The Artsy Dudes Podcast
Pulling the Strings of Imagination: The Art and Soul of Puppetry in Calgary with Jenny Dale Stables and Tia DeLauria
Ever find yourself mesmerized by the charm of a puppet show, or recall the nostalgia of marionettes dancing on strings? We've got a treat for you!
Sparrow Art Space in Bridgeland, Calgary transforms into a lively hub, hosting puppeteers Jenny Dale Stables and Tia DeLauria. They're drawing back the curtain to reveal the magic and allure of puppetry, sharing how they've sculpted their artistic paths and the unique voices they bring to the stage through their enthralling creations. This spellbinding episode is a journey into the heart of imagination, where traditional craftsmanship pairs with contemporary storytelling, reminding us that creativity isn't just child's play—it's an innate language woven into our human fabric.
Who thought glue could be so fascinating? Or that Calgary would be a hotbed for puppeteering? Our guests peel back the layers of this thriving scene, spilling secrets on the nuts and bolts—sometimes quite literally—of breathing life into inanimate figures. It's more than just the materials; it's a dance of adhesives, craftsmanship, and the alchemy of storytelling. We delve into the Festival of Animated Objects, where the Calgary community showcases its puppeteering prowess, proving that this art form is not just surviving post-pandemic—it's flourishing.
As we wrap up, it's clear that puppetry is no mere child's diversion but a bridge to our purest sense of play and connection. Amidst an age dominated by pixels and screens, we explore how tangible artistry, like puppets, anchors us to the physical world, tugging at our heartstrings and sparking joy across generations. Jenny and Tia's passion is a clarion call, inviting us all to embrace the threads of our inner child. To pick up whatever materials are at hand, and to animate our stories in the most human way possible—through the age-old tradition of puppetry. Let this episode be your gateway to rediscovering the magic of play, and perhaps, find yourself crafting a puppet friend to join you on the journey.
Ever find yourself mesmerized by the charm of a puppet show, or recall the nostalgia of marionettes dancing on strings? We've got a treat for you!
Sparrow Art Space in Bridgeland, Calgary transforms into a lively hub, hosting puppeteers Jenny Dale Stables and Tia DeLauria. They're drawing back the curtain to reveal the magic and allure of puppetry, sharing how they've sculpted their artistic paths and the unique voices they bring to the stage through their enthralling creations. This spellbinding episode is a journey into the heart of imagination, where traditional craftsmanship pairs with contemporary storytelling, reminding us that creativity isn't just child's play—it's an innate language woven into our human fabric.
Who thought glue could be so fascinating? Or that Calgary would be a hotbed for puppeteering? Our guests peel back the layers of this thriving scene, spilling secrets on the nuts and bolts—sometimes quite literally—of breathing life into inanimate figures. It's more than just the materials; it's a dance of adhesives, craftsmanship, and the alchemy of storytelling. We delve into the Festival of Animated Objects, where the Calgary community showcases its puppeteering prowess, proving that this art form is not just surviving post-pandemic—it's flourishing.
As we wrap up, it's clear that puppetry is no mere child's diversion but a bridge to our purest sense of play and connection. Amidst an age dominated by pixels and screens, we explore how tangible artistry, like puppets, anchors us to the physical world, tugging at our heartstrings and sparking joy across generations. Jenny and Tia's passion is a clarion call, inviting us all to embrace the threads of our inner child. To pick up whatever materials are at hand, and to animate our stories in the most human way possible—through the age-old tradition of puppetry. Let this episode be your gateway to rediscovering the magic of play, and perhaps, find yourself crafting a puppet friend to join you on the journey.
Hi Ryan.
Speaker 2:Hi Taylor.
Speaker 1:How's it going? Oh, pretty good.
Speaker 2:Glad to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're doing another podcast. This one's a little different, have you noticed? This is yeah. Okay, it's gotten a little bigger.
Speaker 2:A little bigger, a little different. The space is so much better than your living room. Yeah, no plans.
Speaker 1:And we don't have the radiator tingin' in the background.
Speaker 3:We can turn it up, we can get that for you.
Speaker 1:Oh, maybe We'll try it. Chen sound, is that okay? No, that's better, okay. So, yeah, welcome to the RTDudes. This is our first video podcast. We've been doing this for over a year now, but it's been mostly audio, so, unfortunately, now the public has to look at us while we speak as well. So sorry, but yeah, I'm excited. We are here at Sparrow Art Space, located in Bridgeland in Calgary, and it is our new mothership, our home for podcasts from now on. So I'm excited. My name, as always, is Taylor Gladew. I'm one of the hosts of the RTDudes, and with me is Ryan wants to say hi to the people. Hello everyone. Okay, there we go. Today we are joined with two incredible artists. They are puppeteers and, if you would mind, just introducing yourselves to the audience.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm Jenny.
Speaker 3:Dale Stables. Oh, I'm Tia DeLorean.
Speaker 1:Nice. So what brings you guys to Sparrow?
Speaker 4:Yeah, we wanted to put on a puppetry residency that would welcome people of all ages to come in and explore the art of puppetry. At the heart of that is our belief that play is a human birthright, that play fosters creativity across all art forms, and so we've set up the space where everything is touchable, where people can come in and explore making puppets and performing them and creating stories and, hopefully, finding a new way to connect as family and as friends, because I believe that puppetry also has a tendency to bring people together and collaborate. Yeah, what about you, tia?
Speaker 3:What was the question?
Speaker 1:What brings you to Sparrow?
Speaker 3:Right. Well, like Jenny said, the idea of the puppet residency was really neat, especially as this month is more or less the festival of animated objects here in Calgary, so there's a lot of puppet themed events, and having a space where people could not only attend workshops but also experience and play and create their own, as they're also within the confines of other events, seemed like a really great idea, because sometimes you go see an event but then you don't know what to do after that if you want to make them or explore that avenue. So, yeah, came here to show the like behind the curtain level, of older child adult puppets, where they're hidden at the back of the room above child eye level. So I wanted to show that version of puppetry because a lot of people really think puppets, they think Sesame Street, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, jim Hansen comes to mind. Yeah, which which especially in Calgary.
Speaker 3:We have Fragile Rock here, so it's a huge thing. Everyone thinks Jim Hansen puppets, but Jim Hansen even wanted a show called Sex and Violence. So I decided I wanted to show about metal. And I come making metal puppets Amazing.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 1:What got you started in puppetry to begin with, like what was your catalyst?
Speaker 4:Let me go first. Yeah, I think I'll first keep you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, what could be so for me? I've always been interested in. Well, I mean, when I first started to create my own art as a visual artist, I think I was trying to create art for other people, or what I thought other people would like. So I was doing things like landscapes and portraits and like, oh, this is, this is art. And then I finally, about about 12 years ago, I finally said you know, I had to give myself permission to do what my heart is saying and I started to do art that was fun and whimsical. I started to make little characters and dress them up in clothing, and then I started to write stories to go along with them. That evolved into writing and illustrating books.
Speaker 4:My work has always been very child centered. I used to teach kindergarten and I have a bachelor of education in addition to my BFA, and I just really wanted to celebrate and create art that kids love. And about six years ago, I was writing and illustrating my book called Bull. It's about a little robot who gets separated from his boy and I was creating these found object assemblage sculptures to go along with those that story and I kept thinking I want those characters to move, I want my sculptures to move and I didn't connect the dots that what I really wanted was puppetry. And it wasn't until about three years ago I was taking a course to be as to get my sort of certification as a therapeutic arts practitioner and the idea of puppetry came up again. And it had come up for years. It would just pop up and I'd be like I'm not a puppeteer, I'm not a puppeteer. And then all of a sudden, during this class I actually had one of my dolls and I was puppeting the doll and I looked around, I saw my sculptures, I saw my artwork, I saw my stories and I went I'm a puppeteer. Why did it take this long for me to figure out that all of these characters and all of the stories and wanting to bring movement and wanting that's puppeteering. It just took that long for me to have that aha moment.
Speaker 4:But as soon as I had that aha moment, it was like a bolt of lightning just went right through me and I knew that I really wanted to pursue this art form and do it in a really respectful way, like respecting the art form and respecting those who can't and respecting those who came before me. So I wasn't about to jump up and say, guess what, I'm a puppeteer now, like I knew I needed to reach out to the community. I needed to find mentors. I needed to. You know I took some courses to learn wooden puppets and carving.
Speaker 4:I've also been trained by puppet stuff Canada, brendan James Boyd and Reese Scott, who were puppeteers for the Frago Rock, and they hired me as a roving performer so they taught me how to do roving puppetry with Muppet style puppets. Winita Dawn has brought me into her studio and she does a lot of tabletop puppets similar to the wooden carved puppets that I do, and so she's been mentoring me as well. So I still consider myself a very abutting puppeteer. I don't. I think, out of respect for the all of the artists out there who work in puppetry, I don't want to go and say I'm such a pro, but I think you have to start somewhere, and that focus in my practice has now been going on for three years. You can get close to saying that, yeah, I can step up with you guys maybe, but I'm still, out of respect, really taking and learning from the community.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I got into puppetry accidentally. I went to art school. I also have a bit of a background in carpentry and graphic design. So I applied for a job with the Calgary animated object society, thinking it was a production job. Like I can make things, I can make things I can do that I'll apply. I was kind of just applying to jobs like a mediocre white guy and I didn't really look at the qualifications and I got the job and she's like all right, do you want to make a puppet show? And I went, is that my job? And they're like do you want to perform this one? And I'm like is that also my job? So I, yeah, I was commissioned to make my first puppet show.
Speaker 3:It's a suitcase puppet show. Most of my puppet shows are, yeah, they're kind of self contained within a puppet show. I've built them into the suitcase or I can just grab it and go. And this has given me a lot of opportunities to make several puppet shows now that we perform a lot at festivals. So things like we'll be at Folk Fest, we'll be at, like we'll go to Nanton, we'll go to Beakerhead, stuff like that, and so, yeah, it kind of is. I got really excited after the first couple months because it's finally a job that uses what I thought were all of my useless skills. And now I get paid to make tiny furniture out of popsicle sticks and, you know, instrument, case foam and it's, it's going great. So, like a lot of artists who go to art school, you kind of come out and you're like great, now what do I do?
Speaker 3:It's been incredible finding a way to use all my skills and my backgrounds, and it's really also such a good community that I stay in it, and it's such a welcoming and encouraging one that it's kind of hard to get out of it now. So that's how I got into it.
Speaker 1:I had a question about just like meeting you guys right off the bat. It seems like there's a whole bunch of different styles of puppeteering. Like you just mentioned the suitcase thing, is that like an actual like like category?
