VSWF Spotlight: The Poetry in Puppetry

Poetry is about making words and ideas come to life. Puppetry is about making ordinary objects come to life. So what do you get when you combine poetry with puppets?

We’ll find out on March 6^th at the Poeteers! show as part of the fourth annual Victoria Spoken Word Festival.

This is a new show for the festival and came out of the success of last year’s puppetry workshop with Master Puppeteer Tim Gosley. The poets had so much fun making and playing with puppets that this year we decided to go even further and pair the festival ensemble poets with local puppeteers and see what they can create together.

Victoria has a wonderfully vibrant puppetry scene – in fact in September 2013 Victoria will have an international puppetry festival! From shadow puppets, to transformed objects to giant puppets Victoria has a wealth of talent.

Meet some of the puppeteers who will be collaborating with the ensemble:

Kathleen Greenfield – The director of Little Orange Man and Kitt and Jane, Kathleen is comfortable with the collaborative creation process and has a special knack for turning ordinary objects, such as vegetables, into puppets!

Kathleen Greenfield

JunkTime Puppets – Shoy and Meesh are local Victoria puppeteers who love to make their own puppets. Watch a snippet of them performing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tfiCzl75HY

Janet Walker is a musician, playwright, puppeteer and illustrator.  Recently she is making cut-out cardboard shadow shows with live acoustic music. She likes to combine spoken word with performance art. Check out what she does here: http://janetwalkerart.wordpress.com/

Janet Walker

Julie Gennai is a puppeteer, artist and musician. She particularly likes playing with textures and using unique materials to make puppets. She likes puppets so much she once biked solo across Canada to study with the Bread and Puppet Co. in Vermont.

Julie Gennai

Danika Boyce is writer, comic and puppet maker who sometimes writes plays and sings songs. She belongs to the Polestar Puppet Collective in Victoria.

Giant Puppets Leona and Leah operate giant larger-than-life puppets named Olio and Opus – you may have seen them at Bike Ride last summer! http://giantpuppets.ca/

Olio and Opus!

In addition to these fantastic artists, the Two Dope Boys, better known as Shayne avec i  grec and Johnny MacRae, will perform a brand-new piece incorporating puppetry. Closing out the evening will be Master Puppeteer Tim Gosley with a very special performance of P.K. Page’s puppet play ‘The Blind Men and the Elephant’ using LED lights and shadow puppets.

Master Puppeteer Tim Gosley

It will be a magical evening that will be a feast for the eyes as well as the ears! So get your tickets now: http://ticketrocket.org/victoria-spoken-word-festival-2/

Find out more about the festival:

http://www.victoriaspokenwordfestival.com/
http://www.facebook.com/events/1474828702744477/