With Ann Powell of Puppetmongers Theatre
Saturday April 2nd & Sunday 3rd, 10 am – 4 pm. Two days for $200 registration
At first glance looking like a set and costume designer’s scale model, a Toy Theatre is a complete theatre in miniature, with little puppet actors manipulated by rods from above or beside the stage, scenery that rolls, folds and flies, and all kinds of wonderful theatrical surprises.
In this two day workshop participants will each transform an ordinary cardboard box into a magnificent miniature theatre, design and create mini puppet figures, and discover the possibilities of scenic effects – perspective and scale, pop-up scenery and scenic vistas, trap doors and moving dioramas to name a few.
Making and performing Toy Theatre was a popular family activity in the nineteenth century, when people created their own home entertainment by reproducing miniature versions of the popular melodramas, comedies, tragedies, farces and pantomimes of the day for intimate audiences in the parlour. These dramas in miniature employed all kinds of spectacular effects; indeed, some mechanical contrivances and contraptions first invented for toy theatres were then adopted by “real” theatres.
In recent years this all but forgotten theatrical form is enjoying a resurgence in popularity amongst puppeteers and visual and theatre artists, who are exploring the unlimited potential of Toy Theatre in the context of contemporary theatre.
Ann Powell is co-artistic director of Puppetmongers Theatre, where she has been playing with puppets and creating critically acclaimed new works since establishing the company with her brother David in 1974, and touring with them around the world.
Outside of Puppetmongers, Ann collaborates on projects with other theatre companies and artists, including an Arts for Peace theatre project in the former USSR with Whole Loaf Theatre. She teaches puppetry arts to adults at colleges, conferences and Puppetmongers’ School of Puppetry, and to children as an Artist in Education. Ann has also illustrated a number of books for children and written one, and was a founding member of Kids Can Press publishing company.