Speaker 3:Kind of there's a lot of miniature puppets. There's entire festivals just dedicated to like street performing and puppets like that. So my boss really loves talking about the puppet festival in, I think, charleville, france. She's always like, hey, but you guys got to go, I take my kids, I take my kids, I take everyone. We've got to go and we're like it's every two years, deep breaths, we can't go. Right now, it's not this year. There's entire festivals. One of the people in my company who really like hits it hard is was started as a summer student many years ago and they kind of created the suitcase theater arcade.
Speaker 3:Sometimes you might see at a festival and it's called. It's a bit see, but yeah, it it's. It's a way to perform puppets but it involves a lot of different kind of puppet techniques. So a lot of people look at my puppet shows and they go. You have four different kinds of puppets in this show because you just do what you can use. So, yeah, the mini puppets is definitely a type, because you get the marionettes which everyone thinks of instantly, like the Pinocchio strings. On top you get the table top ones which you kind of perform down at the table and it's more like down on the table and there's rod puppets there's. There's so many kinds and it really just it's kind of what kind of puppet and where you perform it.
Speaker 4:And I think, if I could add to that one of the definitions that that I've come across for puppetry is an inanimate object that is animated in front of an audience, so an object that moves in front of an audience, and I think that is probably one of the most encompassing definitions of puppetry, because it is such an expansive and such there's so much depth to puppetry and there's so many traditions, like worldwide traditions that we could, we could trace back for centuries, and all of those have come to influence and it's still evolving, which I think is amazing about puppetry. Like I remember when I was studying painting in my undergrad and one of the professors said, oh, don't go into painting because everything's been done. I don't think you could say that about puppetry it hasn't been done yet because it's so expansive Like.
Speaker 3:you'll get people making 40 foot tall dragons that breathe fire and walk in parades. You'll get where online.
Speaker 1:I think there's a travel. Yeah, there's a new castle. They've been in Montreal.
Speaker 3:I've seen them in other places online. And then, I think, a couple years, there was one that like climbs up a building and then you'll get, like Jenny mentioned, the more traditional ones. So you'll get like puppets and masks We've done last year we did an exhibition on more traditional mass making and how it comes to contemporary artworks of current artists and you'll get people who have these puppets in Mexico and you wear them on your shoulders and they're like an extra six feet on top of you and you just like like walk back and forth and the hands just slap everybody as you walk.
Speaker 4:But it's very traditional, very fine, it's traditional, we're okay and that's also a good point that, like there's so much crossover between mask and puppetry that we often put them into that umbrella of puppets because it is so related. And actually T and I both did a mass workshop this summer with Wanderheads.
Speaker 3:Wanderheads out of Victoria, yeah.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 3:A lot of our work and our community, especially with the festival. It's kind of everything leads up to the festival but it's a big combination of mask, puppetry and animation. So we get a lot of people who do a lot of everything and a lot of crossover, and then we throw some clowns in because why not?
Speaker 1:Why not? Yeah, who doesn't like some clowns? Children?
Speaker 2:Some adults Some adults yeah. Claws are fun. I find it very fascinating how you know you both kind of stumbled into it in your own way, and how you know engaging in that play and now you're teaching kids to do the same thing, like behind the scenes, like it's not just something you're watching, like you can do this too. Yeah and yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think I watched this little reel on Instagram a few days ago with John Cleese and you know, talking about creativity and how it's. You know a lot of people tell themselves, oh, I'm just not creative. And you said it's yeah, really stuck with me what you said. He said it's about engaging in play. Like that's basically all. Creativity is Absolutely. Yeah, I just found that fascinating. Yeah, pass on to the kids and show them what's behind the scenes.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, and I think that breaks my heart. I hear that a lot is I don't have a creative bone in my body. Oh, look at what you can do. I don't have a creative bone in my body. And you never hear that from kids.
Speaker 4:By the way, I walk into a kindergarten classroom. I say who here is an artist? Every single hand will go up because they know the truth. We are human, we are creative. That is what part of what makes us human? We are all creative, and it makes me sad that somewhere along the line, these adults have been told that they're not creative people.
Speaker 4:And it really that that hits home when I think about the work that I do as a teaching artist. I want to empower every single person that comes into my workshops or my classrooms. I want to empower them in knowing that you are innately creative. You can do it like in. Creativity isn't about creating something perfect, and I think that's what happened. They had this idea of perfection and kind of like what I was trying to do for years and years that you know throughout my BFA and after that I'm going to make something that everybody else is going to like, like this landscape. That was what my heart was telling me. You know, we all have a voice, and it's really about just listening to that voice and trusting it.
Speaker 3:So yeah, yeah, something I like to tell people when they do that is it's not that you're not creative, it's that you just need to learn to appreciate what you're able to do. And then you throw out, like people like, ask me up, people don't think that's very good because it's just you know scribbles and stuff right, and it's like, yeah, but he thought he was good. Once you understand, like what you're able to do is good, you can elaborate on that, you can keep practicing and you'll get to a point where you think you're great.
Speaker 4:So it goes a lot with what Jenny said, where people told them it's not good, it's like, well, if you just learn that that line is just a creepy line and not a straight line, then you'll be fine, and I think too, the other thing is is that sometimes when we teach art and this is something that is really like my teaching for me, is just as much of an art form as this stuff I produce.
Speaker 4:And what I am constantly trying to do is make sure that when I teach a class and I teach a workshop, I am not laying down rules and step by step procedures that have to be followed, and I mean, I understand why some teachers want to do that, because it gives them a sense of control and it they feel that if your students can create what you have taught them to create and create it to the T, that they will feel successful. But I do not believe that that's what makes us feel like artists. I believe that, like if we give them tools and strategies, but the opportunity to expand and take different avenues, that's what gives them power and that's what gives them belief and creativity.
Speaker 1:It's really interesting that you mentioned that because I mean, over the podcast we've been doing before, we've met with multiple different artists from different disciplines. There seems to be a trend that every artist within different disciplines comes to that realization. One is what you mentioned was about play. If you talk to actors, their thrill, that they get to their livelihoods is to play. Pretend the best actors are the ones that really go into that. We've mentioned this multiple times with different people, especially when it comes to music and stuff you mentioned about art While you were doing art that you thought other people would want. And it's the same with music. It's like if we create something that we think is a masterpiece, then nobody likes it. It's actually a really well-written thing. Or we just do a three-chord pop song and everybody's like that's fantastic, it is funny that we're… A part of our soul dies a little.
Speaker 2:It's funny that we're progression. We get into where we're kids and we don't care what people think, it's just hey, I like this. Then we get into this weird space where it's like people pleasing. I only feel within the past few years with myself, some people may not like what I create, but I like it, and if I like it, there's at least two others that I'll feel I just want to find them.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that thought, that exact thought, was what changed my career as an artist. When I started to do those illustrations that were like these funky little characters, I thought you know what? I don't need to be in that gallery. I like this. This gives me joy. I love to scribble, I love to have fun, I love to just be whimsical. And as soon as I said, yeah, screw that, I like this, that's what made a big, it made a huge difference. People see your joy. They get that energy from it.
Speaker 2:Spread the good vibes.
Speaker 1:I had a question about your process when it comes. Because you were a writer, you wrote initially. And to expand on your writing, what drew you to puppetry? Because a lot of writers. I tend to go towards film because I like the visual aspect of it and I know some writers that get their novelists and then they get drawn into graphic novels, for example. But what about that aspect of performance Did you like most about telling your stories?
Speaker 4:Well, I think not only am I a writer, but my writing starts with images. I consider, I think, in images first, so I can see the images of this story that I want to create, and then the writing kind of evolves from that. And I think that puppetry is like, like if you could imagine your illustrations in a book just coming right out and popping out of that. That was that idea that I wanted to carry over, was that you could still create these characters and have this. It's so similar to illustrating, creating a puppet. I think that was the crossover that I saw. Was these illustrations that you've created and that you thought about the shape and the form. It just seemed to naturally bring itself into puppetry. And I will admit as well my doll collecting Also, like yeah, she's laughing because she's seen it. I've been to her house.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's insane, it's insane. So I like a couple, no, no, no, a couple rooms, no, like. And I'm like I think this needs to. You know, I'm 45 now and I'm like you know what it's coming out. So I've always loved dolls and even when people were you know, even my teens when everybody stopped playing with dolls, I'm like, I still like my dolls. I really love my dolls, and not just for display, but like they have personalities and names and birthdays and all that sort of great stuff.
Speaker 4:But it was, puppetry was also that like, and I actually, when I was in university I, you know, not in my official coursework, but one of my dreams was to make dolls and toys and stuffies and create these characters. Even back then, even in my 20s. However, I soon realized sewing and like the technical craftsmanship of it doesn't lend itself to my artwork. My artwork is more a little bit like fluid, so I don't worry about the craftsmanship, and I also realized I didn't want to sew 40 versions of the same character. So the idea of puppetry, that every little guy can be unique, and with puppetry you're constantly problem solving as well. So you're like, okay, this is how I started it, but we got to go to Fernabénie. So, yeah, my love of dolls is actually also what brought me towards creating these characters that can move and be my instant little friends.
Speaker 3:I think it's actually kind of funny, since you brought up your dolls, how our various collections reflect in our puppetry, because you love dolls. You're so very kid focused. Your puppets are very cute. Everything's very doll like. I collect action figures that have lost their accessories, so one of my favorite things is a leather face action figure that doesn't have a chainsaw, so he just looks like he's going for a hotty jaunt. And now I make puppet shows that have snail mail mail. Snail mail snail mail and metal puppet shows, and it's just interesting to see how those like precursor collections of things have expanded in the wildest ways. Yes, like metal and tear away dresses with secret iron maiden shirts.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you about that because your style of puppetry and storytelling is very different than hers.
Speaker 3:I also get told very unique as well. My boss is like why? Where did you come with it? I've seen people with pop up books and scenery.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. It's like, obviously, like you use music a lot as influence for your storytelling, but how like? What's the process of like, like? Why the fly? Why that song?
Speaker 3:Well, when I was first doing a puppet show, I had no idea what I was doing. I never made a puppet show and I wanted to make a show about frogs. So I was in my 30s going through a frog phase.
Speaker 3:As one does when you collect things like I do. And then somebody said that one of the easier ways to start is to pick a song. Go through there. So I picked a song. I chose somebody's watching me, because if it's about a frog I can make it about a fly and a secret frog, because at the end the frog eats the fly and that's like kind of the punchline to the story, that it's been about frogs the whole time, which is most of my conversations.
Speaker 3:And with the pop up book thing I didn't understand how to make scenery changes so small. So I made a seven spread pop up book and the fly just fits in and he goes through his day through the pop up book and and dies, because that's nature. But most of yeah, I have one that's not pop up, not not a song based. And even then we started with a song. We wanted to do a metal show for adults, for seniors specifically in case. We did tours of senior songs again and we found a really cute song called Never Alone by Terror, but you probably know what the lyrics were, so we gave it subtitles and then we gave the puppet hearing aids to validate the subtitles and it kind of just keeps expanding from that? Yeah, it's. It's really easy to start from the song, though, if you're getting ready, if you're starting out, because already have all the scenery and already has the imagery, you just have to make the jokes.
