The Memory Project: Storytelling through visual arts, theater & puppetry

  HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center HOME Project Blog 12 10/28/2021 We introduced our new project today but faced an interesting dilemma. In today’s class, students learnt how to make miniature house mobiles, but Spica was unable to find a Mandarin word for mobile.  The closest translation she found was a kinetic sculpture. We never stop learning when we are working with our seniors!  Because we are balancing miniature houses on a rod, we warmed up with a physical balance exercise. Our seniors stood on one leg and then the other, making sure they had a solid structure to hold on to if needed. All of our seniors keep fit with regular forms of exercise and stretching, so for many this was part of their morning routine. Next, we took some yoga poses as we breathed deeply, and finally just for fun we tried balancing a book on our head as we moved across the room or in a circle.  To give our students a reference to the mobile sculpture as art, we shared the work of Alexander...

  HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center Puppet Project Blog 11 10/21/2021 The day has arrived when we can do some performing with our puppets! Don Lee quietly joined our class and added his support and encouragement to our seniors’ enthusiastic show. We used the human puppet as a glove puppet and the animal puppet as a rod puppet. However, we first needed to warm up our voices with breathing, pitch, and voice exercises. Then we shared the terrific costumes the students made for their human puppet. Some of our ladies said they didn’t know how to sew but learnt in our classes. Well, they certainly picked up the skill quickly, judging by the outstanding clothes they made for their puppets.  Sook Fong’s lady puppet has blue drop earrings and two sets of clothes. One vest is trimmed with lace and the other with pink piping. Pun made two human puppets a male and a female. The woman has a pink hat, while the man sports an elegant silver bow tie. Ru Ping made a red vest with matching red but...

  HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center Puppet Project Blog 10 10/14/2021 Today Bensonhurst Senior Center is celebrating the Double Ninth Festival (Chong Yang Festival or Chung Yeung Festival) with an outing for the seniors, so our class was moved to 9am. According to the I Ching , nine is a yang number; the ninth day of the ninth lunar month (or double nine) has too much yang and so is a very auspicious date.  We began with breathing and voice warm up exercises as we shall be voicing our puppets soon. Our seniors did a fantastic job in finishing the head of their human puppet and we enjoyed sharing them on zoom. Pun’s puppet had a decidedly French aspect with a pencil thin moustache and jaunty cap made from newspaper. She also made a female puppet and added a pink cap. So Sim knitted a white beret trimmed in beige for her girl who had braids plaited from black wool and bangs made from tissue paper. So Sim completed her with a pair of red earrings.  Ru Ping’s puppet remin...

  HSC Bensonhurst Senior Center Puppet Project Blog 9 10/07/2021 Now we are officially in Fall the weather is balmy and just perfect for puppetry! We warmed up our fingers and hands before we began. Our students’ puppets are ready for a face-lift! Time to apply the “skin”.  They selected colored tissue paper and tore it into small pieces, reviewing the technique learned when making the animal head’s skin. We reminded them to glue in one direction to avoid wrinkles in the paper. They smoothed out the head and then added eyes, using small rolled up pieces of toilet paper. They added a pupil to the eyes with a black sharpie to give them more character and definition. Once completed they took a good hard look at their puppet, decided on its sex, age, and character and sketched a hair style. Seniors were encouraged to experiment with either colored tissue paper or newspaper for the hair, manipulating it into the required shape and then gluing or taping it on. This will be finished ...