Little Dickens

Centaur Theatre / 51th Season

LITTLE DICKENS

Quebec Premiere

November 19 - December 21, 2019

Created & Performed by Ronnie BURKETT

With Musical Arrangements by John ALCORN

Production Manager & Artistic Associate Terri GILLIS

Stage Manager Crystal SALVERDA

Every performance of Daisy Theatre show is unique, improvised on the spot, adjusted to the audience's mood and reactions. It also relies on the volunteers from the audience Burkett gets to participate in his play. Stated plainly, there is no written script. These puppet performances cannot be reproduced or performed by anybody else but their creator Ronnie Burkett.

Little Dickens is a funny and edgy remix of Charles Dickens’ classic Christmas Carol. It also launches the early Yuletide celebrations at Centaur.

The Dickens's character Scrooge is impersonated by the aging Diva Esmé. As she launces her midnight journey that leads to her inner redemption, she encounters many other Daisy Theatre well-known puppets, now all interpreting Dickens’ infamous characters. Presented in vaudevillian style, music ties all parts of the performance together: Christmas remixes and sultry jazz solos helping with the joyful merriment of the Fezziwig’s party.

ABOUT RONNIE BURKETT

Captivated by puppetry since the age of seven, Ronnie Burkett began touring his shows at the age of fourteen. His Theatre of Marionettes was formed in 1986, playing on Canada’s major stages and abroad. Ronnie received the 2009 Siminovitch Prize, The Herbert Whittaker Drama Bench Award for Outstanding Contribution to Canadian Theatre, a Village Voice OBIE Award and four Citations of Excellence from the American Center of the Union Internationale de la Marionnette. In 2019, Ronnie Burkett was appointed as an Officer of The Order of Canada.

AGE RESTRICTION: 16 years and over

Click on images to enlarge them.

All photos courtesy of @ Centaur Theatre.

For more information, visit the Centaur Theatre website.

More about this performance here.

The Daisy Theatre

Ronnie Burkett, The Daisy Theatre, Photo Vanessa Rigaux

Centaur Theatre

49th Season

The Daisy Theatre

Quebec Premier 

Created and performed by Ronny Burkett

NOTE: For adults ONLY, 16 years and over.

February 20 - March 24, 2018

A world renowned puppeteer Ronnie Burkett makes his Centaur Theatre debut with over 40 personally hand-crafted marionettes. This is Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes' 13th production which follows previous international successes.

The audience will be surprised by the skill and mastery of the puppet manipulation and impersonations techniques displayed by Rony Burkett. Every puppet has a distinct personality and a unique voice, all their specific characteristics are portrayed and reproduced without skipping a beat. Spectators will also appreciate the puppets' many detailed movements and expressions, and the dexterity with which they are conjured. The vocal ranges and volumes Burkett projects are quite impressive. One only marvels how he manages not to over strain or injure his voice, regardless of the agility and diapason of his vocal cords.

Burkett puppets are the classical string-manipulated marionettes. Unlike some other puppeteers who prefer to remain hidden to the public, Burkett lets the audience to observe how he controls and animates his puppets from above. In this way, not only his puppets but he himself becomes a personage to look at, especially since he interacts directly with the audience, becoming the key character of the show he stages. At some instances, the puppets appear as a pretext to display his vocal and gestural choreography and to express, with an ironic twist, his take on many issues, mundane and political.    

Ronnie Burkett, Old Lady, Photo Vanessa Rigaux

The situation vignettes performed by the puppets were all written by Burkett himself. Yet he does not strictly adhere to any text but rather improvises according to his own and/or audiences's reactions and mood. Although he has a great number of puppets, he stages only a few such vignettes, and in the course of the evening he either chooses himself what he is going to present next, or asks the audience which particular personage they would like to see. This makes each performance quite unique.

Recognized as one of Canada’s foremost theatre artists, Ronnie Burkett has been credited with creating some of the world’s most elaborate puppetry. He designs and constructs all of his marionettes in a combination of hand-moulded papier maché pulp and hand-carved wood. Defining characteristics of each puppet, such as eye glasses, wrist watches, hats, and shoes, are fastidiously crafted with intricate detail. Though he works on several puppets concurrently, Mr. Burkett approximates that each one takes six weeks to make and an entire show roughly one year to mount, from concept to opening night.

Ronnie Burkett, Jolie Jolie, Photo Vanessa Rigaux

CREATIVE TEAM

Creator and Performer - Ronnie Burkett

Marionette, Costume and Set Design by Ronnie Burkett

Music and Lyrics and Sound Design by John Alcorn

Production Manager / Artistic Associate – Terri Gillis

Stage Manager – Crystal Salverda

Crystal Salverda, Ronnie Burkett and Eda Holmes at the Opening Night
Photo Nadia Slejskova

Click on images to enlarge them.

For more information, visit the Centaur Theatre website.

Sunday Chat-ups

Sunday, February 25 @ 12:30pm

FREE

Join Lucinda Chodan, Montreal Gazette’s editor in chief as she speaks with designer, director and puppeteer Clea Minaker.

In collaboration with the Montreal Gazette

Talk-Backs

Thursday, March 8

Following the performance.

FREE

Audiences are invited to stay 

after the show for a lively Q&A session

Old Czech Legends by Jiří Trnka

OLD CZECH LEGENDS / Staré povesti ceské

ANIMATION FILM

CZECHOSLOVAKIA | 91 MINUTES | 1953| Czech with English Subtitles 

The Czeck film Director Jiří Trnka is renown as the great master of puppet making and puppet animation. His contribution to that special art form is quite significant. Because of his influence in animation, he was called "the Walt Disney of Eastern Europe".

For his Old Czech Legends, Trnka chose six classic Czech folktales, more specifically, historical legends that were put into a literary form in 1984 by the writer Alois Jirásek in his book with the same Czech title as Trnka's film.

Trnka is careful to vary the tales' tone and tempo, transforming long forgoten heroes of national legends into living characters, incarnated by his very unique puppets he designed and made himself. Trnka’s work is equally impressive for his innovative editing, lighting, and sound. He was a winner of many international film award, raising the bar for the future puppet animators and influencing their work, even of the Quay Brothers. 

The film represent a unique opportunity to become acquainted with the work of a master puppeteer Jiří Trnka, and to get to experience his way of transmitting a narrative through his animated puppets.

The film was featured at the Montreal's FNC 2017 film festival (Festival du noveau cinéma) in LES INCORTOUNABLES (THE UNAVOIDABLE) category.     

FNC OFFICIAL SYNOPSES

"The lives of the earliest inhabitants of the historic land of Bohemia, recounted in a series of six stop-motion animation segments. Released in 1953, this film by the Czech director breathes humanity and empathy into the folk tales behind the heroes and legends of Czechoslovakia. Inspired by the book Ancient Bohemian Legends by Alois Jirásek, Old Czech Legends is proof not just of Trnka’s outstanding artistry and puppeteering talent, but also his amazingly inventive use of cinematic language."