Speaker 2:I love how you said the kids are fine with like the fly being eaten by the frog. Yeah, they think it's great because the amount of his misery is not even enjoying. Well, nobody likes flies.
Speaker 3:So that helped. But also the way I did the frog is I put a party blower inside and then attached it to a pump, a little air tube and a pump. So the kids just love how the tongue pops out and then gets eaten or eats the fly. So the kids don't care, the fly is dead, they just want to play with the air pump at the end, which helps me continue my pattern of something dying in most shows. So that's just fly gets eaten by frog. It's just nature. It's not Sesame Street. I'm sorry, I don't know if I could do Sesame Street.
Speaker 2:It's a soft touch, reality for kids to grasp. It's healthy.
Speaker 3:My next one, I was listening to a really nice song by Badly Drawn Boy called the Shining, I think.
Speaker 2:Oh, love him, yeah, because I had a.
Speaker 3:French horn case. I asked my in-laws do you have any extra suitcase? They went no, we have extra French horn cases. And I went sure. So I found a French horn song and that song and for some reason I thought something's dying in a tar pit. That's what this song is telling me. So a baby mammoth was going to die in a tar pit but I made a giant land sloth to save it, because not everything has to die. So yeah, it's actually not in the tar pits. I started researching the Pleistocene and what kind of bones and fossils have been found in the Lebran tar pits. So that's where I got the land sloth and the mammal. So I also just kind of tie in a lot of science and nature stuff to my shows because I like bugs and science and metal. That's so cool.
Speaker 3:I'm just here just doing the best liking stuff and making stuff out of it. That doesn't make sense, which is why it's great, fantastic. It doesn't have to make sense, it's just got to be fun.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to ask you guys about we kind of touched on it a bit before, but some projects that are going on this month and other festivals or anything that you might be involved with that you might want to tell people about. You did mention something while we were on the break, Do you mind? Just yeah.
Speaker 4:So for the next two weeks or actually they've extended it a bit, so we'll just say the whole month this is the month of the Festival of Animated Objects, so there are numerous exhibitions and shows and workshops happening throughout this entire month, and one of the things that is happening is an event called the Dolly Wiggler Cabaret, which is like a puppet slam, so people come in and they have three minute performances. It's an adult only audience, so things get interesting. This will be my first time performing in it and I more or less stumbled across it and that was actually when I met Tia, because I was looking for ways to become part of the puppet community and I came to this puppet jam thinking, oh, I'll bring a puppet and see what this is about they're like. Oh yeah, we're we're, you know, getting some ideas ready for the Dolly Wiggler. You're going to be in it. I said, oh, okay, I'm going to be in the Dolly Wiggler.
Speaker 3:We kind of just decide we'll go hey you, you're in, apply, do it.
Speaker 4:Dare you Go on stage? Yeah, so because it's an adult only audience, it's a step in a very different direction. For me, it's still going to be. I mean, it's still me. So I'm like You're darker side, though I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think it's still a little bit sweet. But there's like there's a little.
Speaker 4:Jen. Oh, what is your old lady puppet doing? Oh, like, a little like.
Speaker 3:It's super cute.
Speaker 4:It is still super cute. Like I'm not totally breaking away from from that sort of I hate to say the word brand, but I guess brand that I've become known for, but I wouldn't show it to kids.
Speaker 1:Do you have something in that as?
Speaker 3:well, oh no, I have something in everything else Because I worked with chaos, which started the festival, so that's my year round job is performing with them. So within the festival I calculate the exhibition that's happening at Rotary Park for two months at the end of April and then also at sea space until March 16th. That's two part exhibition there. I'm helping run Dolly Wiggler as backstage crew. I'm part of Wonder Briefs, which is a whole group of us who do the tiny puppet shows and they're kind of before and after the main event, like commercials in a way, because they're short form, no more than seven minutes or so. Puppet shows that we can perform in the corner of a room, under a stairwell, in a closet, if there's space.
Speaker 1:So it's like gorilla puppeteering.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because we just show up, we're there, we just need a space. But it gives people more. I really like it because it gives people more exposure to different forms of puppetry instead of the very almost intimidating, beyond a stage theater aspect of puppetry. So we're kind of more buskers without the tits because we get paid anyways. So I'm part of that. I'm not part of Anna Movies, but I still have something to do with it. But Anna Movies is happening at the Globe, I believe on the 24th, and it is a selection of short animated films nothing digital, all puppets or claymations, stuff like that. That was curated, co-curated by two members of the Nakota AV Club Kess, left Hand and Kelsey, two Young Men. So that's going on. There's a family group and or a family parcel. There's a family portion and then there's a second like more adult kind of spooky portion, but there's so much going on. And then I'm here doing workshops to teach people how to do pop-up books as theater shows.
Speaker 1:Nice, yeah, workshops that are coming up at Sparrow, what are coming up in the next couple of weeks that you guys are really looking forward?
Speaker 4:to. So I am going to be teaching I think I have four more family workshops, so where parents and kids are coming to create things together. We're going to be doing a Muppet Style well, really it's glorified sock puppets, but we'll be building that in one of the workshops. Another workshop we're going to be I'm using one of my books that I illustrated for Calgary Reads last year. That was meant it was published for the purpose of giving away, and so I'm going to be taking that book and creating a workshop out of it. So the book itself is celebrating stories, fairy tales, just the joy of reading and celebrating stories. So we're going to be making fairy tale rod style puppets with that.
Speaker 4:Another one called Robot Parade, which of course was influenced by Bolts, my own book, where they're going to be making wooden, very simple marionettes, a rod marionette where it's not all strings, so you have like a stationary rod but you have strings that can move the arms, and that was also influenced by that song, Robot Parade. Robot Parade. So these are the robots that the children made, and then I'm hoping that we can actually make a little video at the end of our Robot Parade. And then a mask workshop that celebrates one of my newest books, the Zoo Inside Me, that I created with a friend of mine named Kelly Miller, and that's going to be mask style puppets like these. So this looks like it's just a mask to wear, but there's actually a rod behind it so you can puppet the mask and there's different ways that you can add fabric, to add different body parts to it. But we're looking at making animals and again connecting story to it as well.
Speaker 3:And then Tia I have two more workshops to do. These two are based off the puppet, the puppet, the pop up books, because mostly when you go to learn how to make pop up books, it's as you think of them as books, as cards, not really good first stages and performing outright on a flat surface, so no 90 degree angle lessons. So there's been a lot of problem solving and I'd like to tell people about that. There's beginner class, where you learn the absolute basic shapes, and then the second class is a little bit more, a little bit more into measuring and geometry. So I have those.
Speaker 3:And then on the 22nd there's one more additional workshop to do with the exhibition that I co curated. The exhibition is about stop motion puppet animation. So, again, nothing digital, but there's claymation, there's drawings, there's all sorts. So we have two of those artists coming in to teach a beginner, a beginner stop motion workshop that you can go home and you can make things on your phone. So we try to keep it as accessible as possible. We want people to know that they can get started with just the stuff they have.
Speaker 4:So three yeah, and we also have two other workshops that are going to be taught by Monica. She is doing a shadow puppetry workshop and a miniature crankies workshop. So crankies is where you have your two rods and you crank it and the scene moves around. So she'll be teaching that and that's through a partnership that we formed with the festivals and the new objects, so she'll be in this space teaching as well. Cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, cranky, Like is that like?
Speaker 3:like the scrolls move Like a scroll yeah.
Speaker 4:So if you can imagine with it two posts like this and like a scene that's on just wraps around and wraps around, and then you crank it and that would go by.
Speaker 3:I've actually seen that used in a puppet show. One of the people that I mentioned, the suitcase people. He has an analog non video game where he kind of cranks it and then he gets the people who are watching to hold on to a controller and it's like a flappy bird type of game. So he cranks it and people do the puppeteering for them. There's another person actually in Wonder Briefs this year who she's using it to give people like a trip on a bike. She's got like a pedal thing that people do and then she's going to turn it or something. I haven't seen it yet, but it leads you down the pathway as you bike. So it's a really good mechanism for scene changes that I've seen used in incredible ways Nice.
Speaker 2:Man, just the mechanics of all this kind of blowing away.
Speaker 3:I love mechanics.
Speaker 2:I love mechanics.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think that's one thing about puppetry that really appeals to me is I've always, always, even as a kid, I love to figure out how things work and I would take apart everything. Music box is, I want to figure this out, take it apart. Clocks I'm going to. I mean, I'd never really figured out my clock, but you know, I know, there's always a sprocket left.
Speaker 3:Yeah, where did I'm sorry, clock yeah?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Good though.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:My favorite teacher or my favorite professor in university. He's passed now but he always was super enthusiastic and keen and he just liked to have fun too and he was a huge inspiration to me now. But he was just looked at me and went you need to move fast. The mechanism of this. Can you stop paying attention to the mechanism? And it's a hard part of puppetry to just continue past the mechanism once you've put half of it together. But the mechanisms are so neat all the time and that's not even talking about people who get into animatronic puppetry like Jurassic Park and stuff. Those people are insane. It looks so cool and I want to know it so bad. But till then I have pop school sticks and toothpicks.
Speaker 4:Yeah Well, even yesterday, I ran a workshop for adults where we made tabletop puppets out of wood pieces and, of course, like I mentioned earlier, I love to allow avenues for them to go off on their own. So I had one person who stayed for about two hours after the official time, so she spent close to five hours working on this puppet and she'd made a dragon and we, together with the two of us plus her husband, we worked. So we put so much time into figuring out how is this puppet going to? First of all, you have the mechanics of even just like. How is it going to move as you're holding it on rods?
Speaker 4:It seems so simple, but if there's certain movements that you want it to do, sometimes you've got to add a string. And how is that string going to be rigged? And in this case, she also wanted it to breathe fire. So we really looked at, like all the examples I had, and we found the mechanism that we thought would work. And then, okay, but this material isn't working, but this string isn't working, and you just but it's, it's, it's the journey that we all crave is on it. That's the messy middle, that's what makes it like, ah, like, when you finally get to something that works like. That's.
Speaker 3:That's why we that was, but that's what brings us to this work as artists and one of the thing I love about like the, the play and the mechanisms, is the materials you end up using. So for me, a lot of the joints start out as popsicle sticks and toothpicks. Um, because you get like, say, you have a knee, so you have to have a brace right, so you have to have like a kneecap. You still have an arm, and then you have like two, two pieces here and then you put a stick through the middle and that's a knee and it works until it doesn't. So you got to figure something else out.
