained a Hawk to follow his commands, and Geppeto would do Hawk as if he were the trained bird. The Trainer was up on stilts as well, with a riding crop in hand and wearing an oversized white linen suit and Panama hat. He was standing in an undefined circle in the middle of the Bread & Puppet circus field, calling out moves that Hawk would undertake. Fact was they had practiced, so Trainer Laurent was actually calling out moves that Geppetto as Hawk had already initiated, but the illusion was nicely created that the Trainer was calling out commands and Hawk was following them.
Anyway, an audience of about 200 awestruck people came to watch the show as the Trainer and Hawk worked the big circle. Trainer shouted commands: “soar!” and “dive!” and “perch!”.
Hawk started to take off, so Trainer shouted “thermal!” Hawk began working his wings harder and running as if climbing up to a thermal and just as Hawk had picked up speed
his right stilt collapsed!
Without a pause, the Trainer shouted “crash!”
And Hawk did. A full face plant in front of all those people!
There was a guy seen holding a video camera, but he had just turned it off before the crash so sadly there was no visual record of this most spectacular crash…. would have been fun to watch a replay.
No injuries, but plenty of lessons. Stilt design has since evolved quite a bit and such malfunctions haven’t occurred again.
Hawk is seldom performed solo anymore, although in the right environment he could. For the last few years Geppetto has preferred seeing him as originally intended, playing his role as a mercenary soldier at Rooster‘s greedy beck and call in our staged play called Resolution Revolution, which stars the Flock of Doves.
