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Odd Puppet Collective

Suitcase Puppetry Process

6/4/2018

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Fresh Ideas in Puppetry was a wonderful experience. My heartfelt thanks to the Puppetmongers, Ann and David Powell, for making it all happen.

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I'm guilty of circling around a project for days, weeks, months (sometimes years) before diving in. Setting up a puppetry program at AWO has been on my mind for years, but there's always been something more pressing to work on. Fortunately, a number of supportive nudges got my priorities sorted out. An upcoming Wood Carving and Puppet Design workshop in Massachusetts (more on that in a future post), a call-out for arts programming proposals supporting refugee and newcomer populations from the Toronto Arts Council, and the Fresh Ideas in Puppetry mini-conference and festival all brought my focus back to puppetry and for that I'm very grateful.

As promised, the following is an attempt to share my process. I tried to walk through the same steps I'll be taking with the kids this summer. The suitcase stories will be their stories and they are the protagonists.  They can be based on a true story or completely fantastical or a bit of both. The suitcase or container, the puppet(s), and the story are the three key elements. In building my prototypes I began as I would with the children - with the stories and attempted to strip them down to crisp three-act structures. Easier said than done.

The first story was about me searching for mojigangas (giant / pageantry puppets) in Mexico. I built the puppet show to fit the perfect blue vintage suitcase I'd found. The puppets and props all had to be sized and built to work with the parametres of the suitcase. Initially I planned to build small puppets, but then worried about visibility for the Fresh Ideas workshop.




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Suitcase Theatre at Fresh Ideas In Puppetry - Sunday, May 27th

5/23/2018

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After a long dry spell, I'm back with some exciting puppetry announcements. I (Nadya) will be presenting a performance/workshop Suitcase Theatre for Refugee Children and Youth between 11:00 and 11:30 at the FRESH IDEAS IN PUPPETRY event on SUNDAY MAY 27, 2018.

At the Aki Studio in Daniels Spectrum, 585 Dundas St. East 

An almost-annual totally day-long mini-conference and festival, showcasing artists taking new and ground-breaking directions in puppetry
Fresh Ideas is a day of presentations and demonstrations, discussions and hands-on workshops, culminating in an evening cabaret of fresh new performances; it is a day of exciting innovations and explorations in puppetry, a stimulating event for everyone interested in current developments in the art form.
Daytime Events 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. $75 (Student/senior $70)
Evening Performances 7 p.m. $25 (Student/senior $20)
All Day & Evening Access $90 (Student/senior $80)

The workshop will explore suitcase theatre as a medium for refugee children to tell their stories. Two short puppet shows, demonstrating different suitcase theatre models, will be followed by a discussion of the rationale, materials, and methodology for developing puppet shows with newly-arrived refugee children.

For more information and to buy tickets, please visit the Puppetmonger's Fresh Ideas page.

Suitcase theatre is a program I'm planning to do this summer with refugee children and youth at the Afghan Women's Organization. We've applied for a Toronto Arts Council grant that would allow for us to establish a puppetry arts centre at our Don Mills location. The plan is to do suitcase theatre during the summer, table top, hand and rod, and hand puppets during the fall, and pageantry puppets and masks in the spring. Everyone is getting very excited about upcoming puppetry programming.

I'm right in the thick of things, but PROMISE to post all kinds of photos about process next week... once I catch my breath.


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Odd Puppet at Victoria Park Lantern Festival

9/27/2015

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For the 15th anniversary of the Victoria Park Lantern Festival in St.John's. Newfoundland,  the Newfoundland Puppet Collective formed under the wings of FoVP and commissioned a script from Andy Jones and Mary Fearon for a traditional Newfoundland Jack tale to be told with illuminated puppets. Pia from the ODD puppets was the link between our mentor David Lane of  the Old Trout Puppet Workshop and Newfoundland. David led a performance workshop here in St. John's and a first vignette of the Tale of Jack and the Bottle of World's End Water was premiered on July 25th. We are now gearing up for the 2016 performance. Anyone in the St.John's area interested in puppetry is warmly encouraged to join the Newfoundland Puppet Collective.
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Odd Puppets at OUF! - March 5, 2015

3/1/2015

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The Odd Puppet Collective presents: Ægget

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Nadya has been working on a new show for the Odd Puppet Collective. A puppet short entitled, Ægget.

An ornithophobic bird’s peaceful life of solitary contemplation is disrupted by the unwelcome appearance of an object with a mysterious allure.

La vie paisible et contemplative d'un oiseau ornithophobique solitaire est interrompue par l'apparition d'un objet malvenu et mystérieux.

Ægget will make it's debut in Montreal's POUF! at OUF! at the Pavillon St-Viateur, Parc St. Viateur (Bloomfield/Bernard) on Thursday, March 5th at 11:00 p.m. See the OUF! site for the festival program. OUF! is a smaller side festival of the Festival de Casteliers.
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Excerpt from "The Golden Butter Tart" performed at the Midland Butter Tart Festival

8/13/2014

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From the workshop

6/8/2014

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We collaborate over quite a distance, so what cannot be done via email is mostly done via Google hangouts. In this cloud space we discuss ideas, show and tell, read scripts and organize from our respective home bases, in Tiny, ON, Toronto, Montréal, Ottawa, and  St.John's, NL. 

Sometimes however the stars align and we are able to hang out in person. And puppet. 
And that is of course always the best. En fait, c'est super bon. Super bon bon.
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TEASER: Tales from the Aga: The Golden Butter Tart 

5/27/2014

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teaserODD from Fournier Marilyne on Vimeo.

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Tales from the Aga: The Golden Butter Tart

5/6/2014

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Coming  soon: Tales from The AGA

4/5/2014

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    Puppetry Links

    • Fresh Ideas
    • OUF!
    • Puppet Allsorts
    • UNIMA-Canada
    • Association québécoise des marionnettistes
    • Institut Internationale de la Marionette
    • New England Puppet Intensive
    • The Old Trout Workshop
    • Casteliers
    • Clunk Puppet Lab
    • Humber College Puppetry Intensive
    • Les Sages Fous
    • Butter Tart Festival Midland

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