The Canadian chapter of the international puppetry union now has an online directory of members!

The Flying Box Theatre is thrilled to be alongside such an inspiring and talent group of artists.  Take a moment to check out the directory–it’s full of beautiful work!

Co-founder Jesse Orr just got back from a short artist’s residency in Smithers, B.C. at the Main Street Studio.

Check out her facebook album to see photos of some of the puppets that came out of this paper-craft puppet workshop!

The Girl Giant was the very first marionette that Jesse and I built for this project, all the way back October of last year. We were lucky enough to have the help of Lydia Lorrain, animator and miniaturist extraordinaire, as we stumbled our way through the building process. Lydia sculpted the head and hands of the Girl Giant puppet, Jesse built the body, and I made the costume, so it was definitely a collaborative effort!

We told the Girl Giant’s story in our initial short showings last fall, and she has made a reappearance this spring as part of the cast of Hans Dudldee and Other Forgotten Fairytales. This time I got to be the puppeteer, which was a bit stressful at first. She is a lot of fun to play with though, and I’ve started to get the hang of her bouncing walk. We’ve learned a lot in the process of making her and working with her in performance, and I’m sure she’ll continue to appear in our upcoming work!

The Flying Box Theatre has been offline for a few weeks because we were preoccupied with preparing for two performances that took place on March 7th and 8th 2015.  The shows were a great success!  Thanks in large part to the volunteers and collaborators who worked with us–and to them we are so grateful.

One of those is Ms. Evelyn Giron, freelance designer extraordinaire, who created the beautiful painted design that graces our puppet theatre.  She also helped us make our stage floor more sturdy and portable, as well as giving us feedback on our show before opening day…come to think of it we couldn’t have done the show without her!

We asked her to incorporate the names of the people who contributed to last summer’s fundraising campaign into the painted design, and you can see an example of how she did it below.  We love how detailed the pattern is–and we know how many different hands and how many hours it took to achieve.  Not to mention how much problem solving and creative solutions! Thank you Evelyn!

Not too long ago, we at the Flying Box recruited some friends and family to listen to us practicing telling our fairytales from memory.  We created our own ways of telling the stories and we worked on playing off each other as a performance team.  At one of these practice sessions we were introduced to actor and director Cowboy Smithx.  What a great encounter for us!  When we told him we were podcast fans, he laid down a challenge:  make your own. Well Cowboy, we did!

Now presenting episode one of Magic Mirror, The Flying Box Theatre’s first ever podcast. 

We’re jumping on that bandwagon!

-Jesse Orr in Episode One

Episode one features Erika Eichenseer, discoverer of the Schönwerth fairytale archive and publisher of the collection Prinz Roßzwifl.  (to be published in english as The Turnip Princess next month! we’re not even being sponsored for all these book advertisements!)

Erika talks about the stories, their history and significance, and her work with the Schönwerth Society, among other things.  Through the society’s website (german only) you can explore the lovely Schönwerth Path online… or visit in person in Regensberg, Bavaria!

Take a listen to Magic Mirror for a peek into our process, an outline of Jesse’s obsessions, and insight into the pagan roots of the Schönwerth Tales, plus much more!

Plus, don’t forget to check out Cowboy Smithx’s podcast The Silent X.

“We have to have better segues at some point.”

-Deborah Sullivan in Episode One

Some years ago a German folklorist discovered a collection of 500 long-forgotten folk tales in a basement archive in Regensberg, Bavaria. Tales like The Tailor and The Moon, The Flying Little Box, and Hans Dudeldee had all rested, untold, since they were collected in the early 1800’s by Franz Xavier von Schönwerth.

Continue reading →

The Flying Box Theatre has a few updates to share:

• We have moved into a shared studio space, as pictured above.  So very exciting to be out of our small apartments and surrounded by inspiring fellows like Egotrip Productions and Rickie Lea Owens, among others.
• We’re able to rent this studio because we’re taking part in the program Jeunes Volontaires for the next year… a year of puppetry and storytelling, on the government dole!  Quebeckers under 30, artist or not, should be aware that this program exists.
• We have been following up our crowd-funding campaign by giving original prints by Jesse to donors, and we realize we also promised a little bit of audio as a reward, so…
• We are making a radio episode!  For this first-ever-audio-creation we have interviewed Erika Eichenseer, the wonderful teacher, folklorist, and occasional librettist who we mentioned in a previous post.  We’ve also talked to puppeteer, illustrator, animator and activist Alma Sheppard-Matsuo, who is embarking on the creation of an illustrated anthology of radical fairytales.  Stay tuned for our first foray into radio in 2015.
• Over the next few months we will be hiding out in our new studio, preparing to emerge in the (early) spring with a new puppet show at the Centaur Theatre Children’s Series on Saturday March 7th 2015.  Save the date!

A long time ago, when Deborah I and began planning how we would bring the tales from the Schönwerth collection to life, we decided to work with a simple string puppet design that we describe as a rod marionette.  The image below is an example of a rod marionette in Janie Geiser’s work, an American puppeteer filmmaker and scholar that we’re inspired by.

As we set out to adapt these old European stories we wanted to learn from traditional puppet forms, hopeful to discover something fundamental about puppetry and storytelling by hunting around in the traditions. Early in our process we also talked a lot about the fine pair that our imagined puppets would make with fairytale characters: the puppets’ non-naturalistic movement & their ability to perform time-worn tricks and stunts would fit well with the familiar heroines and villains, who, in these stories, are never fleshed out with motivations or inner lives.

The design and building of the Girl Giant rod marionette for our first show was a team effort. The book Marionette Magic, co-authored by Cathy Stubington of Runaway Moon Theatre (another big influence on our work), was an indispensable resource. 

I used plans from this book to create the jointed body of the Girl Giant puppet.  In the midst of our…ahem… quite rushed process our skilled stop-motion animator friend Lydia Lorrain stopped by Flying Box Theatre workshop (aka Deborah’s kitchen) to build the puppet’s head and hands. You can see some of Lydia’s beautiful stop-motion work here.

Next, I assembled the puppet, mostly using string and eye-hooks at the joints.  

Finally, in an example of the Flying Box design collaboration that we are developing, Deborah fleshed out the body of the puppet and made its costume. 

Above right is a video still of Stephen Quinlan, myself and Deborah Sullivan beginning the first ever performance of the story The Girl Giant and the Farmer.

With very limited rehearsal time before that show, all three of us had to figure out very quickly how to best make our puppets move–or in Deborah’s case how to play the accordion, learning songs newly written by Japhy Sullivan!

Luckily for me the Girl Giant cooperated well, and I managed to perform her bouncing, leg swinging walk during last Saturday’s performance at Café Concret/Festival Phénomena.  The audience even chuckled a bit when they saw it, which I’m taking as a good sign!