When mounting a seasonal production of Pinocchio, an “uncharacteristically family friendly show,” Calgary’s Old Trout Puppet Workshop couldn’t resist going dark.
“Pinocchio kills Jiminy Cricket, like on page 5. Brutally, with a hammer — that’s in the original book — and so we kept that,” said Old Trout co-founder Judd Palmer.
Pinocchio struck Jiminy once and the audience gasped. A second time, spurred titters of uncomfortable laughter. A third time, the cricket moaned and the audience spewed belly laughs. A fourth time, and theatregoers seemed struck by the tragedy.
“It was a roller coaster of cricket murder,” Palmer said. “That was the coolest moment of the play… when a puppet dies, so we thought what [would] happen if we made a play that was nothing but the best bits?”
The motley crew of writers, illustrators, sculptors and carpenters who formed Old Trout in 1999 culled the most famous death scenes from beloved puppet shows to bring their fantasy to fruition.
Famous Puppet Death Scenes premiered at the PuSh festival in 2007, returned in 2008 and a new version will play at the York Theatre, March 31 to April 19.
Death scenes include “Edward’s Last Prance” from The Ballad of Edward Grue by Samuel Groanswallow and “Bipsy’s Mistake” from Bipsy and Mumu Go to the Zoo by Fun Freddy.
“We have the Scandinavian Theatre of the Insufferable, we have neo-realist Irish working-class drama from the ’40s, we have ’70s German existentialist children’s programming,” Palmer said.
In truth, these renowned puppet shows exist only in Old Trout’s imaginations, but Palmer insists part of the fun for puppeteers and audiences alike is imagining what these puppet productions could be.
Famous Puppet Death Scenes has played in 35 cities in Europe, Canada and the U.S. and impressed critics with its hilarity and inventiveness.
Press bumph promises Famous Puppet Death Scenes will cure your fear of death.
“Say goodbye to anxiety about difficult choices, to dreading birthdays, and to desperate pleas for immortality through fame, art, or progeny,” reads a press release.
But Palmer explains the show’s popularity another way: “People have an unadmitted sadistic feeling towards puppets, they want to see them suffer,” he said.
“The show manages to be quite hilarious, but sneaking in from the side, suddenly you find you actually are kind of moved,” Palmer continued. “You are, through this relentless tragedy and wailing and gnashing of teeth, somehow brought into a new kind of comfort with your own mortality.”
Palmer concedes Old Trout’s fondness for dark humour wasn’t the puppet workshop’s only impulse for creating Famous Puppet Death Scenes.
“Death is a real thing, as we all know,” he said. “And it’s art’s purpose to help us process things.”
The “rough and tumble cowboy types” behind Old Trout explore both heavy and hilarious themes with puppets because they’re so disarming.
“Even in a puppet show for adults, we’re being asked to act in a childlike way and to believe that a block of wood has hopes and dreams and fears, and that’s a beautiful, fragile little magic spell that we get to cast,” Palmer said.
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