Speaker 3:And then you meet people like Kid koala came to town with their mosquito-villum story, storyville mosquito, with a storyville mosquito show, and they were nice enough to let everyone on stage afterward To look at it, and they made these incredibly small, tiny and incredibly durable puppets out of broken umbrella pieces. Yeah, so now we're hoarding umbrellas. But and then and then the importance of different kinds of springs. And as soon as you talk to anybody about glue, you are stuck there for two hours. Let's talk. Let's talk about glue.
Speaker 1:Everyone's.
Speaker 3:Nobody likes hot glue, nope.
Speaker 1:Nobody likes hot glue.
Speaker 3:Anybody who has made more than one puppet show. Tells you hot glue. Hot glue is your last resort.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it is, it's a quick fix.
Speaker 3:It's good for like it's not good for my job, but I'm also at the point. I know like sometimes you gotta get the glue glue man.
Speaker 4:You got paper glues, you got construction glues you got and I always have to think about like toxicity because I have kids, so I'm like well bond, I am like like a little tears then it's like the whole glue thing is like the shrimp thing with like yeah, yeah, all kinds of different glue there's she brought up when Eda Dawn earlier and I went to visitor studio once too and I was like we're gonna glue you.
Speaker 3:She's like I have a whole cabinet of glue and like, yeah, as soon as someone comes to my house I'm like here's my glue trolley, because you know, you have Clues for every material. You've got ones that expand, so you don't want to use them here. You've got clues that don't stick to that, but they stick to that. So glue is insane. Glue man, it's a hell of a tool. Well, because if you don't find the right glue, everything falls apart.
Speaker 4:Yeah right, yeah, and that breaks the illusion, yeah, like that's. The thing about puppetry is like we can make something that's really fun and but when we're thinking about Sharing it with an audience, we want them to believe just as we do. We want them to believe that that object has life, and then when something breaks that illusion, it takes them out of that space. Like when we're in that and we're sharing that together and we're watching our, our puppets move, like we. We're invested so, even for an adult, for something to then break that, break that story and break that investment. It's, it's, yeah, like it's.
Speaker 4:Traumatizing like, like it, even if you have a joint, that all of a sudden you know an elbow that let's say like, suddenly moves back, like you suddenly become disconnected from the story that you're trying to tell but then you become very good at improv.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so like, like I mentioned with mine, the the one knee. For some reason. She's in her fifties man, she's got bad knees, but she's also old enough to go to Wad's Woodstock 99. And when Fred Dyrs tells you to break stuff, he didn't mean your knee but she tried. So when she gets knocked down in the family wash pit these are sentences I'm saying it loud that she just goes oh no, not the Woodstock 99 injury. Or the His arm keeps falling off. So she, when he gets it, he goes oh no, not my arm. Like you become very good at improv to make it look like you intended for that to break, because you don't want to continue. You don't want to break that illusion. You don't want to let people know that. You know you're panicking. You don't want people to know that this was unplanned. You just want them to keep having fun Right and not go to Woodstock 99.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they did such a good documentary on it and now everyone knows and I feel like I can finally make jokes. It's like the millennial firefest.
Speaker 2:Oh, my brother is like 27 and he was telling me about it. He's like oh, like, did you see it on TV when? Like, because he wasn't like, he was a little cute at the time, but he's so curious about it I was.
Speaker 3:I was also a kid I'm not 27, but I was also a kid but just the bands I listened to, you know you start finding stories from the 90s, and I mean Nobody pays attention to Woodstock 94, but Woodstock 99, and that was whoo Worth a Netflix documentary, and a good one too, which is also why I keep saying that mainly parents and older children get my shows, because Toddlers don't know what Woodstock 99 is. So Parents love it, though.
Speaker 1:Bringing up the documentary that. I think that's a nice transition into Into, like movies and filmmaking and how, like, what? Is there any like particular shows or TV shows or Films that kind of have always stuck with you or inspired you as puppeteers?
Speaker 4:Mmm, that's a good question. I, I do love Jim Henson's work. I I do love it and I like it's it was. I think there's just that magic that you because it was made for children there's a magic that you just bought into 100 as a child, you never questioned if Grover or Kermit were. You saw them as their own entities, right, you didn't even think about them as puppets. You're like, yeah, I want to meet them, man, I want to be with them and and and that is that's the magic of puppetry, across all disciplines, no matter what type of puppetry it is. It's believing in those characters and and becoming invested in them. And and we cannot deny the I am, I am actually a huge Jim Henson fan and and I think he's done so much to bring puppetry to To everybody, to end to a level where everybody can relate to those characters. Um, so, yes, I love freggle rocks, sasame street, the Muppet show, all of those shows were just. I grew up in the 80s. I'm a bit older than Tia. I'm close, close to her mom's age.
Speaker 3:That's okay. My mom's super young. Everyone feels bad.
Speaker 4:I, like you, could have a third year or something child doesn't mean she's little Um, but If it had when I was younger, so that was like you know, like in the 80s, that was when Jim Henson was, that was big right and um, anything, anything that had a puppet and I was, I was into it. Mr, dress up, oh, my like, be still my heart. Like he, he brought this magical world. And even though Casey didn't even have a moving mouth and for some reason finnigan did, but couldn't talk, it's like I didn't notice that as kids, but no, you didn't.
Speaker 4:And anytime that they Came on to the screen, even, mr Rogers, like anytime that these puppets came onto the screen, there's part of you that we're like, oh, I can't wait to see what they're gonna say today. And you, just, you, just, you see them as their own characters and and I think too, like I mean I don't want to go too much on my doll thing, but one thing I'm really into them, but I love, I, as a kid, I loved imagining, and this was before toy story came out. Okay, toy story came out in like the 90s, and so this was way before, not way before, but this was before toy story. I believed, I didn't, I knew it wasn't true, but I you know, like you believed Anyway there's this I don't think that's so much as a kid.
Speaker 4:I try to catch them like yes, yes, and you'd like close the door slowly, yeah, or just sit there and like stare at them and say are you gonna come alive today?
Speaker 4:I want to make you just want that. But those, those shows that use puppets, that's what they did. They like we wanted that to happen so badly. And and kids are natural puppeteers as they play with their action figures, as they play with their dolls or their stuffed animals, they are animating them. We're natural puppeteers, and yeah. So to see shows like that growing up, and and especially the work of Jim Hanson, I think really how could it not influence you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean personally, like I'm. I'm a huge fan of Jim Hanson too. To this day still influences my filmmaking. Um, we are actually making um a short right now, which is a sci-fi comedy musical that incorporates a giant life size Muppet.
Speaker 3:And it's gonna be submitted to animovies, right, because we need to show this to people.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Sci-fi music, something. Something sounds great, yeah, but it's, it's.
Speaker 1:Like I've always just loved the aspect of how that helps to tell stories is that you have that and I mean You're right, like the 80s were the heyday for that, even from like kid shows. Like I think one of my favorite kid shows was today's special yes, um, for anybody under the age of 35, they won't know what that is. Well, what they mannequins were, came to work.
Speaker 1:There was a mannequin that came to life but there was also a bow to a security guard and the security guard was a puppet as well, um, but yeah, the one thing I remember from the 80s is that, like we look at them as kids movies, but there's two in particular that Traumatized me a bit as as a child, but they stay with you, but they stayed with me and kind of geared me towards like I'm like this is this is how you should do it, and one of them was um, the never ending story, um, which I thought the puppeteering and that was fantastic. But and even looking at the story right now, is that, is it a really a kid's story?
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:I mean, we all remember what happened to the horse, but Don't bring that up. We were having a fun time, yeah, oh yeah, um, and then I mentioned the kids move with a dying horse.
Speaker 3:It's okay. Everything dies, even flies, even flies exactly see, never ending story is why stories have to have death in them. For me, I guess we just connected that. Yeah, there you go. I'm hot to memory.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then the second movie that is still one of my absolute Favorites, I would still put it in like my top 10 films. Um, would have to be the dark crystal, oh, yes, yeah, which I mean I saw it in the 90s on vhs and I think I was like Seven or the first time I watched it, because it's Jim Henson. I'm like yay, yeah, then yeah, I couldn't, uh, turn the lights off my room for about six months after that.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just thought that, like the older I get, the more I appreciate those films because, like Just the detail and the amount of effort that was put into that, um, and from a storytelling perspective, it's one of, like, the most amazingly unique stories. Yeah, I think that's ever been put on film.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I. I grew up in a house with a lot of kids. Mom had four, but there was always six at our house for some reason. Um, oh, you were that house.
Speaker 1:We were that house. Neighborhood kids go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, there was four streets in my town. It wasn't hard to pick one, um, but uh, with all the kids in the house all the time, it was always kids movies, even through high school. Um, so people are like you don't know friends. I'm like no, we didn't watch that, we had blues clues playing at that hour or something, um, which I'm not. Mad that I don't know anything about friends.
Speaker 4:No, I'm just gonna say that as an adult uh.
Speaker 3:But uh, Between having kids around all the time and kids movies on, we had one tv. We were in the middle of nowhere, no satellite or anything. So mom's like here's a wide vhs collection. Uh, so between kids movies and as janny brought up, my mom was particularly youthful Um, she also kind of grew up in the 80s and, uh, her favorite movie was the dark crystal. So when he said that I was like that's what I grew up on. But I also really connected with labyrinth.
Speaker 3:Um, I really like especially the the little worm in the wall loved the little worm in the wall. Um, and I got really into puppets that way. We didn't really do sesame straight. I don't know why that just skipped. Um, I really loved animal as a kid and I wanted to play drums, but I just, I guess I was just cool, I don't know, I Didn't really pay attention to the rest of them. Yeah, I think these clues took over more than Sesame Street. But animal, I had everything animal if I could find it.
Speaker 3:And then with my mom's like 80s influences, I knew about Friday Rock, even though I didn't know what it was, I just knew it was Muppets. And then for some reason I knew about HR puff and stuff. I think that's the same, but that's like a 60s, 70s show. I think that's yeah, yeah, 70s, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I knew about it. I don't know why I should know. It's weird. I still watch it now because it's on the internet, but that's a wild one. I guess. If it was weird and for some reason a middle of nowhere antique store had it, I had it, but between labyrinth and then, like later on Jim Henson, the company did a more like digital puppetry, one where they have mirror mask. Loved mirror Right so much.
Speaker 1:That's one that like had a sphinx in it, yeah, so it was, the actress was live-action.
Speaker 3:And then there was this weird highly green screens everything with. I can only explain it as digital puppets because you'd have like Masks. It was very much a mask movie where, like, you had a cat looking thing but it had a mask that the face was out of the out of order and she grew up in a circus. So that's also why everything was weird. Living in the middle of nowhere, you're just like what you get, but it was a very surreal movie.
