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DAYTIME PROGRAM – Sunday June 5th – STARTING AT 2:00 p.m. ET
2:00 P.M. There and Back Again, From Live Shows to Virtual Shows to ?! Three companies discuss their transitions from live shows to pre-recorded work, online streaming, and hybrid presentations. Has the pandemic profoundly changed our companies, our industry, and our audiences’ expectations? Panelists: John Nolan and Kathy MacLellan of Rag & Bone Puppet Theatre and Robin Polfuss of RoRoArt.
2:30 p.m. Channels: Creating a Puppet Show from Found Audio. How I turned an audio collage into a celebration of bad television, starring an unlucky channel-surfing puppet. Follow me through workshopping a script, building a stage, and creating special effects. Presenter: Grant Harding (The Abstractions) studied puppetry at Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia. He has created short puppet films, live concert visuals, and puppet templates for children.
3:00 p.m. Light & Shadow: from Shadow Puppetry to 2D Platformer. Light & Shadow is a free-to-play, 2D platform video game being developed by Shadowland Theatre and Flawed Designs. The game explores anxiety and depression through the artistic style of shadow puppetry. Presenters: Sequoia Erickson of Shadowland Theatre, and Robin Careless of Flawed Designs. Shadowland Theatre creates theatre that is expressive in style, highly imaginative in concept, and spectacular in execution. Flawed Designs is a media production company that specializes in films and video games.
3:30 p.m. OCEAN SWING & GARDEN GROOVE –the search for original sound in FRAKTAL THEATRE. Musical instruments from old, recycled objects. Puppets and set design as musical instruments. Sounds of the changing seasons. Sounds of the ocean, sounds of the mystery. Garden as an orchestra. Presenter: Ewa Maria Wolska of Teatr FRACTAL (Poland). Ewa Maria is a director, puppeteer, stop-motion animator. Founder of Teatr FRAKTAL (FRACTAL Theatre), creating original, intímate, poetic performances known for rich visuality, experimental sound, and original instruments.
4:00 p.m. The White Plague by Karel Čapek: A Cardboard Puppet Production. Alex and Gabe discuss the puppetry production elements from their winter show about a mysterious, contagious, and lethal disease ravaging the population with doctors around the world racing to find a cure. Presenters: Alexandra Montagnese and Gabriel Levine. As curators, Gabe and Alex have collaborated (along with three other puppet enthusiasts) on Toronto’s Seasonal Experimental Puppetry Cabaret: Concrete Cabaret since 2018. The White Plague is their first directorial collaboration.
EVENING CABARET OF VIDEOS – (not in scheduled order yet) Sunday June 5th – STARTING AT 7:00 p.m. EDT
Jovita Idár: A Maiden of Justice. Created for the 2020 Women’s Suffrage Pageant at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, this toy theatre piece honours Jovita Idár’s courageous work as a journalist, teacher, political activist, and civil rights worker. Performer: Genna Beth Davidson is a puppeteer, actress, musician, and graduate student in the UConn Puppet arts program.
Ottawa Valley Stories. A 6-minute film of mini-object performances expressing stories of social goodness, with local artists/residents of Killaloe, Ontario in August 2020 – part of Jumblies’ Grounds for Goodness project. groundsforgoodness.ca Performers: Jumblies and Ruth Howard make art with, for and about people and places. This video was produced in partnership with Ottawa Valley Creative Arts, filmed and edited by Studio Dreamshare.
Jack be Limber. These Laughing-Limberjacks and Limberjackys are musical instruments and Irish/British folk-like dancing, paddle puppets. Each is manipulated by an elastic string attached to its head and a vibrating paddle at its feet. Performers: Linda Fitz is a retired 3D animator, now video editing and making and animating limberjacks. Steve Paul Simms is a singer-songwriter, actor, guitarist, seniors’ entertainer who regularly performs his original music.
The Awkward Date. You can’t always tell everything about your date from their picture, but it still might work out! Or… maybe not? A short video on the perils of dating. Performer: Robin Polfuss is a storyteller, puppet builder and puppeteer at live festivals and events, and has been making short films for Slams and YouTube. She teaches puppet building & performing workshops.
It Only Takes the Smallest Light… The Journey to LuminUS. During the darkest days of the pandemic, the Lumins come to life for Clay and Paper Theatre, artful expressions of sculpture, light, music, large scale puppetry and spectacle. Performers: Since 1994, Clay & Paper Theatre has been producing plays, pageants and parades with and for the community, grounded in the idea that performance in public space is an act of cultural transformation.
An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good – Rag & Bone Puppet Theatre. An excerpt from a work in progress hybrid (film/live) show for adult audiences, about an 88-year-old Maud, who pretends to be vague and helpless but is really a cold-hearted killer. Performers: Rag & Bone has created shows, toured, and worked in TV since 1978, earning an ACTRA award and a Citation of Excellence in the Art of Puppetry from UNIMA.
Short Attention Spa is Tall Attention Spa. Small town comedians Short Attention Spa takes their act to new heights in this improvised giant puppet documentary. Performers: Short Attention Spa is the duo of Lenny Epstein and Gavin North. They practice the art of making people laugh. Mostly they do that through comedy.
And an afterparty chatroom Zoom for everyone