Chapeaugraphy by Roland Schopp

The art of Chapeaugraphy means visual comedy. From a simple felt ring the performer folds various hats in order to impersonate different people and characters. Within seconds, a stoic Napoleon Bonaparte becomes a crying baby; after that a Chinese Mandarin; and then a Spanish Torero, to name a few. The audience is truly amazed and amused by the fast and visible transformations.

In 1984, the author, award-winning German performer Roland Schopp, aka ChaPeau, awoke the „Sleeping Beauty„: the art of Chapeaugraphy. Ever since, it has been an integral part of his repertoire as both magician and quick-change artist. Now for the first time he shares with the reader his knowledge and the experience of 25 years performing the art professionally.

Learn everything about it in words and pictures: The exciting history of Chapeaugraphy • How to make the felt brim • Various folding techniques • Tips for performing, gestures and facial expressions, possible props and appropriate music.

Sometimes called one of the „fringes of magic,„ the art of Chapeaugraphy offers much more than the fun of transforming. It allows you to build your own routine and perform it to please the audience. The result is entertainment at its best, with a minimum of baggage!

This book is bilangual (English/German).

Contents Preface by Eberhard Riese About Chapeaugraphy History of Chapeaugraphy Making a hat for Chapeaugraphy No Folds One Fold Half Fold Two Half Folds The Rolling Fold The Needle Fold The Elevation Fold Hands-on Hats Elastic Band Annotations From the Preface by Eberhard Riese The desire for disguising and concealing oneself is as old as mankind. A cave drawing from the Stone Age shows a human who is hiding under an animal mask, probably in order to perform his hunting or praying charm even more successfully. No wonder that the art of transforming conquered the variety stages in the 19th Century. Its representatives, however, can only rarely be seen, probably because several different skills are required for the craft: production of costumes, very fast transformation and – probably the most important – convincingly interpreting the figure that is represented.

ChaPeau is one of the few transformation artists of our day who unites all these gifts in him. Even as a young man he was interested in the theatre, in magic and in masquerade, and the fact that his father was the head makeup artist in television for many years only partially explains this passion. He was awarded innumerable artistic and magic prizes as well as engagements all over the world.

The fact that he now reveals the secrets of this classic of the art of transformation and offers much of his own experience can‘t be stressed highly enough. The professional world and the interested reader must thank him for this.

I hope you have a lot of fun reading this book. It is certain to become a standard work of this art in a very short time!