Speaker 3:It was fantastic and that explains a lot. But yeah, you brought up Toy Story and I just I had so much like Gorn for Toy Story for so long because as a kid I wanted to make like I'd watch special features at the end of the VHS it's sit through the credits To watch how they made Sleeping Beauty and they did like the background painting on glass and like they would show you all those Details. Then Toy Story came out and nobody did that anymore. So like until I was older I was like toy story and now I make puppets. I do what I want anyways. But yeah, my mom had a huge cultural influence on me growing up in the 80s. Miramask Jim Henson, but older, like older kid Jim Henson.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my mom actually had a huge influence when I was younger. She would make me and my brother watch what she grew up watching. So Me and my brother were the only kids on the block that knew Thunderbirds and and stingrays and all that other stuff. And it's like we tried to explain it to our friends and yeah, and they were like what are you talking about? And then when it became popular again, it's like me and my brother like yay, but I also have.
Speaker 3:When you have a young mother, hopefully you also have a young father and not an older father. So my dad also grew up in the 80s and he had like alf dolls and stuff.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I love the alf dolls. I know what the California raisins are. Yes, I know what noise are like. All these little things for some reason ended up as puppets when they were sold as toys. So I also know what Thunderbirds are. Yeah, I, I Really love Team America world police way too much because of how much my dad loved like Thunderbirds and that kind of stuff. So, yeah, I get those references to.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I was just interesting, yeah, just talking about mr Rogers and mr Dress-up, like those are my big things when I was a kid and it's uh, it's interesting, just the suspension of disbelief when you're a kid. Yeah, you know, rewatching the mr Rogers doc, you know he has the puppet, yeah, and it's. You know it's very simple and you can see his lips moving. But the kid is buying it as the puppet.
Speaker 3:Still, that's a lot of technique, though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's, it's some, and I was totally that way as a kid too. You just you buy it, yeah, like, and it was so comforting. And yeah, recently I watched the mr Dress-up doc on prime and I Think it was Juliette Lawrence. She was the puppeteer for like something crazy like 30 years. Yeah and yeah, casey and Finnegan wait, which one was the human? Casey? Casey. Yeah and I think she deliberately made a casey non-binary because everyone was like is it a boy, is it a girl?
Speaker 4:Yeah, thing is like as a child you could, I for me, casey was a girl, for my dad, casey was a boy. Yeah, and we were both right.
Speaker 2:Which is wonderful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm still relatively new to puppeteering it's only been like two and a half years but a lot of what you're saying like as a kid, you notice the lips are moving, but you still pay attention to the puppet. It's very slight techniques, like when you're performing you look at the puppet so that people are looking at what you're looking at, or when you come out with the puppet you don't show people, you're putting it on your hand, like you go behind a curtain and come out with the puppet so that the puppet comes as itself it's. There's a lot of consideration into how people perform.
Speaker 2:That's a good point. Like not showing, you're putting it on because I think you know, yeah, mr Rogers was visiting, like children in the hospital and you'd kind of like bring it up on the side of the bed. Just very cute.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's harder to Create a suspension of belief when you can see that that's a sock on a man's hand.
Speaker 1:So, when it comes to Puppetry and your art, is there any other art forms other than, say, music or writing that you Do kind of use as almost like a muse or something that inspires you to keep Trying different things?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I Think my work Illustrating and and painting is always coming into my work in puppetry. You know, some of my puppets that I'm making right now are Are inspired by books that I've written in the past, like, like I mentioned how I created bolts as I was writing that book. Well, when I created this little guy here, he was actually meant to be the boy character that's in that story as well. The other thing is is when I'm I'm thinking about Creating characters through illustration, you're thinking about how Different shapes inform the personality of that character. So, for example, like our, you know, circular shapes, you're thinking warm and caring and approachable, joyful, square shapes. You're thinking things that are more stubborn can't be moved. Things with points like triangular shapes tend to lend themselves to villains because we think of sharp and things that can hurt them. So these rules that you have are these understandings that we have about visual language in terms of illustration, bringing that into puppetry or having that inspire new characters within puppetry.
Speaker 4:There's there's such a strong connection and even when we were doing the mask workshop with the Wonder Heads, the different masks that you would choose, they had, even though these masks that we were choosing, at one point we had neutral expressions. However, you could see the shape of the head, just a general square shape, and all of a sudden that would inform the character that you could become with that, with that mask. So I think that I'm finding crossovers all the time and and it's really neat to see how things can be so connected you know how you don't just abandon. You know there's no abandoning this. Oh, now I'm doing puppetry, so no longer a book illustrator. No, Actually, this is just an expansion and a way to grow as an artist and and everything kind of comes along and everything influences each other continuously.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I Love cartoons More than most adults. It's kind of just what I watch like I even have some friends from like high school and they'll be like, how did you know about that? You don't have kids, I'm like okay, but I am one. So, yes, but between all the insanity of illustration and cartoons because I I'll sit there and I'll watch Naruto on repeat because it's all the same story all the way through and 80% of its filler but then I really love like super jail and stuff from like Adult swim that people should not watch because it's just like that ultra violence kind of era of animation where everything is so chaotic and detailed all the time. So Cartoons are always a huge inspiration, just to think, because there's the fluidity that you kind of talk about in your illustrations. But people get that in their cartoons as well. My partner is actually watching all of Pokemon right now and the alola season is terrible because it just keeps going and they made it more American because it's based in Hawaii. But They've over exaggerated so much of the proportions and the character designs all different and I hate it. But it's gotta be watched Just so we can get it. But you learn so much about how things can move by how other people have made the move because, like we learned in, like our mask thing, it informs a lot of how performance happens, how movement happened, like there's certain tricks for animators where if you film yourself doing the thing and then animate it, that's how you get the references right. So Watching cartoons and how they move and their weird ways can inform my puppet moving.
Speaker 3:But I Also take a lot of influence from toys. My house is Transformers and Lego and it's crap I find I really like WWE plushies and we both collect a lot of Lego and he's got his entire collection of Transformers still. So there's a lot in how the toys are made Like. Even when I'm like troubleshooting how a character can be built, I'll use technique bits to get the joints. Earlier versions of the one puppet, her, her neck is a ball Ball and socket joint that are techno-technic pieces. Until the glue I had made it stretch weird and it broke. But you also get a lot of the reflection of what Jenny was talking about in illustration how certain characters you know they're bad because they're spiky or you you know, like the Lego characters are bad because they have certain colors or Stuff like that and all these same themes of design are carried through. So many aspects that um Look up toys a lot.
Speaker 1:Well, on, sorry, on toys, have you guys ever tried like Stop motion at all? Yes, and what was? What was your experience with that?
Speaker 3:I, yes, yes, my experience is the lack of patience I have is astounding. Like I've watched documentaries from artman animation, who does flushed away and Wallace and grommet and stuff, which those were also big influences as a kid, and they're like anybody who gets into stop emotion, stop Motion animation hates themselves. Or even I've watched like With like digital puppetry, you'll get people from Pixar who are the actual animators and they're like nope, been working here 23 years. I've animated seven minutes of film, which I understand because I also was getting into digital animation for a bit. And I Like puppetry because it lacks the tedium of animation.
Speaker 3:Yes, gotcha, yeah, yeah, which I think, like I I mentioned to you Before with my other puppetry, like I was really impressed that I was able to draw it because I have a lot of hand issues, like a lot of motion movement issues. So one thing I've learned with a lot of puppets is it's really accessible, a lot more accessible than animation. Right, like I can't always push a button, I can't always hold a pencil, but there's so many different ways to make handles, so many ways to attach things to the fingers that do move that day, that I can animate an object and I so back when I was doing my undergrad and all of these Computer graphic programs were fairly new.
Speaker 4:So, like when I learned Photoshop, it was like really like early early Photoshop, early early Illustrator, and I also learned cinema 4d I don't even know if it's still around, but that was like the early 3d Animation. They call this and or did they call it cinema 4d? Anyway, it was a long it was. It was right. When you know, toy story first premiered and we made these and and I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 4:But at the same time, what Doesn't pull me back to that is the idea that things Are only existing on a screen, like I think stop motion kind of breaks that too, because you have something that is physically being manipulated, which I think is really cool, and knowing that it physically exists somewhere. But I think the you know when you get into that sort of and for me anyway, I love, what I love about puppetry is that there is something physical that exists, that you are, you know, like you're working with Gravity or you know, or against gravity, as the case might be, and in your moving something, and and that something actually has a place in this world that's not just flashing on the screen, which isn't to say that there is so much like there. I do respect that art form very, very much like. That's not to say that there's. I hope it doesn't come across as anything.
Speaker 4:Oh, that's not, because I do respect it a lot and I do use a lot of Digital tools when I'm illustrating books as well. When I illustrate books, I always try to do something physical, at least first. So Sometimes I go straight from beginning to end. It's all physical and all I've done is scan, scan those images and there's no digital editing whatsoever. But other times I'll create a base out of like paint and texture and collage and then I'll layer digital illustration on top. But I just love the idea that it something physically exists in this world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, with the current exhibition that we Co-curated with all the stop motion animators. A lot of them, you find, started out as painters, started out as illustrators, and then they didn't feel like it was enough. Like for me personally. I I also was in painting and the pictures were cool, made some neat stuff, but it didn't feel like enough. I Generally lose interest if I walk into a room with flat things on the walls because it's more walls. So a lot of stop motion animators, sculptors, in general, they're looking for that tactile nature and things. So I do want to make myself do stop motion in some capacity or that kind of animation where it's like robot chicken but not where it's more active. There's like an actual term based on the TV show from the early 90s that I cannot recall at the moment and it needs to be recalled. But yeah, it kind of just stems from you start as a drawer, painter, and you find you need more which. These bring the images to life, as you keep saying.
Speaker 4:I think it's. I think you're touching on what I think is our, our need to connect a story. We all need to connect a story and In paintings do we know that there's a story, but it's so easy to walk by that story and give it a three-second glance and in a gallery, and and not really you know, sit back a boy. We appreciate the people that do take more than three seconds, thank you. But at the same time, like when you have these moving objects, even if the story is so simple it's, it's something that, like, makes us pause and makes us wonder, and and slows us down and draws us in, and and there's magic there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it makes me think of your aha moment when you're talking about first getting into puppeteering, because you know anyone who draws something or paints anything in your mind. You're kind of picture it like it moving. Yeah and then the fact that, like you've done so many illustrations before and you probably thought about that, now, all of a sudden you're like oh, holy crap, like this can actually move, like everything I've been envisioning, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I had that with pop-up books, because all of my pop-up, pop-up how now brown cow All of my puppet shows have pop-up books because I'm able to still illustrate them and draw and color. But they're, they're 3d, they're, they're popping out, they're dimensional, they're able to be involved in something.
