This two-day workshop will introduce a collection of ecologically-conscious building techniques through a hands-on process of constructing a parade-styled puppet. Exploring a branch of ecoscenography, this workshop explores the life of materials and endeavors to reach beyond the presentation of a performing material to the ecosystems in which they are entwined.
Techniques will include: working with willow, a local plant that not only can be harvested sustainably but also serves as a dynamic sculpting material, as well as sculpting with cardboard, an ever-present remnant of consumer culture. This assemblage of natural and found materials considers our human influence on local ecologies while offering approachable methods to large-scale puppet construction.
Details
March 19th-20th, 12pm – 3pm
The Old Trout Puppet Workshop
3640 15A Street SE
$100 per person (limited space available)
Presented as part of the 2022 Festival of Animated Objects
About the Facilitator
Ian McFarlane is a puppeteer, a scenographer, a carpenter, a paddler, a scholar and a tinkerer. His practice of landscape poetics, junkyard theatrics, and performative alchemy explores the unexpected correspondence between the performing body and the performing of the world. Expanding on the disciplines of puppetry, ecoscenography and sensory ethnography as foundations for creative inquiry, Ian creates works for the theatre, outdoor spectacles and community-led projects.
Ian was a resident company member with Bread and Puppet Theatre where, over the course of several years, he helped create a number of circuses, pageants, parades, protests, gardens and experimental puppet shows. He also toured with the company internationally, including a performance of The Honey Let’s Go Home Opera at the 2019 Festival Mondial des Theatres de Marionnettes. Recently, Ian has co-created the North Barn Theatre in Mi’kma’ki, Antigonish County, Nova Scotia, where he has designed, created and performed Troubling Joy: A Bicycle Puppet Circus (2021) and Late Night Radio (2020). Ian received an MFA in Contemporary Art from Simon Fraser University in 2018, and is currently a co-producer and resident scenographer for The River Clyde Pageant, a community-led spectacle in Epekwitk, New Glasgow, PEI.
Canadian Academy of Mask and Puppetry
© 2017 Canadian Academy of Mask and Puppetry
QUICK LINKS
In the spirit of reconciliation, Canadian Academy of Mask and Puppetry acknowledges that we live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (which includes the Siksika, Kainai, Piikani). We would also like to acknowledge the Tsuut'ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations(Bearspaw, Chiniki, and Wesley), the Métis Nation (Region 3), and all of us who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.