At 7 p.m. Friday, students strolling around Grounds may run into some fantastically unfamiliar faces. The Stan Winston & Steve Warner Festival of the Moving Creature, a joyful culmination of two semester-long courses, will parade anthropomorphic “creature” puppets through Grounds. Two massive puppets approximately the size of a small bus — a bird “Delia” and snail “Shelly” — will be accompanied by an entourage of relatively smaller pieces, like handheld and full-body wearable creature puppets.
The festival will begin at Arts Grounds, with the creatures gradually winding their way through to Central Grounds and the Rotunda. The creatures will be accompanied by music along their path. Melissa Goldman, a fabrication lab manager at the School of Architecture, explained the celebratory, vibrant nature of the precession through Grounds.
“It's a joyful parade,” Goldman said. “We're going to parade through Central Grounds with not only the two big creatures but a whole series of smaller creatures … This is a designed experience, and we've really made something come to life, and that's what makes it a creature.”
Goldman has spent the spring semester teaching alongside Annie Temmink, a lecturer in the drama department, and helping to bring these creatures to life. DRAM 4597, “Art of the Moving Creature,” which is co-instructed by the pair and cross-listed in the drama department and School of Architecture, has been the birthplace of larger-scale puppets such as Shelly and Delia. A more introductory-level course, DRAM 1220, “Art of the Creature,” is instructed by Temmink in the drama department, with a focus on smaller creatures as the festival’s supporting characters.
With a class of 14 students, the creation of two specific creatures required a lot of deliberate collaborative effort, both creatively and logistically. Fourth-year College student Hannah Martin said that designing and brainstorming these puppets stretched the imagination of the class and that the fantastical element of the creatures made their designs naturally tricky to bring to life.
“It was a lot of back and forth when finalizing our designs, because, again, we have a class full of people from all different backgrounds … so everyone's kind of good at something, but none of us knew everything,” Martin said. “We had to figure out designs that were creatable.”
As the course progressed throughout the spring semester, Shelly has evolved into an otherworldly snail-dragon hybrid, donning an iridescent snail shell accented with flowy tentacles. Delia, the “flying” creature, is comparably sizable as well, amounting to upwards of 20 feet in length.
The pair have been the sum of the work of eager students — like fourth-year College student Will Clemons — who now describe their design processes with pride.
“We had some really great ideas come to the table, and we ended up with this final product for the design that I am really quite in love with right now,” Clemons said, speaking about Shelly. “I'm just really excited to see how people engage with it and how we can engage with the other creature.”
This year, Goldman emphasized sustainability in the creation process while keeping the creatures as light as possible. This has been achieved by primarily using bamboo. For decoration, they added on colored burlap, shredded plastic and dress fabric.
“Last year we did some other materials, and we learned many things from the structures using PVC and foam,” Goldman said. “We wanted to be more sustainable and get things locally, so we've been hacking the bamboo down and using the raw material.”
Creature-related courses have been offered at the University since 2013, with the first iteration of the festival, the “Stan Winston Arts Festival of the Moving Creature,” occurring in that same year. The festival’s namesake, Class of 1968 alumnus Stan Winston, was a television and film special make-up effects artist. Before his passing in 2008, Winston was lauded for his work in special-effects for blockbuster franchises like “Jurassic Park” and “The Terminator.”
According to Goldman, the original festival featured five large-scale creatures, built over two semesters and under the purview of students collaborating with Hollywood artists. After 2013, the courses continued, but on a smaller scope, with smaller models and less grand performances. The death of groundbreaking Drama Prof. Steven L. Warner in 2022, however, inspired the drama department to “go big” again in memoriam — it was Warner who initiated the festival in 2013 and whose namesake lives on in the modern iteration of the parade.
After being revived in the 2023-2024 school year for its second edition, the festival now commemorates both Warner and Winston in its title.
“This is the second of the Stan Winston and Steven Warner festival,” Goldman said. “When Steve passed away in 2022, we said, ‘We really need to do something to honor his memory and bring joy to Arts Grounds’ ... Going big again would be the way to honor his memory, and it was such a big hit … We got approval to do it again this year, and we're looking to do it again next year.”
With that ultimate goal in mind, Clemons recalled how hands-on learning in “The Art of the Moving Creature” has been individually impactful as he worked closely on Delia and Shelly.
“It's been a lot of sort of improv work insofar as in, ‘How do we make this shape work?’” Clemons said. “It might not be clear immediately, and it might take a few tries, but it's that process of just doing things and actively figuring out new strategies and techniques … It’s been really great for me personally, because it's sort of an opportunity to do something that you don't really get to do a lot in academic spaces.”
Similarly, Martin appreciated how distinct Goldman and Temmink’s course has been from her typical classes as a biology major.
“It's just been kind of a wild experience,” she said. “I'm just really glad that I did this. I kind of took the class — I'm a fourth year — because I was like, well, when else am I going to build a giant puppet in my life?”
Narratively, Goldman explained that Shelly and Delia — while endlessly different in their backstories — have both come to find home and community in Charlottesville.
“Shelly is coming from the depths of the sea … And Delia, the flying creature, has come down from the mountains … Hopefully the two of them coming together can find community, and that's kind of a really hopeful theme for all of us on Grounds right now.”
Read More
The growing zine scene of Charlottesville
By Isabelle Halliday | YesterdayZines are small booklets that can feature anything from stories to recipes to art to poems — the content is completely up to the artist’s choice. From recent on-Grounds workshops to city-wide festivals, community members all across Charlottesville have been getting the chance to exercise their creative skills through the unique art medium of zines.
“The Legend of Ochi” brings new life to a timeless tale
By Zachary Geller | YesterdayThe film follows the story of Yuri, a teenage girl who lives with her father, Maxim, and adopted brother, Petro, on a farm in the mythological land of Carpathia.
The Undergraduate Composers Concert exhibited the talent of U.Va.’s musicians
By Carter Horner | 2 days agoCultivating a diverse collection of music was one of the main goals of the Undergraduate Composers Concert.
