Sophia Michahelles
Encyclopedia
Puppeteer
A puppeteer is a person who manipulates an inanimate object, such as a puppet, in real time to create the illusion of life. The puppeteer may be visible to or hidden from the audience. A puppeteer can operate a puppet indirectly by the use of strings, rods, wires, electronics or directly by his or...
s of Superior Concept Monsters
Superior Concept Monsters
Superior Concept Monsters is an ensemble of performing artists and theatrical technicians devoted to pageant puppetry and processional art. They are best known for creating the large-scale puppet performances that lead New York's Village Halloween Parade...
, makers of pageant puppets and other processional art in upstate New York
Upstate New York
Upstate New York is the region of the U.S. state of New York that is located north of the core of the New York metropolitan area.-Definition:There is no clear or official boundary between Upstate New York and Downstate New York...
. She works closely with co-director Alex Kahn
Alex Kahn
Alex Kahn is an American visual and performance artist, best known for his creation of the large-scale puppet performance works that lead New York's Village Halloween Parade each year.-Pageant Puppetry and Processional Art:...
. The couple's work is commissioned each year to lead New York's Village Halloween Parade
New York's Village Halloween Parade
New York's Village Halloween Parade is an annual holiday parade and street pageant presented the night of every Halloween in New York City’s Greenwich Village...
, the largest puppet parade
Parade
A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of some kind...
and street-pageant of its kind in the United States, drawing two million spectators.
Many of the giant rod puppets (or "pageant" puppets) created by Michahelles and Kahn, are lit from the inside, making them suitable for night parades. They are performed by teams of puppeteers. For the 1998 Halloween parade, Michahelles worked with Kahn
Kahn
Kahn is a German surname. Kahn is the German word for a small boat. It is also a Germanized form of the Jewish surname Cohen, another variant of which is Cahn.- People with the surname Kahn :...
and his team to build five 20-foot caterpillar puppets (designed by Kahn) which transformed into giant Luna Moths
Actias luna
Actias luna, commonly known as the Luna Moth, is a lime-green, Nearctic Saturniid moth in the family Saturniidae, subfamily Saturniinae...
. In 2001, as a response to the attack on the World Trade Center
World Trade Center
The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...
, Michahelles herself designed an incandescent baby phoenix puppet for the New York parade, as a symbol of rebirth from the ashes.
Michahelles has also worked in collaboration with master puppeteer Basil Twist
Basil Twist
Basil Twist is a New York City-based puppeteer who is best known for his underwater puppet show, "Symphonie Fantastique".-Life and work:Originally from San Francisco, Basil Twist is a third generation puppeteer. He graduated from the École Supérieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette in...
. She performed in Twist's off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
show Symphonie Fantastique (1998 and 2004) presented at Dodger Stages. The Obie-award-winning work is a water ballet of 180 puppets choreographed to the five movements of Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
's 1830 orchestral work. Unseen during the performance, she and the other five performers "...emerge from behind the scenes for their curtain calls... Each is wearing a wetsuit, looks exhausted, and is soaked from head to toe," according to theatre critic Matthew Murray of TalkinBroadway.com.
Since 2002, Michahelles and Kahn have taught a summer workshop in pageant puppetry and processional art in the mountain village of Morinesio, located in the Italian Alps. They draw on local history as an inspiration for the artistic themes of the puppet creations and folk festivals that are part of the workshop. This process of creating locally-derived, site-specific processions has become a central aspect of their work, and in 2005, they formed a non-profit entity, Processional Arts Workshop, to further pursue community-based projects.