You know when your brain wont go to sleep at night and you have a bundle of mad unconnected ideas all at once? When that happens to me I do my best to get a sketchbook in front of me and see what happens. Here are some ideas I came up with last night (apologies for the sketchiness of the drawings, I'll do my best to explain whats going on!)

 The first idea is inspired by Christopher Bauder & Robert Henke's performance Atom : Document
(have a look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_aH10y367I)

LED lights were put in helium filled white balloons which were then raised and lowered with servos and flashed in conjunction with various sound-scapes.

The sketch is pretty basic but I thought you could make a 'snake' or 'dragon' by linking a series of similar LED illuminated balloons with sections of bamboo. An identical parallel chain of bamboo sticks at the bottom of the balloon strings could then be operated by a team of puppeteers. Perhaps they could have battery packs on their belts that feed power up into the balloons. With good choreography an impressive display could be played out on a hillside at night-time. Sadly I think it would be prohibitively expensive to set up in terms of electronics and helium, but could suit a commission for a night time festival procession or similar.

The next idea also involved inflatables (my brains 'theme' for the night it would seem)

The idea with this one is to make an inflatable 3 player bunraku. At the 6 usual control points are small battery operated fans (those little gif shop ones you can buy in the summer). This would allow the puppeteers to inflate and deflate the puppets appendages at will. The movement of such a puppet would probably be quite interesting to watch, a mixture of control and chaos. The right 'pinching' of the form would be key to make it articulate well. Think balloon modelling.

I came upon this video a number of weeks ago and found it pretty inspiring: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH6xCT2aTSo

This next doodle is a sequence attempting to mesh inflatables with the comb characters:

Hopefully the drawings read well enough for me to explain. I want to start with a tray of sand or earth (1) and have an inflatable character buried underneath that is then inflated from underneath the stage with a hidden fan or hair-dryer. This would hopefully cause the figure to push up through the substrate (2-3). This would be cool because there would be no operators in sight and hopefully would surprise and mystify the audience for a few seconds. Then a puppeteer would bring a sheet of fabric across the front of the figure (4) and wrap it up (5). Meanwhile the inflatable figure would be deflated  out of sight and removed. The fabric would then be used to form a simple 1 player comb character comprised of simple elements that could be concealed behind the cloth.

I didn't sketch out my final idea, I just mused about it so its a bit more formless. On Stokes Croft there is a large abandoned building called Westmoreland House. Most people who have lived in Bristol for a while will be familiar with it, its one of our cultural landmarks.

The combination of collapsing architecture, abstract text and giant characters is sumptuous and appealing, I've had a special affection for the building for a long time. The idea would be to make a model of the building from airbrushed mattress foam around a model board skeleton. The various faces on the building could then be operated by puppeteers, coughing up miniature bags of rubbish and skateboards, eating seagulls or fighting amongst themselves.

A friend of mine is developing an 'anti-pantomime' piece about an artist moving to Bristol on a journey of self discovery, ultimately getting mixed up in the drug scene and losing his way. He asked if I might be able to incorporate a short puppetry interlude during set changes. Perhaps I'll run this idea past him.

Thats all for now, its been a lengthy post so thank you for soldiering through it. As always any feedback on ideas and work is really helpful and greatly appreciated.