Toronto’s favourite experimental puppetry collective closes out the 2023 WeeFestival with a fun and fantastical afternoon of performances created especially for the youngest puppet-curious crowd. As you enter the space, musician Adam Waito creatively makes music with old cassette loops and other musical machinery. This exploratory music is accompanied by colored shadow swirls, by Annie Rollins and Heather Caplap, to set the stage for a wild and wonderful cabaret of puppets and performing objects.
Adam Waito is a multidisciplinary artist and musician who used to tour the world in rock bands but now mostly composes lo-fi new-age dadwave in his garage.
Care and Maintenance of your Puppeteer by Robin Polfus
Fluffball, a professor at Honeyball University, specializing in the fields of human physiology, psychology and whimsicology, will be presenting his talk on the “Care and Maintenance of Your Puppeteer”; that we might better understand what a delicate, fragile, beautiful, and ridiculous, creature the puppeteer is. This piece is created by Robin Polfuss with Lindsay Lee and Maiko Taku of Honeyball Puppetry.
Love Amphibious by Madeline McKinnell
Madeline McKinnell brings two frogs together in this short and sweet shadow puppet piece entitled ‘Love Amphibious’ with sound by David Howlet
The Tlacuache’s Tail by Maxei (Trio)
Maxei is a newcomer collective of performers Dani, Ruy, and Paola, from Mexico. Their original piece, entitled The Tlacuche’s Tail, is a Mexican prehispanic story that tells about how an opossum animal rescued the fire and gave it to mankind. Dani, Paola and Ruy will be presenting the story with cardboard puppets and live music made with prehispanic instruments.
My Lovely Frenemy by Afsaneh Zamani:
Afsaneh Zamani is a theatre artist originally from Iran who is always inspired by objects and puppets to visualize stories. In her piece, My Lovely Frenemy, one small napkin rebels against the iron’s mission to iron all the other napkins neatly and uniformly!
Thyme Enough by Nathaniel Hanula-James
An industrious squirrel tries to increase his productivity by buying some more time…or is it thyme? What’s a squirrel to do? Nathaniel Hanula-James (he/him) collaborates on theatre performances as a dramaturg, performer, writer and administrator. Born and raised in Vancouver, he now makes his home in Toronto. Nathaniel is Associate Dramaturg at Nightswimming, where he assists in the nurturing of new work. He loves to make work that is zany, whimsical, and unabashedly queer.
The Concrete Cabaret team is comprised of artists, workers, teachers, researchers and general-purpose humans, who are dedicated to making space for experimental puppetry and performing object work in Toronto. The team works on a volunteer basis under a democratic management system.
Team Members: Alexandra Montagnese, Annie Katsura Rollins, Heather Caplap, Sarah Tracy, Gabriel Levine
About Concrete Cabaret
Concrete Cabaret is an experimental puppetry and performing object cabaret that began in 2018 and performs seasonally in Toronto. In the spirit of experimentation and historic object performance forms, we welcome short acts and works-in-progress that challenge theatrical norms and our understanding of objects and inanimacy as well as performances that address current social, political, and artistic issues. The cabaret aims to act as a catalyst for community building between performers and audiences, creating a commonality around experimentation and performing objects.
Visit the Concrete Cabaret website
