SHADOW PUPPET 101 with David Powell of Puppetmongers Theatre. Sunday May 10th 2026, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. At our new studio in Kensington Market. Fee $100 – click here to enroll
This workshop will take you on a brief visit to the living traditions of shadow puppetry around the world. This will be a hands-on workshop, focusing on the use of shadow in theatrical work: as fabricated actors, as powerful images, and as kinetic set design. Working with incandescent light sources, you will design and build your own shadow puppets, explore a number of manipulation techniques and start to develop a short piece of theatre.
David Powell, the other co-founder of Puppetmongers, has been involved with all levels of production: design, scripting, construction, marketing, touring, performing and administration. With Puppetmongers, he has created eleven new theatre works, toured extensively nationally and internationally, and received awards from both the theatre and puppetry communities in Canada and the USA. David’s other work has included design and building puppet, sets, masks and props for many theatre companies. He created Shuttle Dreams, a new-music shadow play with musicians Scott Wilson and Daria Kwiatkowska. He has taught puppetry arts at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, York University, University of Windsor, University of Guelph, the Toronto Teachers’ College, and at several C.O.D.E Conferences.
