Ahh puppets. The name conjures up memories of classic children’s shows such as Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, and The Muppet Show - or for older crowds, Howdy Doody. Your childhood memories will be pummeled, beaten, stabbed and slaughtered in The Old Trout Puppet Workshop’s Famous Puppet Death Scenes running at One Yellow Rabbit this month from the 9th to the 25th.

“The show is whatever the title conjures an image of. Some may think that it is actual real famous puppet’s death scenes, but there aren’t enough of those to fill the cannon. So we invented them,” Pete Balkwill told GayCalgary.com in the midst of rehearsals for the Regina stop of their current tour. “The evening is curated and narrated by a puppet named Nathaniel Tweak. He is presenting this collection of Famous Puppet Death Scenes to the audience to prepare them for his presentation of what he believes to be the perfect death scene.”

The show is a collection of famous scenes culled from the absolute best puppet shows in history. Tweak ushers the audiences through a myriad of scenes including an existential brutalization in a German children’s television show; a tragic murder in a black forest fairy tale; a Neo-realist play about the Irish working class; a science fiction investigation into immortality and much more. Famous Puppet Death Scenes is a black comedy for adults. The press release states “Your kids, or someone else’s kids will find it scary, confusing and will most likely give them a bad outlook on life generally. Lemony Snicket this is not.”

While The Old Puppet Trout Workshop was behind the astounding production of Pinocchio at Alberta Theatre Projects in 2004, this is definitely a grown up show.

“The show isn’t for kids although we have had some younger audience members see it already,” said Balkwell. “Generally we approach our shows on an adult level – Pinocchio was a diversion from that – so we are returning to the roots of our adult oriented material.”

The show is in the midst of a Western Canadian tour.

“It opened in Vancouver and then played in Victoria. We are presently in Regina and then go to Calgary, Edmonton and Vernon. The audience reaction in Vancouver and Victoria were quite interesting. Both runs were entirely sold out and received rave reviews, in Vancouver it was met with an enormous amount of energy and response. In Victoria it was a slightly different sense of energy level [where we] were dealing with a subscriber list to a theatre with an average age of seventy. I think they were expecting the fist to drop on them.”

While puppets have a history of being considered “kids stuff” the art of puppetry is quickly regaining its adult fan base, with artists like the incredible Ronnie Burkett or the show Avenue Q on Broadway and in Las Vegas.

“It is interesting, Ronnie Burkett is one of the greatest Canadian pioneers in bringing puppetry back to the adult audiences. In Europe the art was never lost, it was always maintained as a sophisticated form of theatre and art. Only in North America did it deviate from that position due to television. In the 1950’s they discovered that the camera is a very effective framing device so puppets were used almost exclusively for children’s television material and lost their connection with the adult audiences. There is a renaissance occurring in North America with puppets coming back to adults. In the six years we have been building shows there has been a steady increase in the acceptance. Now when you tell people you are a puppeteer and ask if they might like to come see your puppet show, people don’t question it, they love to come as opposed to thinking ‘puppets are for kids.’”

The show was born out of the group’s Inglewood studio, where the five core members (Balkwill along with co-stars Don Brinsmead, Pityu Kenderes and Judd Palmer, as well as Bobby Hall) and a group of volunteers created the puppets. While many will remember the diva attitude of one Ms. Piggy, Balkwill says that working with puppets is a joy.

”Puppets are extremely demanding. They beg that you take utmost care of them and pack them carefully. When performing they demand that you get into some ridiculous, inhuman positions to make them work. At the same time they are fun little creatures to play with for sure. They die extremely well and then pop right up for bludgeoning the next night without really complaining too much about bruises. They are fun to create – in the creating and designing of the wee beasts it invokes your childlike qualities. It is youthful and exuberant to create them. We find the audience is transported back to the child like state in watching them. With as much excitement as we have making them, they are received with an equal amount of excitement.”

Comedy, tragedy and puppetry. What else could you ask for in a night out?

“For those people that are familiar with an Old Trout Puppet Workshop show, they can expect what we have always brought to shows with 75% more puppet stuff. For people who have never seen a show, I think they will experience a rebirth of sorts with this show” Balkwill concluded.

Photo credit: Jason Stang

One Yellow Rabbit presents
Famous Puppet Death Scenes
March 9th – 25th, 2006
Big Secret Theatre – EPCOR Centre for the Performing Arts
www.oyr.org
Tickets: (403) 264-3224 or at ticketmaster