“THE PUPPETS ARE EXQUISITE. EVERYTHING ABOUT THEM – FROM THE BEWILDERED LOOK ON THEIR FACES TO THEIR STOOPED, FATIGUED POSTURE, TO THEIR HAND GESTURES, TO THEIR COSTUMES – SEEMS LIFELIKE AND HEARTBREAKING.”
– CALGARY HERALD
Night Feed
A puppet play about motherhood
Co-created by Sarah Joy Bennett, Ginette Mohr and CLUNK Puppet Lab
As an exhausted new mother nurses in the dark of yet another night, her apartment comes to life; possessions possessed with the demons of fear, self-doubt and anxiety, a chorus of objects and body parts. You know, standard parenting stuff.
Outstanding Overall Production – Ottawa Fring Festival 2019
Best of Fringe – Presented by TO Arts Toronto Fringe Festival
Patron’s Pick Tarragon Extaspace – Toronto Fringe Festival
UNIVERSALLY PRAISED BY THEATRE REVIEWERS IN TORONTO, NIGHT FEED WAS FEATURED ON EVERY CRITIC’S PICKS LIST, INCLUDING THE TORONTO STAR, NOW MAGAZINE, AND MOONEY ON THEATRE.
DEBBIE FEIN-GOLDBACH OF NOW MAGAZINE PRAISED NIGHT FEED AS “DEEPLY HONEST AND COMPELLING STORYTELLING”, GIVING IT A RARE 5-N REVIEW.
CAPITAL CRITICS’ CIRCLE HAILS NIGHT FEED AS “A NECESSARY PIECE OF THEATRE THAT COMBATS ANY MISCONCEPTIONS OF PUPPETS BEING ONLY FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES. … KUDOS TO THE TEAM BEHIND THIS CONCRETELY FEMINIST PIECE OF THEATRE.”
Chronicles of Rose
In collaboration with David Lane of New England Puppetry, Chronicles of Rose is about the fretful time in Paris just before, and during the Nazi occupation of France during WWII. France is on the brink of invasion and we find Rose Valland, the curator for the Jeu du Paume Museum, torn between escaping Paris with handsome Jewish art dealer Paul Rosenberg or staying to help the French Resistance. The Louvre is being evacuated as priceless sculptures and paintings are loaded onto trucks on their way to chateaux in the south in the hopes that they will not be discovered by the Nazis. But before Rose can make a choice, she’s met by an unexpected visitor, whose presence in Paris changes everything. As a completely new creation, the Chronicles of Rose is built from the ground up; from the costumes, and puppet heads, to the set pieces and miniature frames, everything has been artfully designed and built by the CLUNK Puppet Lab and Davis Lane. Incorporating the use of a combination of table-top staging, moving sculpture, shadow puppetry, and slide projections, audiences follow Rose as she desperately tries to undermine Nazi plundering by passing secret messages to the underground while concealing her true identity as an operative. Tanks and bombers, the ominous forces of war portray a stark reality as archival radio footage sets the mood.
Gone Fishin’
The first in the development of CLUNK Shorts: Four 15-minute pieces based on quotes and stories by famous philosophers. Using these quotes as a jumping-off point for our research, we delve deeper into their meaning to create simple, beautiful, stories that explore moments and connections of our shared human experience. Gone Fishin’ looks at the meaning of a quote by Henry David Thoreau: “Some men fish all their lives without knowing that it’s not really the fish they are after”. It’s the tale of Percival Sweetwater, a kindhearted curmudgeon and a mischievous fish whose stories collide in an epic adventure on the open sea.
Created by Shawna Reiter and Jonathan Davis
The Unremarkable Disappearance of Mr. Ogorki
The story of an afflicted, agonized, ailing, anguished, brokenhearted, dejected, desolate, despairing, despondent, disconsolate, discontented, distressed, doleful, downcast, forlorn, gloomy, heartbroken, hopeless, hurt, injured, melancholy, miserable, mournful, pathetic, pitiable, racked, rueful, sad, sickly, sorrowful, strained, suffering, tormented, tortured, tragic, troubled, woebegone, wounded, wretched man.
Click HERE to watch a video
The Climbing Man
This series of vignettes explores the feeling behind the motivation to take a risk to find love in old age.
Click HERE to watch a video
How I Became Invisible
Click HERE to view a trailer of the show.
“How I Became Invisible” is a surreal puppet performance that unearths life, death, and the memories that linger in between. What happens when you disappear from everything you hold dear, the people you remember, the place you call home?
Saija, an 81-year-old woman struggling with Alzheimer’s, has moved in with her overbearing daughter who lives in a dilapidated apartment complex. In an attempt to find clarity in an increasingly confusing world, she writes stories for her granddaughter. As her illness progresses, she finds herself lost between reality and fiction, where she encounters a curious group of demented seniors including an obese floating man, a washed-up superhero, and a woman who has been sitting in her bathtub for so long that she’s turning into a fish. As she discovers their stories, her mind grapples with the deterioration of old age, where grace becomes fear, and beauty is beleaguered by the desperation that comes with forgetting everything life is lived for.
The Process…