Speaker 4:So that's even one step for a way. You know, when I was working with puppet stuff Canada, to go off on that Both Brendan and and Reese said to me you know, there isn't a single puppeteer out there who would say, yep, I only do puppets, we're. I think that probably every puppeteer out there is a multi-disciplinary Artist. You have to be, yeah, you're, because you're, you're performing, possibly you're singing, possibly there's music in there, dance, there's a huge connection to dance.
Speaker 4:And illustrating to. And then you also think of there's, there's set design, there's sculpture, there's so many elements that come together. The costume design I had to make a tear away dress, yeah, we needed to show that. Yeah. And fiber arts and yeah, and I think maybe that's what draws us as artists into that art form is is that, as we mentioned before, the Expansive nature of it. We always we want to grow, our souls want to grow, you know, we want to know that we're moving forward in that where we're, you know our roots are going deeper and deeper. We're not withering, we're not staying at any surfaces. And man, can you dig into puppetry? You can just dig right in.
Speaker 3:I love that you brought up dancers, because we have two specifically like I work with Jocelyn Ma in chaos. She's quite a well accomplished dancer In Calgary and then she also toured around Europe and did her masters in she's. She's impressive. I'm intimidated all the time, oh yeah, but but between her and Kaya Irwin, who is a company dancer with DJ D, so decidedly jazz, they tend to gravitate more towards the mask performance part and I love watching them for the way they bring movement To these objects and these masks, like they do touch on the puppets as well. Jocelyn tends to perform with Juanita John, but they do movements in a way that we wouldn't have thought. So what their puppetry, their masks of, is so good.
Speaker 3:Kaya has has a new one where she did like a night at the Roxbury, but she has A mask that for some reasons looks like Chris Catan, and then their upper body is like black, like she's got like a morph suit, and then the mask is here and she's just doing this.
Speaker 1:It's so that it's not like the so Dancing and it's like man. Only a dancer would think of that.
Speaker 3:Right, so good like the rest of us, don't like moving with our body, but they come in and Jocelyn does this incredibly fluid like dance thing about discovering an object as a mass creature and they do incredible things as dancers with within this puppet and mask community.
Speaker 4:And I really brings in everybody. And I remember Jocelyn speaking about her, her work as a puppeteer with Winnie to Dawn and she was saying like it is. She said it is so connected because you're always thinking in terms of, of. You know, when you're moving a puppet, you're expressing emotion, sometimes without words, like there's so many wordless Puppet shows out there. So how do we bring that into the body of the puppet and into its movements and into these like even little subtle movements? And a dancer Understands that, yeah, and so she just channels that energy. Instead of it being in her body, she's able to then channel it into that puppet.
Speaker 3:There's, there's actually in Japan, one of the traditional forms of puppeteering. You have yeah, you have to be like you have to for ten years. You have to be the guy who moves the feet.
Speaker 3:So you have to there's yeah, you have to move the feet, and then there's people who have their hands and there's the master moves the head, so that has all the like Noticable emotion, but you get the people at the feet. They have to learn how to smile with feet. So they have like ten, ten years where they have to learn how to move things specifically Before they can move up to like the next like body form of the puppet puppet and it's. It's so involved, right. So yeah, dancers all the same.
Speaker 1:I Like I wanted to touch it a little bit on what just kind of popped in my head was. As puppeteers like I, my mind was to like you're either behind a screen or you don't see the actual Manipulator. But we're actually talking about a lot of stuff right now where the you have the subject but you also have the performer with it. Is that something that you guys also partake in, which is kind of like simpler for you guys? Do you find that's Easier to do, to like to interact with the audience and the puppet or to just, you know, put a sock on and go behind a card like a curtain?
Speaker 4:I so, personally, I love like roving puppet puppeteering is where you're going with your puppet and you are interacting with people, okay, and having conversations with your puppet, and I love, love doing it, I love it. I I didn't know I would love it until I actually tried it and I became a roving puppeteer with puppet stuff Canada and it's interesting, like, like I am visible when I, when I work with puppet stuff Canada, I'm visible. But one of their rules for the characters that that I play, I play a character called Pecky Becky. She's fabulous, she's so different for me. She can talk to anybody and she doesn't mind. And she, and when I'm pecky Becky, I'm, even though I'm physically there, I'm, I'm not there. So I, you know a kid might say, oh, you're a puppet, and pecky Becky, we go, and I love that. I love that sort of Suspension. But it's so fascinating how many people will come up and I read and just engage with you. It's this wonderful point of contact that it's. It's just fulfilling and unexpected.
Speaker 4:Like we were doing a show for Canada Day this summer and Pecky, with Pecky Becky and I were what was really pecky Becky. I was just, you know, witness, but Pecky Becky was flying back to to the, the break place, back to her nest, as we would say. And this group of, I'd say they were like teenagers or young adults and I think they were part of a dance troupe or something and they saw Pecky Becky flying and they all gathered like a circle around me. There was like 20, some of them like there was a huge how many teenagers?
Speaker 4:no, man, I think normally those teenagers would they give Jenny the time of day, like they would like my look at that old lady. No, pecky, becky. They were hanging there waiting for pecky to say something like Becky, tell us something.
Speaker 1:And Amazing, but I think that's one of the things about that is like, yeah, if you were in a park and you were just there with a puppet, yeah, everybody from all age group would just go over there. Yeah yeah, I mean, there's just something amazing about that. It's so special.
Speaker 4:Yeah and just, and I just love Becoming pecky Becky. I love becoming her because she just I. It's hard to explain. I'm sure all puppeteers feel this, but you feel like it's not you out there. You and I'm sure actors feel that too, but it's like it wasn't me. I wasn't there. Jenny doesn't say that to people. Jenny's not out going, jenny's. Jenny's the sort of introverted type that just kind of sometimes fades to the background. Pecky Becky is not. Pecky Becky goes up to care to people in the park and says I love your cotton candy because it looks exactly like my hair and for my feathers, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like when you have people that Performances and masks. The moment you put that mask on, you're not really you anymore.
Speaker 3:Yeah, your whole body. Yeah, yeah, I have the physicality of the character.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but it's just. It's almost like you're channeling I don't have another word for it. I've been channeling because it just feels like, especially with roving, you don't have a script either. Like roving, you you have an idea of who this character is, but you don't have a script. You have ideas about what you, you know you want, who you want this character to be, but you just kind of let that take over and it's. It's a cool experience. I love it.
Speaker 1:So ties into that improv kind of yeah yeah.
Speaker 4:And it ties into clowning too. Clowns do that too right. A lot of physical theater, yeah.
Speaker 2:I also be a different shade of your personality too. Yeah, that's one thing in the mr Rogers doc where his kids were saying, you know, just at the dinner table, like he was speaking the king Friday voice, if he was a little displeased, like he would never actually be mad himself, he would use the puppet voices.
Speaker 3:I'm not mad. I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. Yeah, because I'm not even me right now. That's how mad I am.
Speaker 4:And then anytime I perform with with you a lot, carry it's I. It's different than with pecky-becky because with you a lot, I still exist. I don't want to call it ventral cousin, because there's no attempt at not, but you'll lock exists and I'm you'll lock santi Jenny, and you'll look as sweet and kind and curious and he's a gentle soul, aren't you guy?
Speaker 2:I was waiting for him to talk back.
Speaker 1:I know, yeah, so I mean, one of the things I kind of wanted to bring up too is Me being a filmmaker. I I love it when I see puppeteering and stuff on film. I'm just wondering if there's anything recently you saw that you kind of liked that or something that's relatively recent that you know is Hopeful, that you know we can see more of this art form on screen.
Speaker 3:I think in Blue-eyed samurai, the Netflix anime that came out there's the 10th episode has a whole shadow puppet Storytelling line, so well done. Not only is the whole show so well done, because I saw a whole, a bunch of the back Back like the producers and this and stuff. They were like putting up their sketches and showing all the research they did like and even into like the way the certain designs were done on the kimonos and stuff. But I got so excited when I saw that the the shadow puppets in there, because it was such a good addition.
Speaker 3:Right, when you introduce a different Media or format to something you've been watching for 10 episodes already, it can be hard to Figure out if it's going to add or subtract from it and if you're just pushing it in there because you want to. But it worked so well because they they cut it in with like Back, not back. They cut it in with like a little bit of back backstory and like they kind of segmented it and it was. It was very well done and it's fairly new I think it came out this year.
Speaker 1:So yeah, there's one I wanted to kind of mention. I saw on the festival circuit last year and it was one of the best shorts I've seen in a long, long time, but it's called old man dragon.
Speaker 3:It's in our festival this year. You can see it at the globe on the 24th.
Speaker 1:There you go. Yeah, I saw it in Edmonton. I saw it at SIF last year. I saw and it it was remarkable and I just I'm like, as a guy who makes short films, I'm like I wish I could make that. You can. You just got to keep yeah, yeah, so kind of. But yeah, I wanted to give that film a shout out because I thought it was one of the best Local shorts that I saw. I'm really excited for it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, have you guys seen it. I've seen I mean most of it, just because I have like the, I have all the files, because I I do a lot of like the back background, producing, organizing, administrative stuff and I put a lot of the information on our website. So, yeah, it's pretty good. It's pretty good, but there's there's so many pretty good ones. It's it's really. Especially after COVID a lot of people were like, wow, I have time to do things now. So a couple of our people in our exhibition they started stop motion because they had time and there's just some really good work coming out of an unfortunate time where people learned how to bake and they Watched a lot of TV and some of them learned how to make new skills and as parents just suffered.
Speaker 3:I just played a lot of Animal Crossing. I yeah, not about animal crossing from the camera crew, that's pretty good.
Speaker 1:So on, just in general, with, like, I've learned a lot, especially talking to you guys, especially over, like doing research over the past week or whatever. Calgary has a very big puppeteering communities are like larger than I thought it could be. What are some of the things that is beneficial that you guys see from having such a large community here?
Speaker 3:So, much variety. Yeah, like, like you've said, you've worked with puppet stuff, juanita, you've worked with WP puppets. Everybody has their own thing, yeah, and you learn so much and you see so much all the time and everyone has really good input and because everyone does so much, we're all super encouraging of each other as well, because it's just a really positive oh my god, you did that for real on stage kind of attitude. Yeah, like there's a mother who was in, who was in the Dolly Wiggler a while ago, did a very inappropriate, rather inappropriate three minute performance, and last year their child was like All right, got a one up, mom, and we loved it. It was funny, and you just keep seeing all these wild and wacky people and they come back to town specifically, for this.
