Louise is Director of Casteliers, Montreal's puppetry-promoting arts body, and was there to meet us at the airport. We first met her in September 2011 in France at the Charleville International Puppetry Festival. We'd taken on the challenge of performing The Man Who Planted Trees in French for that festival and felt that it was a big vote of confidence when Louise asked us to do a Version Française for two of the shows we were already booked for at Theatre Outremont. That was a few months ago so we were nervous about dusting down the parlez vous but the reception from Montréal audiences was heart-warming. Louise made us feel very much at home and we enjoyed meeting her husband Daniel Butcher and can (controversially) confirm that her sister Claude's bagels are at least a match for those we've devoured in New York. Not only that but she introduced Elspeth to her delightful coiffeur, Stephan W who, as a native of Charleville, not only does very chic hair styling but also gives good puppetry chat!
Renowned for his incredibly skillful and high-energy marionette performances, Ronnie Burkett is a huge name in international puppetry so we were thrilled to get to see his latest show Penny Plain at la Place des Arts. It was compelling and impressive, funny and tragic. There is a short video here and a selection of images of the beautiful puppets at Ronnie's producer's website here.
Oscar-winning Canadian animator Frédéric Back came to see our second French show in Montreal – a great honour for us. We were nervous about what he would make of our adaptation. His animation of The Man Who Planted Trees is a 30-minute long gem of painstakingly animated artwork that lovingly represents the characters of Jean Giono's original story. Our show is made of hessian and cardboard and is padded out to more than an hour with unscripted banter with an irreverent dog puppet. Fortunately, because he is an advocate for animal rights, he was actually very pleased that we let the dog's character shine.
As well as attending the film screening one night, our show the next, Frédéric Back still had it in him to come out the next day plant a tree to mark the start of Montreal's Earth Day.
Originally we were going to be performing on 21st April, Earth Day, but the scale of the event this year meant that pretty much all of our audience would be out on the streets. There's a greater sense of urgency than ever before about demonstrating to politicians that business as usual is not in the best interests of those of us who depend on the planet for our livelihoods – and at the end of the day, that's all of us. Also in Montréal there's a strong feeling that a large mining project in the North of Quebec, Le Plan Nord, has got all its priorities wrong. This Montreal Gazette piece reports that there were 250,000 of us out on the streets.
This video shows Frédéric Back planting an acorn as the bells chimed to mark the start of the march.
Even if you don't understand the French voiceover, the sight of this generous man planting a single acorn and the hundreds of thousands of people making the shape of the tree/hand are very powerful. It was a privilege to be there.
Our recent performance of The Man Who Planted Trees (the 100th of this North American tour) at the Millennium Place Theatre in Whistler marked the 5th anniversary of touring with this show. There is snow on the mountains of British Columbia and it's a long way in terms of ocean, altitude and years of accumulated experience since we first performed The Man Who Planted Trees at the Columcille Centre in Morningside in May 2006.
At that time, we had six shows scheduled at various schools, summer festivals and outdoor events followed by a Fringe run to round things off. Little did we know that that was just the beginning. Approaching 1,500 performances later, it's still a rewarding and enjoyable experience to tell Jean Giono's story to each new audience. Dog's repertoire of jokes and insights has expanded, the set has undergone a rolling restoration, and the original costumes still fit (at a squeeze!).
To mark the 5th birthday we have made a video montage of photos from many wonderful, varied tour locations. We weren't able to include each venue but it's a tribute to everyone whose support has kept the show on the road.
And while we've been thinking for a while that 'the next show' will be about one of Scotland's most influential sons, we've just recently given our ideas a working title – America in the Morning: John Muir – One Wild and Precious Life.
Development time will fit in around existing Man Who Planted Trees dates which include a 2-week 2011 Edinburgh Fringe run, our first performances of the show in French at the puppetry festival in Charleville, a Fall USA tour with a return to the Lincoln Center Institute, and a Spring 2012 North America tour. We plan to premiere the new show at the Fringe in 2012. We're interested in new and existing partnerships for this project and continue to work with our agents Holden & Arts for North American touring.
Meanwhile, many thanks again to everyone who has played a part in this semi-scripted, semi-improvised adventure. If you'd like to stay tuned, see the links below where you can 'like' us on facebook, subscribe to our blog or have a look at our website (which we promise will look substantially more groovy come festival time!).
Oh and what about those pictures from Seattle that we promised? Here's a selection with wistful music evoking the (admittedly only occasionally) wet weather of Washington State by the wonderful, Edinburgh-based singer songwriter Emily Scott.
