Rat King Puppets

Gallery

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Caption

Inspiration & Concept

I created these rat puppets for a show I'm currently workshoping, in-progress title is "Rat King" but I'd like to come up with something more mysterious. The subject of this show is a rat king, a real-life phenomena where rats will get stuck together via their tails and strugle until they starve. While working on the script and the visuals, I started with a lot of photos and articles on the subject.

Wikipedia
Medium: Rat Kings…What Are They, Really?
Mental Floss: An (Almost) Comprehensive History of Rat Kings
YouTube: Rats Found With Tails Tied Together in Eastern Estonia
PDF: Rat Kings in Estonia, abstract

When I originally devised the visuals for the show, I was imagining people in rat costumes -

- which then shifted to rat masks -

- until I remembered how much I love puppets and how strongly I've been wanting to make my own puppet show for a long time. So I reimagined my concept with puppets, and began sketching to figure out how to show this many rats onstage at once with a very limited number of puppeteers (preferably one).

My first thoughts involved a shadow play, with puppets held by sticks hidden behind a sheet. But then I figured, why not remove the lighting issue and allow the show to be performed anywahere regardless of lighting constraints? But I decided to stick with the same method that shadow puppets use - sticks! I chose to built each 2d puppet on top of a pole, each of which would slot into a frame on the floor and would stand on their own. Then when puppeteering the individual rat, I could hold it from the back or take hold of the stick if it needed to exit the frame. In the middle would be the knot, possibly on its own stick but it may just hang in between the rats, supported by the ropes of the tails.

Another important aspect of the show is that I wanted to cut the tails for real. In the script, the rats must cut their own tails off to escape, and while my original ideas working with actors meant expensive sewn tails, working on a small scale means that they ccan be simple pieces of rope. Which can be cheaply bought, attached, cut, and replaced. So each rat, and also the ball of tails, need to be made in such a way that the tails can be removed and re-attached for each show.

To keep them as cheap as possible, I'll be using cardboard, scrap fabric, and materials from the hardware store.

I want to make them fluffy using scrap fabric and yarn. One of the driving themes for this show is texture, I want to highlight the unnerving nature of the sharp (or not-so-sharp) instruemtns that I'll be cutting their tails off with by making everything feel very soft and natural. Through soft yarn fur, rough rope tails, and cold shiny metal, I want it to be a tactile experience for the viewer even if they aren't actually feeling the puppets themselves.

Vintage Rat Poison Ads as Art Style Reference