Speaker 4:So, and I think that the other wonderful thing is that, like, like you said, like everybody does feel like a community and supports each other. You know WP puppet. They do run their own festival but they're always inviting other puppeteers to be part of that. And then festival of animated objects. Of course, everybody is finding ways to be part of that and inviting be part of that. So as you start to dig into one form of puppetry, you suddenly or what one person is doing you suddenly realize that they do have the support and the connection of all of these other people in the community and at the same time, it's so different. You know like they're, they're all doing things that are so different, but we all feel this camaraderie as well, which is just amazing, really cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's the most inclusive like supportive community I've ever been in and like a lot of us focus so much on accessibility to like I have workshops on how to make stuff that stuff you already have. Like I said, most of my stuff is popsicle, sticks and toothpicks because until I could get the tools right, you, you just make things and yeah, it's. It's incredible.
Speaker 1:What is it about Calvary that you guys think that draws so many like people towards puppeteering?
Speaker 4:You know, I'm struck by one thing that Christine Cook said, and she says one thing that puppetry puppetry takes is a lot of grit and determination and sort of the ability to say, like man, that's, that's hard, but I want to figure it out, like you want to figure it out. And there's, I think there is an attitude like that In Calgary. There always has been about like going a little bit against the green. There's an entrepreneurial spirit here in Calgary and I think that carries over to puppetry as well, because you are figuring a lot of things out for yourself and you are taking risks and this is a great city to take risks in and especially the last three years, like when I first moved here in like 2014, I did not see a place for me here.
Speaker 3:I was like I don't paint landscapes and horses, so I guess I'm going to stop doing things because I couldn't find anywhere Right Like it's. It's kind of weird, but there's been a push, especially the last, like just before COVID, till now maybe five or so years, where everything's just so much more readily available. There's so much more art where we're trying to push more for, like, more inclusive activities for everyone to find it. It's just a lot of good things all at once just coming together.
Speaker 1:Great. So what other types of glue can you use with puppets?
Speaker 3:Every kind of glue depending on what you're building Like I had to put.
Speaker 1:Well, what about like staples? Is that or that? Just like tap?
Speaker 4:Oh, but then you think it's like staple? Well, I mean.
Speaker 1:I think you'd have to be careful, wouldn't you sew?
Speaker 4:Oh, I sew so much.
Speaker 3:I was showing you some trees I made earlier, right the spray painted creepy looking trees. I started out with like a three strand rope and I unraveled that so that there was three strands, and then I put a wire through it and then it kind of gave it this bumpy texture along and then it frayed at the end, so I just burnt the end so it melted and looked cooler. And then I ended up sewing a few of those like string wire rods together and then bent the shape. And then I took some cane that you'd use to like make a chair and I kind of stripped that, because it's really flexible, bendable wood, and then I glued that on, mostly with like construction glue, because that stuff does not. That's, that's from like wood stays, so I use that.
Speaker 3:I hate using it, though, because you have to use like a cocking gun and it's really hard to use and it's kind of unpredictable and if it'll ever come out of the tube and then spray painted it. But then I'd use like hot glue for like attaching toys to things. So there's tiny skulls and some of the trees. Hot glue that in there. But yeah, so things staple things. Sometimes if it's glue, just tape, that works. There's been times when, like, I've soldered tiny bits of wire because I can't get glue, or like the glue won't stick to the metal or the tape can't get in there. So I'll wrap a tiny little, really fine wire and then I'll just put some solder on there so that it melts together and then you have another joint because the knee keeps falling off. So it's very, do your best.
Speaker 1:I would do like, especially like fabric puppets, like I don't know, my brain went to carpet tape.
Speaker 4:So for for the like a foam constructed I'm kicking myself for not knowing the exact name of that that type of glue. It is toxic. You have to use a gas mask when you're using it, but it will. When you do a foam construction which goes underneath your foam and fabric, like a Muppet style, puppet, this, this adhesive will it kind of actually eats into the foam a little bit and then there's like a light. You do this really light dusting of it and then the edges can then squeeze together. And I am just racking my brain trying I don't know why that name is escape me right now, but that is a big adhesive that's used in foam construction.
Speaker 4:Personally, because I have kids in my home, I work in a studio in my home, I work around children, I go into schools toxicity is a huge issue for me, so. So when I constructed YOLOC, instead of using pieces of foam that came together and had to be glued together for his frame, I actually took a block of. I took a block of upholstery foam and actually carved it out as if sculpting it, so carved the outside, carved in it and then layered my fabric on top and did a lot of sewing for him, because I'm always I love to learn the way the professionals do like puppet stuff. Canada, they taught me how to do that foam construction and how to to use that adhesive that is slipping my mind right now, but but how to use that and how it actually goes together by the pros. But I'm always looking for alternatives, because kids, because kids yeah, and working in the home too.
Speaker 3:Like I use a contact cement, very liquid, and it's also very good and sticks to everything. But it, because it's so liquid it doesn't have a lot of, it's not very thick, so it's very good for attaching like fabric to things. It's very good for attaching like hair because you can like kind of brush it on in layers. So I make a lot of wigs with that and you can make wigs out of yarn. You just brush it out and, hey, you've got fiber. But yeah, there's so much. And then even the way puppets are constructed, like Jenny's talked about foam puppets. I use whatever garbage is in my drawer. One eat a John tends to sculptors and clay and then cast it with plastic slip and it gives it this really nice thin, like very light but sturdy plastic kind of thing. A lot of people use wood because it's so sturdy and there's a lot of cherish behind it. But yeah, I mean, you go to any hardware store, you go to any art store. You see an aisle of glue.
Speaker 4:But what you mentioned about staples like one thing that we always have to think about, as is how you are holding the puppet and how you're interacting with it. So if you have anything sharp, if you could imagine being in the middle of a performance, reaching for your puppet and then getting scratched across the hand but the show must go on we have to think about, like, how is it being held? How can it be held for potentially quite a while while you're doing this? So, while you, there might be places for things like staples. That's definitely something to consider is like, if you know, if it's something like a glove puppet or a Muppet style puppet, where your you know your hand has to slide in there and it has to be there for a while If anything's going to come and and start to jab there, like you're going to have this, this thing, jabbing into your hand as long as that performance goes on. So we always have to consider the functionality of it, right?
Speaker 3:Like we use staples in our workshops that we do with the public, where we have a mask making workshop. We pretty much give them a mask, a paper mask, they color it in and then we kind of staple it shut, but we make sure that the flat side is where the skin would be, so that the like sharp closed end would be outside. That way people don't put it on their face and get scratches, right. But yeah, then, like Jenny mentioned, when you put your hand in something you don't want, like sharp plastic, you don't want exposed velcro, like you don't want the hook part of the velcro, because you don't know how long you're going to be performing in there, and not only does it get sweaty sometimes in masks and puppets but it gets itchy.
Speaker 1:So yeah, staples are very good for certain scenery though, right so we kind of touched on two that I want to go back to is that you kind of use a bunch of different items when constructing things. Do you know off the bat, like when you're doing another thing, what you're going to construct it out of? Because I was going to ask you about that, like because you were mentioning some things that clearly sounded a lot more pricey than simply just constructing something out of whatever you had. So, when it comes to that, like, how do you determine what you would use when you're cutting up with an idea for something, or is it just spur the moment?
Speaker 3:It's problem solving.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean there's people like Winnie the Don, right, we bring her up a lot because she's so good at what she does and she does a lot of like projects for the government. Like she's, she reconstructed a whole bunch of puppets for Parks Canada recently I think in the last year. She might still be doing it, but like sculpting it with big blocks of clay and then like casting it and getting all the equipment for casting. That's obviously going to be something that you get over time, right. So you start out with paper. Probably you start out with the dollar store, which I love the dollar store. You cannot take that from me. I wish I didn't love the dollar store.
Speaker 3:But when I need a pack of popsicle sticks and they come in five different sizes, I'm going to the dollar store and, like when you're first starting out your problem solving, like Jenny said, you start out. I keep bringing up popsicle sticks and toothpicks because you don't have someone who can fabricate the metal, right. You don't have someone who can. I mean, I don't, like I don't have 3D printing right, so I don't have a way to form these shapes. And then, as you go on, you can realize you need a scroll. Saw, you would really probably benefit from a sander, you know, and. But there's ways to start out.
Speaker 4:I think, yeah, and I think it all depends on the story that you're trying to tell and the type of puppet that is going to tell that story the best. So you know, when I constructed Yolok, yolok was is really I mean, that was really kind of inspired by my niece, who I wanted to have a puppet that would interact with her, and so Yolok is a true existing person for and there's something soft and wonderful about that foam and fabric construction that really appeals to younger kids. It's huggable, it's lovable, which is is different than my, my wooden puppets, although they do have a certain charm to them as well, but I would use a wooden puppet. It has also this sort of, I guess I would say it's true, it's more traditional, but the wooden puppets also have this sort of, so there's a link to tradition in the in that, but there's also this sort of level of of sculpture and artistry that kind of comes across when you see that, because you know, like these hands don't get me started about how hard it is to actually hand carve hands, hands and feet, and and even the joints are all wood constructed. So what am I trying to convey with the puppet that's been traditionally constructed with all of these, these joints and and the wood. I want a certain level of artistry in that.
Speaker 4:And then when we get to puppets that are like more like found objects that have have been like put together by a, by a junk table, like this is a silly, goofy guy and his story is is going to be much different than the soulful story that Milton might tell, or or the loving, careful, you know joyful interactions that Yolok might have.
Speaker 4:So, which isn't to say that, like you can't, we want people to start everywhere, you know, like we want them to start with anything that they have on the hand.
Speaker 4:And I've, like I've mentioned before, found object assemblage and those sculptures that I was making from all these found objects is what brought me into puppetry, right, and but that, even even making the decision to use old objects that you find like antique pieces that come together, that tells the story too. That's a story of layers, of who owned this before and and it really brings a sort of element of time and element of of ownership and story and history into that puppet, so that puppet isn't like like this, you know, a shiny new sort of entity on its own bolts over there you know he was several lamps, car parts, clock pieces, all these different pieces coming together to make him and, just like the story that he represents, it's all about the passage of time and and the way that we change through our lives. So there's, there's symbolism in that, so, in a level of artistry, there, something I try to do with materials as well.
Speaker 3:So with my first puppet show I made the main character, the fly, out of fabric. I wanted him to be more dimensional, I wanted him to be more of a thing and then, like it mentions a snail male or a male, I can't say it right anymore but a male like a mailman. So I made a snail male, male, snail, but he's also a male who is a snail, but I made him. I made the nosy neighbors, I made the IRS. They're just flashes across, right, so I made them. They're a drawing on a stick, they're not as important, but they're still characters. So the importance of the character to the story can also decide, like, what materials you use. Like the frog, I wouldn't make him out of like a drawing on a stick, even though he's also just a punchline, because he has quite a lot of more importance, right? So there's so many things that go into everything, and then you change it five more times.
