Okay, by most people's standards, even in this world of freaks - Dave might seem wierd. I mean who in their right mind would create, of all things, a friggin' puppet show? Well, in all actuality, as wierd as Dave may seem... he is - and that's why I really, really dig him. In his obscurity he stands out as something of an original, even in this sea of freaks - and who doesn't appreciate that?

The thing is that talking to him, you probably wouldn't notice it too much. He's one hell of a genuinely nice guy who, behind his somewhat quiet exterior and easy laughter, has a delightful touch of darkness swimming around.

Go see his shows. They're funny as hell, and probably something you won't get to see anywhere else, because c'mon - it's a friggin' puppet show... and Shadow Circus pretty much kicks ass. ~ kSea flux

 

Which idea came first, Shadow Circus or its puppets? Well, that question’s quite a bit more complicated than you’d think. There are a couple of characters, Hatchet the Velociraptor specifically, that have been with me for a very, very long time. I think I originally came up with Hatchet when I was about eleven years old. He was - well, I think he was a puppet first, come to think of it, made out of cardboard and a blue sock. He was the villain in these horrible science fiction films that I used to make with my friend Conan Neutron (from the band REPLICATOR) back when we were in Elementary school. Ever since then, I haven’t really been able to make any kind of art without Hatchet sneaking in somehow. He was in a novel that I wrote in High School, he was in the comics I drew - he would pop up absolutely everywhere. When I started the puppetry troupe, it was only natural that he would show up in that, too. His species has changed a couple times, but it’s still Hatchet.

Many of the other characters were permutations of other earlier characters. Some of them were designed specifically for the troupe, out of a script’s need. Some are from mythology… And, of course some are parodies of real people [::cough::Vaudevire::cough::]

How did you conceive of creating a puppet show?
It was kind of a slow process. It started off by including puppets in the stage show for a band I had ten years ago called ‘Healthy Morbidity’ – then I came up with the idea of Shadow Circus as a sort of ‘puppet band’. When I discovered that people hated my music, I abandoned the band pretension all together and just made Shadow Circus a puppet show. In the past couple of years, it’s kind of swung back towards a musical direction again, but it’s still definitely ‘Musical Theater’ rather than ‘A Band with Puppets’.

How much time goes into making each puppet?
It depends on the puppet, and what I need it to do. It can take anywhere from a week to a month depending on how big it is and the level of functionality that it needs.
Being that I make things out of latex, an awful lot of time is spent just waiting for stuff to dry. If you’re interested in the process, I’ve made a step-by-step tutorial that’s up on our site (www.shadowcircus.com)
You now have an entire backing band, sets, the whole deal. Tell me about your first show as Shadow Circus. It kind of depends on what you consider the ‘First Show’. Technically, the first show was in Los Angeles in ‘99 in some warehouse space somewhere, but that was more of an experiment more than anything else. To be honest, I don’t even remember most of it. I wasn’t drunk or anything, the show was just that unremarkable.

Once I came back to San Francisco and really pulled my stuff together, our first show was at Kimo’s. Heck, everyone’s first show was at Kimo’s back then. They were fantastic that way – anybody who wanted to do a show could be booked there, it didn’t matter what you were doing. A year and a half in LA, and I couldn’t get anyone to even listen to my show idea, but as soon as I got back to SF, Kimo’s was like, “You want to do a show? Okay you’re on the calendar. You do what? A puppet show? Whatever, the night is yours.’ No questions asked.
Back then, as I may have mentioned, Shadow Circus was meant to be a puppet band… Kind of like ‘Captured By Robots’, except with puppets instead of robots and with crap instead of music. I had these embarrassingly bad electroclash songs that I’d done, and the idea was that the puppets were my backing band. They all had instruments and would sync along behind me while the real music was being played on a ‘Hello Kitty’ CD Player. In between the songs there were these little comedy sketches that we’d do with the puppets. I wasn’t puppeteering Hatchet back then; I was just playing myself as the straight man to all of these puppets.

