Open Studio Evening, April 27, 2017

Open Studio evening.  Members came with their individual projects to work on, exchange information and ideas, connecting, and general chat.

And now Stratford comes to our studio!

This Fall Keira Loughren and her team of designers and actors were at home in our Toronto studio for a week long workshop of The Komagata Maru Incident, by Sharon Pollock, slated for production at Stratford in mid 2017.

Our job was to create shadow puppets for a Sikh folktale inserted into the play – here are a few pictures of what we made, based on a style of thai shadow puppetry… projected with halogen lamps.

The Crow
farmers-wife-puppet-and-shadow
The farmer’s Wife
The Banyan Tree and happy ending

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Workshopped in Stratford

Collaborated on a workshopping of Cue for Treason at Stratford Ontario, with directors Varrick Grimes and Keira Loughran and video artist Erin Gruber.  It was done with a blend of shadow image/action with projection and live action from a team of six actors.

For this made cut out shadow images to be projected by halogen lamps, and then Erin captured them on video and played with them on her computer before re projecting the results.

Some memorable moments were:

  • A few galloping horsemen I cut out became a hoard of charging cavalry.
  • A ghost scene/bad dream with actors silhouettes and projected visions as shadow images.
  • A cut out chest was projected so that two actors could climb in to hide.
  • Live actors working on the sides of the stage were filmed and projected onto a two floor house interior I had cut out, so you could see them plotting, running up and down stairs, climbing through windows etc, while also seeing them do it all in mime.  A hoot!

Altogether a great shame that the Stratford Festival did not choose to take in on to production – it would have been so much fun!

 

Dragon for Paper Bag Princess

A recent project to built two dragon puppets for the production of Munsch At Play by Tetrault Arts Productions.  One full size head and neck on a backpack, with moving eyes and eyelids, twitching antennae, and wagging tongue.  And a smaller rod puppet with flapping wings, to fly around stage.  It was a great deal of fun!

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Cinderella in Muddy York

The much loved story of Cinderella is reset in 1830’s Upper Canada, just as “Muddy” York is to be renamed Toronto, and where the very Canadian Cinderella is expected to cater to every whim of her recently immigrated stepmother and sisters.  True to the classic fairy tale, with a little magic and some imaginative special effects our resourceful girl does get herself to the Ball, and to the satisfying conclusion of the play.

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New Workshops at the Puppetmongery

We are delighted to have just added two workshops with Shawna Reiter of Klunk Puppet Lab to his season of classes.  One about controlling with strings and one about story development.

And we are still excited to be offering workshops with Mike Petersen with Mouth Puppetry 101 and Mouth Puppetry for TV, and Ingrid Hansen of SNAFU Theatre with Object Manipulation, along with our own Puppetmongers workshops.

For details please visit this page