And where are our next public shows? In the USA, it's St Paul, Minnesota on 4th & 5th June. And in the UK, it's in Bristol at the World Stage Festival 8-10th July.
Congratulations to Leslee Silverman at Manitoba Theatre for Young People on getting a big national award while we were there. And to MTYP's Derek Aasland for valiantly fielding headaches relating to shipping our set from Canada to New York while we were on our break in Georgia.
In Kingston we performed courtesy of Bardavon Theater (where Mark Twain used to perform) at Ulster Performing Arts Center (where Garrison Keillor was on stage the day after us). The puppet in the slideshow who looks like Elzeard Bouffier's girlfriend was made by Grian MacGregor of Ivy Vine Players. Many thanks to Kay Churchill for welcoming us warmly and sending us away with special stuff from Tuthilltown Distillery, New York's first legal whiskey distillery since prohibition.
Talking of baseball, however, we're in Seattle right now and have just tonight seen the dress rehearsal at Seattle Children's Theatre of the fabulous civil rights baseball drama Jackie And Me. Wonderful wonderful stuff!
Two main things are different about this tour than I (Elspeth) thought they'd be when we set out in February: 1) enjoyment outweighs the sense of slog (it's pretty good fun, I must confess!) and 2) it's harder to keep up this blog than I expected. I did expect that in order to blog, I would need to set time aside to write and make consequent choices not to go and do/see/have the alternative thing/spectacle/nap in various locations. But I didn't reckon on how unfeasible that would be in practice. In the future, I aim to tilt the balance of probabilities in the favour of more frequent postings by generally being that bit more organized. And by remembering that blog writing is a fun kind of a slog too.
Today, as it's a rainy day in Pittsburgh at the end of a festival run, without any shows or travel and when we have insufficient inclination to become temporary tourists, it seems like a good time to whizz back in time to capture and share some of the last few weeks' goodies – and soggies.
Talk about rain! We were in Nashville for just over a week in late April and experienced some of the heaviest rain we've ever seen. Rain in which there was no chance of stepping out without getting drenched, whatever kind of clothes you had on (I had on a fabulous cow-patterned poncho from one of the 'western wear' shops). The rain came and it went. And then we went. And a few days later it rained again in Nashville and didn't stop for two whole days. Tennessee has not been so badly flooded since anyone can remember. Thirteen inches in two days – that's double the previous rainfall record.
Some of places we went to are now barely recognizable. The Country Music Hall of Fame in downtown Nashville was surrounded by water but the legendary country performance venue The Grand Ole Opry is submerged and will be out of action indefinitely. People we were working with at TPAC, the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, including Karen Palin, Associate Technical Director, were involved in re-staging the Opry at their War Memorial Auditorium, its home from '39-'43. If you are on facebook, you can see a very touching album of behind-the-scenes photographs of this historic moment. And if you're not on facebook, you can read about it here on the Grand Ole Opry's website.
Back row L-R: Letty, Larry, Richard, Front: Karen and Sherri. Sporting the medals we awarded them for being variously brilliant and fabulous behind the scenes.
Rick was blessed with a veritable stream of visitors as Nashville is the closest we get on this particular tour to his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Both big sisters came, Richelle with Greg, and Robin – with her husband Lou and their four great kids, Robbie, Katy, Nicky and Michael. David Scott from Rick's early years as a drummer in Edinburgh and Jimmy Burns from his Georgia high school days enjoyed nights out in downtown Nashville as did Felicia and Wren, who were also our daytime puddle-hopping, flip-flopping partners that soggy Saturday.
And as a treat for touring puppeteers, Nashville's Public Library is something else. They employ several full-time puppeteers and have a long history of presenting book-inspired puppet shows. We not only had the pleasure of seeing the latest production of Mark Twain's "Jumping Frog of Calveras Counry" but we were honoured with a tour of their incredible collection of puppets.
I prepared to celebrate my 40th birthday in Nashville with a trip to Katy K's western wear to buy a dress – and a crazy wig. Wearing the dress but not the wig, I was accompanied to the Country Music Hall of Fame by my favourite sight-seeing accomplices, my dear husband Richard Medrington and the ever-witty Rick Conte. There's a set of photos from the Country Music Hall of Fame here.
Finally, the Nashville week was distinguished and made especially memorable with the recording of an interview with Dog himself. Dog the celebrated thespian who reflects here upon his major influences and his illustrious career to date.
Later, dear readers, you will be hearing about our puppetry, theatrical perambulations through the rustyish belt of Philadelphia, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Thanks for stopping by!