May 10 – June 9, 2024

 

Wee Digital

Until we’re able to gather again, we thought we’d share some delicious treats created especially for you and your little ones by WeeFestival artists from around the world and across the Country. Enjoy!

Dave Jenniss, Artistic Director of Ondinnok Productions

Dave shares some of the animals, music, and stories of the production Mokatek and the Missing Star

Ariane Voineau and Josué Beaucage

The artists behind Little Big Leaf have a message for you and fun activity inspired by their beautiful show! Download the craft kit!


La Baracca Testoni-Ragazzi (Italy)
Everything Will Be Okay and Emilia and the Right Time

La Mue/tte and Santiago Moreno (France)

The puppet of The Cozy One-Man Band is stuck in quarantine with lots of time on its hand.


Digital Sparks

A series of short creative works on video for children and their families commissioned by the WeeFestival!

Spark # 1

Blue by Alexandra Montagnese, Hilary Adams, Mike Petersen, Andrew Young, and Jeffrey O’Hara

“Blue loves to do things on their own, reading, painting, and flying around. But what happens when a bowl bandit takes the fun away?”

Using household objects, these puppeteers created a unique tale in five equal parts while maintaining a safe physical distance! They passed a minute puppet video in sequence from one person to the next and made a complete five minute story. It was a welcome challenge to take turns adding to the puppet show with no idea what was coming their way and definitely no idea where it would go! From their living rooms to yours, they hope you enjoy this collective one-minute-puppetry-project!

Spark # 2

Pa-Palz by Derek Kwan and Annie Ramos

A pa-pa-pa-playful exploration of the pa-pa sound with bursts of glorious operatic beauty and delightful silliness.

Derek Kwan says “My inspiration, as for many things these days, is my niece, Grace. She is almost 17 months and watching her explore her self and her environment continues to delight me. Each discovery, each learning is greeted with such joy and is immediately followed by repetition in search of mastery through play. Play is fundamental to us as human beings: we learn through doing, failing, trying, copying, through it we learn about gravity, up and down, right and wrong, joy and sadness. It actually is vital work for people of all ages, but particularly for the very young. It was in this spirit that we created Pa-Palz, a short video to explore sound, music and phonation using just the syllable “pa”, based on Mozart’s duet for the two lovebirds at the end of The Magic Flute. We wanted to demonstrate how one syllable could be used in a myriad ways, from the pure joy of the syllable, to emoting with it, to making music, all in a playful way. Seeing Grace watch the video for the first time was magic, I’m constantly amazed at how much they comprehend and take in, how simple actions and concepts organically multiply into the dazzling complexity of humanity.”

Annie Ramos says “Creating this project was so exciting for me. Infants react to both pitches and sound, both physical expression and rhythm. Using these components at an introductory level, help gage an understanding of these elements. Music is an essential part of the development of the brain. I’ve always been an advocate of early music education as it helps accelerate language acquisition and reading skills. Being part of this project has ignited my vision on promotion of music education in young children and infants.”

Spark # 3

The Djembe by Lua Shayenne & Cécé Haba

Learn about the Djembe “the talking drum” and dance along with Lua and Cécé!

Lua says this about the process of creating this Digital Spark “We are two artists working in the field of dance and music who always perform live. We have never recorded a program for children before. It was a good challenge to understand how to adapt what we do live to the camera. We had to imagine our usual circle of live children around us. We wrote new songs to get our message across rather than talk too much and focused on weaving a storyline to keep our audience engaged. Simple things like voice and drum levels, lighting, filming, background were added challenges. We both love working with children so this great opportunity allowed us to be creative in a new exciting way. …”