The Midtown puppetry center is a logical home for Rudolph and Santa.
13 and gave them to the center on semi-permanent loan.
“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and his boss Santa have piloted their sleigh to Midtown’s Center for Puppetry Arts.Īn anonymous donor bought them for $368,000 at auction Nov. The puppet hero of the 1964 animated children’s feature. We did our best to re-create the look and voices.The most famous reindeer of all has flown to Atlanta. The film was classic stop-motion puppetry, so we were confident a live puppetry version would work well. It is a wonderful script and the design is iconic. “This was the fun and the artistic challenge. “It was very important to us and the rights holders that we stay true to the original,” the center’s artistic director said. Ludwig’s version hews close to the original for contractual reasons, but also by choice, he said. All the other misfits soon reach a happy ending, as well. Much to his surprise, he is welcomed warmly, appreciated finally for his bravery and uniqueness.
Soon realizing that his illuminated nose is endangering his growing group of misfit friends, and, as the program notes, “that he can’t run from who he is,” Rudolph returns home. Santa Claus and Rudolph spent years in a toy basket, as decorations and as children's playthings, before they were recognized as the cultural icons that they are.
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The puppet styles employed in the center’s production of Rudolph are different from the TV classic, and include rod, body and blacklight puppets, often enhanced by projected moving images. Now they are on long-term loan to the Atlanta institution. That was before a detailed restoration that returned Rudolph’s red nose and half of Santa’s yak-hair mustache. That’s quite an uptick from when an “Antiques Roadshow” expert appraised them for $8,000 to $10,000 in 2005, after a family member of Barbara Adams, an employee of Rankin/Bass in the 1970s, retrieved them from the attic. In a sale held in Los Angeles by Profiles in History auction house late last year, the figures went for $368,000, far eclipsing their estimated value of $150,000 to $200,000. It’s the kind of star treatment one would expect for King Tut’s tomb, reflecting how beloved the puppets are - and perhaps also how valuable. The 6-inch-tall Rudolph and 11-inch-tall Santa, handmade creations of Japanese puppet-maker Ichiro Komuro, command the entire gallery, set off by a backdrop painted with snowy trees. Guests reach the display at the end of a hall of blue-white shimmering material that makes you feel like you’re strolling amid North Pole icebergs toward Something Very Important. The wee figures are given big-star treatment, displayed inside an acrylic vitrine in a gallery a level below the theater. Upping the nostalgia ante, the Center for Puppetry Arts also is presenting an exhibit of the Rudolph and Santa puppets from the 1964 Rankin/Bass Productions TV special, made in collaboration with animation wizard Tadahito Mochinaga and his MOM Film Studio in Tokyo.
After taking last Christmas off due to the pandemic, “Rudolph” has returned to the puppetry center to light up the holidays for the 11th year with his bulbous red nose. “Rudolph” is to the Center for Puppetry Arts what “The Nutcracker” is for Atlanta Ballet and a thousand other dance companies: a provider of holiday jingle that bolsters the bottom line year-round. All of this and more plays a supporting role for the puppetry center’s main attraction, “ Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” the puppet show based on the 1964 stop-motion animated Christmas television special.
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