The Old Trout Puppet Workshop: Talent, with no strings attached
Hailed by Canadian newspaper critics for its “utterly captivating,” “universal and visceral” and “by turns comic, macabre and sublimely surreal” theatrical performances, The Old Trout Puppet Workshop (www.theoldtrouts.org/) has the potential, according to one reviewer, to become "one of the most vibrant and vital puppet companies in the world."
Old Trouts Judd Palmer, Peter Balkwill, Steve Kenderes, Steve Pearce and Bobby Hall - with backgrounds in sculpting, writing, illustrating and carpentry among them - formed the puppet theatre company on a ranch near the southern Alberta town of Pincher Creek in 1999 where they led a humble existence, sharing a coal-heated shack, collecting eggs and feeding the pigs.
After six months of what they describe as “monkish isolation,” the Old Trouts premiered their first production, The Unlikely Birth of Istvan, before an audience of cowboys and members of a neighbouring Hutterite colony who arguably witnessed one of the most original pieces of theatre in their lives.
Billed as an underground puppet production for adults, Istvan is “a fantastical visual poem about the essence of being human, from the perspective of puppets” and “an absurdist creation myth” that is equal parts Samuel Beckett and Sesame Street, according to the show’s creators.
The production, performed in silence with the puppets worn on the heads of the puppeteers, features an epic good-versus-evil battle between the soulful and artistic “That” and the hedonistic and ravenous “This”, who eats the flowers which That tries to paint. Throw in an Italian opera-singing pig, the birth of a puppet on stage and a rollicking musical score featuring salsa and polkas, and Istvan weaves a tale from birth to death, careening through the profane, the magical, the surreal and the sensual.
Performed before audiences in St. John’s, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, it also became one of One Yellow Rabbit’s top-selling shows, appearing at both its annual High Performance Rodeo in 2000 and during the Calgary-based performance theatre’s 2000-01 season. Since then, the Calgary-based Old Trouts have created a repertory of unique puppet theatre.
The Tooth Fairy, which debuted in 2001 and also appears as a book penned by Palmer as part of a literary series entitled Preposterous Fables for Unusual Children, published by Calgary-based Bayeux Arts Inc., blends the dark cinematic shades of Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam with the literary twists of the Brothers Grimm and Lewis Carroll. It follows a little girl (played by a real actor) who embarks on a journey to meet the Tooth Fairy and encounters pirates, monsters and a toothless castaway along the way.
In 2002, the Old Trouts premiered Beowulf, an “operatic extravaganza” based on the millennium-old eponymous Old English poem, which tells the tale of the monster Grendel who plagues the ancient Danish king, Hrothgar, and the feral Beowulf who defeats the monster and takes over the kingdom. Another regally named Old Trouts’ production, called The Ice King, is billed as a gothic allegory of hunger and hallucination, based on the true story of the doomed Franklin Expedition of 1845.
More recently, the puppet theatre company presented a glimpse into the Great Kitchen of Heaven with their production of The Last Supper of Antonin Carême - the story of “le cuisinier des rois et le roi des cuisiniers,” who during the French Revolution apprenticed at a humble Paris restaurant where he learned the “mysteries of transcendental cuisine.”
In addition to creating innovative puppet theatre, the Old Trouts are involved in a variety of different projects. The troupe has collaborated with Dandi Productions of Calgary to present several children’s shows for orchestras, including The Twins and the Monster, a recent work commissioned by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. On the road, the Old Trouts have toured California with The Death of Benvenuto Cellini, a puppet operetta in collaboration with Calgary-based Green Fools Theatre, a previous artistic home for Palmer and Kenderes.
The Old Trouts have also served as puppet masters on the Disney television series, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and have made their own films, including Commedia Moderna, a short for the Bravo! Canada cable television network, and directed by Toronto filmmaker Dev Singh, which uses puppets and stop-motion animation, and another one in the works based on the life of Rasputin. In the spring of 2004, the Old Trouts won a Rosie award for Best Experimental Program presented by the Alberta Motion Picture Industries Association for their film, The Execution of Margot Rumebe, directed by Calgary filmmaker Simon Dekker.
The Old Trouts are also into sculpture, and built a 15-metre-tall puppet machine and wind-powered clock using old combine harvesters and train whistles dragged out of junk graveyards across Alberta for Calgary-based Big Rock Brewery.
And, the Old Trouts also run workshops that teach participants physical performance techniques using full character masks; the movement-based, ensemble-building methodology of the great Japanese theatre director, Tadashi Suzuki; the medium of puppetry; and, of course, how to make the puppets.
The Old Trouts’ focus, however, always remains on their creations, since after all it’s the puppets that pull the heartstrings of their audiences.
As Balkwill once said: “The puppets allow viewers’ hearts to beat a little faster and see things with a childlike clarity that adults have often forgotten.”
- Christopher Guly