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

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.

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.

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.