What I have loved about developing this show is that is has allowed me to dig into the world of puppet and prop making - a medium of theatre that I have always felt I would enjoy but hadn’t yet had a chance to explore. This project has allowed me to discover a whole other side of my art making and I can’t wait to keep building more!

Creating and directing theatre is such a visceral and intellectual process that I have always longed to contribute with something that is more tangible. For example, when you direct a scene for a play it requires a very specialized skillset - clear communication, the ability to visualize how the actors will move around the stage, an understanding of text, the ability to coach actors into the best performance they can offer… the list goes on and on! BUT after a long day of directing, you don’t have anything to actually show for it. I would come home from a long day of rehearsal and my husband would ask “How’d it go?” and I still struggle, after 15 years of directing, to explain to him what we did that day. A successful rehearsal could be discovering a single moment that resonated deeply. Ha! So that’s my answer to my husband, “We found resonance?” BORING. Not really, but you know what I mean, right?

*Here you can see my stand in cardboard faces - these will be replaced by masks!*

For this project, it has been different because my creativity has been channelled into the puppets and props I have been creating. I converted my basement into a small puppet lab during the Covid draught, and have spent many nights over the past year hunched over my work bench manifesting whimsical creatures out of nothing. And at the end of the day, I could bring my puppet upstairs and say to my husband, “Look what I created today!”. It was an object! It exists in space! I was proud of it.

*My biggest prop so far: a propellor backpack!*

With this newfound sense of accomplishment also came what I like to call “puppet tears”. Get it? Ha. Ok, I stole that from a podcast - but it’s SO TRUE. To me, this is the part of the process where I have spent 8-10 hours crafting a puppet to find out that it doesn’t work - or that it’s awkward - or that the legs twist and look disjointed. Sigh…back to the work bench. I’m not sure if you have tried it but a puppet is a hard thing to make! It needs to look realistic, have breath, have joints that work as you need them to, have personality, have direct eye line. The list goes on and on! And it takes many many MANY hours of exploration, problem solving, and a fair share of tears! But in the end, the magic of a puppet onstage makes it all worth it.