The first show went really well, so Kimo’s had us come back about a month later. We were meant to go on that second night around 11:00, but the opening band refused to get off the stage. They were this horrible jam band, and they just kept playing on and on. The bartender felt bad that we had to wait, so she just kept giving us more and more drinks. By the time we hit the stage at 1:00 am, we were all wasted, and I was too drunk to start the ‘Hello Kitty’ CD player.

By then the audience was calling out for the puppet show, and in my drunken state I hit a moment of clarity – nobody cared about my stupid electro songs – they were there to see the puppets! So, I opened up the CD player, hurled the CD over the crowd and we did the first of what was to be several drunken, belligerent puppet shows.
How have the shows changed since then? Well, the first several years of Shadow Circus our shows were very chaotic and improvised – we were very much into being a ‘punk-rock’ puppet show. It was fun to do for a while, but after a few years, what we found was that while we were entertaining ourselves, the audience was just bored and confused.
I think the transition happened in 2004 after we opened for ‘The Dresden Dolls’ at the Café Du Nord. When I looked at reviews online about that show, I realized that the audience positively hated us. Every one of them said the exact same thing – that our show was long and boring.
(Ringmaster’s note: Yeah, it was boring, (sorry Dave) but not entirely their fault. The stage at du Nord is about a foot high, and pretty much no one but the people in front could even see the show – and it definitely needs to be seen to be appreciated.)
Obviously, we don’t care if everybody in the world likes us. We wouldn’t mind if they found us offensive or tasteless, but the one thing we didn’t want to be was boring - so what we did was we streamlined things from the ‘drunken improv’ format to shows that were very tightly scripted, very well rehearsed and were performed in short, concise sketches that could hold an audiences attention. We seem to get more and more professional in every show, which is a far cry from the ‘get drunk and break things’ shows we started with.
As you mentioned earlier, we also have a full backing band now. When Angelique X, aka Stacy took over the role of Wesley, she brought her husband Davey with her, who plays guitar and writes much of the music. Soon after that, she roped in the standup bassist (Hans) from her country band, and then our friend Carlos came in on trombone and keyboard and… well, all of a sudden, there was a band there. It just kind of happened. I think it adds a lot, way better than using canned music for our soundtrack.

Each puppet has a distinct character. Are those based on anyone in your life? Well, some of them really are directly based on people. We’ve done puppets of Chicken John, Mayor Gavin Newsom, Galaxxy Chamber, Mateo from Extra Action Marching Band, Dj Miz Margo, Killian from Gun and Doll Show… We’ve made puppets of a LOT of people, actually.
But aside from the ‘real people’ puppets, most of the main characters have elements of myself and other people, but often aren’t directly inspired by one specific person. Hatchet is kind of the predatory meanness that I kind of try to hold back. All of the cruel, snarky barbs that I would never think to make to people in real conversation tend to get delivered through Hatchet. Wesley is a little bit me in junior high school and a little bit of some of the people I grew up with. Heck, I think most people grew up with someone like Wesley. He was the kid wearing the T-Shirt with a white wolf on it, who carried a 12-sided dice and spent his recess writing out RPG character sheets.
Wesley’s sister Jade is based on my friend TC in LA, but again, she’s kind of filtered through other influences.

Which puppet do you identify with the most? Why? Well, like I say, many of them have elements of me. Hatchet is my meanness, Wesley is my awkwardness, I like to say that I’m the most like Syrus, because he’s sort of the cool one, and possibly the only character that would be likable in real life. But if I have to be honest, I’m probably more like Wesley than anyone else, I just hate admitting it.

If you could be any of your puppets, which one would it be? Why? I don’t think I’d like to be any of my puppets – I tend to put my characters through pretty shitty situations. In all seriousness, though, I’m very happy being the puppet master. I’ve never wanted to be anyone else but me.
Tell me a secret. Any secret. Ah, but if I told you, and you published it, then it would no longer be a secret, would it? If I told you, I’d have to shoot you.