THE WORLD'S LONGEST CRANKIE

In our script "The Keepers of Clark Street," the characters that the heroine meets share their memories. We chose to represent these memory stories in the cinematic puppetry format of the Crankie. 

BUT NOT JUST ANY CRANKIE.... 

We are building the longest crankie known to man: The frame for the crankie is a pre-hung door, and the stories together will form a continuous length of crankable fabric 50 yards long! 

1 DOOR. 50 YARDS OF MUSLIN.

36" WIDE. OMG.

However... When you shine a light on muslin, it is a little see-through. So first, we have to treat the muslin with a glue mixture to make it more opaque (which is nice for painting on) and a little stiffer (which is nice for cranking). 







50 yards is a lot of fabric - so we occupied the Movement Room at the Puppet Arts Compex over winter break to pin our fabric up to dry.

                                 

We're using push pins to tack the wet fabric tight to a wall of styrofoam sheets. 

By the time we're done, we will have dunked the whole 50 yards in the glue bath twice. 







How will a crankie be built into a door!? Here is a preliminary mock-up design for how that could happen: