BREAD & PUPPET Printshop Internship: Week 6, Part 2
Part 2 (August 1-7, 2012) One of the circus acts needed some costumes and banners fast, so we had to print with something that dried quick and stayed waterproof. The answer: LATEX PRINTING !!!! Yup! You heard right — HOUSE PAINT!
Sounds easy, right??? Well…don’t just watch the paint dry. Round Up Your Team, Pair Up, Spritz Mist, Work Fast, Roll & Wipe Clean, Hang, Repeat! WHEW! When you finish, give yourselves some high fives because it is really tricky to print with latex. You have to move fast before the paint dries on the masonite, but NOT too fast that you’re splattering paint on the print. And then, AND THEN, you really have to clean that paint off the masonite because if you don’t, the paint will RUIN it! — as in, that paint will settle in the cracks like a second layer of skin destroying the fine detail you worked so hard to carve into the surface and maybe even warping it. Yikes!
So WHY do it? Why print with LATEX at all??? Well, it’s cheap and readily available. Lila sometimes prints with latex for fast proofing Peter’s masonite cuts. I can’t remember if we proofed the POSSIBILITARIAN LION with latex, but he sure was so satisfying to print! Must be the bright golden color… so cheery I felt like joining in some of the acts. But soon after a crash course in flag dancing, I realized that printing huge woodcuts in the morning, and running around twirling huge flags in the afternoon left me with no energy for the next day. So, I just busied myself taking pictures. The LION also loomed large as the backdrop in the circus field.
Here are the theatre interns dancing the BOMBA
in protest of the imposition of English
as the medium of instruction in Puerto Rican schools.