Speaker 2:You change it again once you learn something new yeah, just, I found it so fascinating hearing all about puppeteering and just everything that goes into it, and it makes me think of music, almost like. I mean no disrespect to 2d animation, but it makes me think of music as in like no matter if you get this fancy synthesizer or a sampler, nothing is going to replace a regular piano or guitar. And that's how puppeteering seems like I mean all the power to you and 2d animation, but and it almost seems like there's maybe a resurgence. You know, fraggle rock has come around and there's a big community here that's blossoming, I guess. Do you see like the future just opening up for puppeteering again?
Speaker 4:absolutely. I think we want to connect to something real. We want to connect to something real and it's interesting. That made me your comments made me think of AI, for example, and as an illustrator, a book illustrator AI is something that is invading these. It's invading this, this thing that should be, this beautiful art form in this beautiful expression of story and our soul and our heart and prompts are being fed into a computer and this thing is being generated and I realize there are artists here out there using it as a tool and hopefully that is where it goes, rather than taking over the the work of, of an artist.
Speaker 4:But what AI has led me to reflect on is that I think, as we move forward as artists, the process and the engagement in the creation that is our most valuable thing that comes out of creating art. Ai is that end product. But and and if you, when you start to recognize AI, you, you start to recognize the soullessness about it too. Yeah, but puppetry brings back that process and that being in that messy middle of trying to figure things out and and, like I said before, that messy middle is what art is all about. But I think that, yeah, I think that we, we are craving that. We're craving that experience and that realness. So not only as artists who are creating the puppets and creating the shows and going through that, that mess and that struggle we we crave that and we need that. But our audiences feel it, whether they recognize that there, that's what they're feeling. They're feeling that there's something genuine there and puppetry is genuine yeah, it actually made me think of two things.
Speaker 3:Um, the first was how, as a puppeteer, as a artist, maker, creator, everything's a puppet show, and I really want to do a puppet show about AI fingers and how it can't make hands. I just I haven't figured out what the story is going to be, but there needs to be hands with too many fingers that bend in the wrong way and eating spaghetti. If I could combine those into one puppet show, I could validate at AI, I could be like yeah, you're a cool thing, bud. Secondly, it made me think of the importance of permanence and archival material and, like you've had Kevin Smith, uh, recently, past weeks or so, talking about how people who own hard copies of things like DVDs, blu-ray, vhs, are the keepers of that media, and I know I personally still have way too many VHSs because I cannot find some of those on DVD, let alone Blu-ray. Where and then you, you find people who make the illustrations you still can have the original drawing, you still can have the original puppet after people I mean, we were talking about the German puppets that I've brought in to the space as the show and tell for people to learn different kinds we we have. We're able to hold on to those, we're able to learn from those, we're able to keep teaching about those um and I.
Speaker 3:I think that's a large part of why physical theater, physical art, is so important, because, uh, we might find it in a pile one day and go, oh cool, what is this? Let's look about it. Um, as opposed to like, as you brought up, ai, there's no source, there's no research, there's no life behind that. There's no, and I mean the thought that's usually behind that is, this is representative of the artist whose work got uploaded and now we take pieces of that, now that they're gone and they don't get the credit, but it looks a lot like there's um and it.
Speaker 3:It just it's got such a just leaves a bad taste in my mouth every time I hear of another artist who's like there was a really famous artist whose name I cannot remember that's how famous they are uh, who died and all of their artwork got uploaded online and instantly put into an AI generator and, um, that's how the AI was making art, right? Yeah, it was based on somebody's art, somebody else's art, and it was no longer attributed. Um, and that there's a lot of artists who are finding that right, yeah, where they'll get, like shot for shot, pictures of this is mine, though. I have the files, I have the drawings and, yeah, there's just so much people thinking ownership without responsibility.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean on the AI subject. It's um, it's come a long way in the past couple years, um, but it's still like, um, like even from a chat, gpt kind of thing. Like if you're writing a letter, an essay, I can tell if it's been written by that, because it's like it's super formulated, yes, and no writer would write like that ever, um, but and even some of the, the images and videos that they're creating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they look spectacular, but it's somebody else's work to get there, yeah, and it still looks fake, like people look like yes, they look more real, but they look like fake real primus, it's getting like.
Speaker 3:It looks like primus. Yeah, that one candy valley right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it looks human, but we know it's not and it makes us uncomfortable yeah but yeah, it always makes me almost think of a post-apocalyptic world where, okay, we have all this info that's on computers.
Speaker 1:But you know, imagine, you know, just having the tangible item in your hand, like going going through ruins after society's collapse, you'll still find pop-up yeah, unless you have a screen yeah, the tangible thing is I think that's a great point that you've made there and, um, yeah, with the Kevin Smith thing, like where the keepers of that media, where the keepers of those knowledge, of that knowledge, right yeah, and, and that's the thing, it's like dogma, like you can't find dogma on a streaming service because he doesn't know the rights to that. Yeah, but I own a VHS copy and a DVD so it's like I watch it all the time and I like I like having that physical DVD copy.
Speaker 3:It's or even a super deluxe they were.
Speaker 3:I can't remember if they were with college humor or they were with adult swim one of them, but something swallowed up super deluxe and there were so many cool things on there that I reference all the time, but I can't show anybody because whoever swallowed it wiped the internet of it and a lot of the creators who made those artworks like there's certain music videos and stuff that were animated that I reference they have no control about that because they made it for the company. The company owned the work and now nobody has those files anymore. That's considered like lost media. But something I love about lost media is the entire lost media community online where they'll be like yeah, but I filmed that commercial as part of this art of like, as part of the sports event in 1983 on a VHS upload it. So all we can hope is this lost media can be found again, and that only happens with, you know, physical, tangible materials like puppets VHS is weird recordings, usb sticks yeah, it's, there's just, yeah, responsibility behind ownership kind of deal.
Speaker 1:So if I were to want to start, like, becoming a puppeteer, do it Awesome, okay, so that's everybody know by coming to one of their workshops.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was gonna ask you like Wiggler, if you're an adult, for sure you'll get a whole. You'll just get. You'll just get so much weird stuff thrown at you and you'll go, wow, it could be anything like. Jenny brought up WP puppets in their own festival. Part of the ideas festival last year was a talk with artists and they just make puppet shows at garbage bags. The medals are the openings and they have all stories. Do it, yeah, do do the thing that you want to do, do it. We got YouTube now loaded on the internet. Someone will like it, is there? A seven year old has 10 subscribers. If her seven year old can have 10 subscribers on YouTube, you can do puppets.
Speaker 1:Fair. Is there any organizations within the city people can go to recommend any.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so chaos, calgary animated object society. Christine Cook is very much the heart and soul of the puppetry community. Everybody's everybody knows her, everybody loves her. She, she's inspired so many people. She got the arts award for Calgary a couple years ago, so she's an incredible human. And chaos is great, also because I work there. So, and then Jenny brought up WP puppets. Wendy does some incredible workshops all year round. There's all that you talk. No, I was.
Speaker 4:I was going to recommend WP puppet theater because and she does Wendy's really dedicated the last 30 plus years of her life to applied puppetry, so I'm looking at how puppetry can be applied in therapeutic situations or in education and she does a lot of work with seniors and the programs that they've developed like are really spectacular programs and she's truly, truly passionate about that work. So, and yeah, like Tia says, she has workshops running throughout the year as well. But I think, like like me, who just showed up to a puppet jam and suddenly found herself and dolly wiggler, although I had been working on puppets prior to that.
Speaker 3:But but that's so many people don't truly get started till they meet Christine, and then Christine launched oh yeah, you're on stage, yeah, oh, you haven't.
Speaker 4:You haven't yet You're in. I think that that. I think what we're getting to here is that there are many, many points of entry, I guess. To come into puppetry, even yesterday I ran an adult workshop making wooden tabletop puppets and the work that came out of there. I am still on this high because I cannot believe the creativity, but just that, that idea that they've created this character that can now move. And now the character says to them I want a story, tell me my story. And they will start to tell the story. And then Ta da, like, like. There's your start. And then you, you like, you know.
Speaker 3:Then maybe you start reaching out to other people in the community, mentors or organizations, like chaos and like WP puppet thinking we show up everywhere, like we're at folkfest, we're at beakerhead, we're at Chinook Blast, we're either performing this, doing workshops, market collective. We're at those sometimes and like, like Jenny, as an artist in residence in schools, like companies like chaos have done like school residencies. We also did a Blackfoot animation or Blackfoot language animation program where we went into a school, taught a bunch of people animation and they they're making like a. It started with Celestine twig and she wants to make like a Sesame Street for Blackfoot and the first group was a grade nine group in Fort McLean, livingstone range, down there, and they went in. Each group of kids made several videos. They animated things like hello and numbers and stuff like that. And then the next group were like more adult animators and beginners and they did things like hello, how are you, where do you live? So we're everywhere, it's, you just got to look for us.
Speaker 4:Like most art things, whatever you like, it probably exists, which can be unfortunate, but also really encouraging, and I think as soon as you start noticing it, you'll notice it everywhere. Yeah right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because we are everywhere. Yeah, like we do tours of seniors homes to, wendy has a lot of work in seniors homes which is really encouraging to see how something like puppetry and mass workshops can help bring a little bit more joy to seniors. Started during COVID we would perform outside of the windows. Right, because they couldn't come outside. We can go in, but yeah, we're everywhere, just just go like masking puppetry Calgary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm glad we had this conversation. Thank you for joining us, thank you, thank you for having us. I think the one thing I'm taking away from this conversation especially is that when you're talking about being puppetry with the kids and also with adults, and how, and seniors and seniors, how it's all, it's all about play. Yes, and even as adults and seniors probably we were all those kids at one point we all love it and we've just, you know, forgotten, maybe, how to play. So I think that's the joy of puppetry. It reminds us of simpler times, when we were younger. I want to go to the dollar store and make a puppet. Do it.
Speaker 4:Do it, do it.
Speaker 2:I was just bringing back my childhood so much, yeah, how much it meant, and it's just it's blowing me away talking about this, just how it requires so many disciplines like to be a puppeteer, like it requires what you are good at.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like you can always learn more, but the thing you're good at already probably can be used. It's great Like a piece of written paper on a fishing hook. That's a puppet.
Speaker 1:Something I can do.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:I'm going to try a little bit. Gotta start somewhere.
Speaker 3:American Beauty filmed a paper like a floating bag in wind.
Speaker 2:That's a puppet yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a puppet.
Speaker 3:So yeah, you're on your way.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks for joining us for conversation. We're the artsy dudes. I'm Taylor Gladue and, as always, Ryan Eliasen.
Speaker 2:It was great to be in sparrow art space for the first time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, thank you again for joining us.