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5 Post-Cards from Down Under All in a Wonderful Oner - April 19, 2013

Auckland Arts Festival

We performed in not one but two lovely venues, the Glen Eden Playhouse for our schools shows then at the Town Hall Concert Chamber for public performances at the weekend, including an extra show added on due to popular demand.

The Auckland Arts Festival was resplendent with pink posters, fluttering poetry flags and abuzz with memorable acts. We saw some great performances – notably I ♥ Alice ♥ I and Cantina – although our dates and times meant we couldn’t see the other Scottish-based theatre shows Pondlife McGurk and The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart.

There are reviews from Auckland and beyond here. And we received some lovely feedback from the Auckland Steiner School and Glen Eden Primary.

A captivating likeness of Dog

A play inside of a play

Capital E Festival, Wellington

An uncanny thing happened when we arrived in Wellington and were welcomed by Derek Simpson who drove us to our accommodation. Elspeth asked if he could turn the radio on just in case we heard the interview that Richard had done via Skype for Radio New Zealand. The very instant that he did so, we heard the presenter Lynn Freeman saying: “I spoke to Richard Medrington of Scotland’s Puppet State Theatre Company.” Here is that whole segment in which Lynn and Richard discuss where puppetry is at today.

Wellington is a beautiful city and the Capital E Festival makes great use of its many downtown, walkable arts venues to provide young people with a smorgasbordic moveable feast of live performances. We treated ourselves to as many other shows as we could – in particular the delightful Duck, Death and The Tulip – and also took advantage of the England-New Zealand test match at Basin Reserve and went to see Rodriguez, the songwriting legend and star of Oscar-winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man.

Wellington’s Basin Reserve

Thanks to Derek and the whole festival team as well as Rick’s renowned clown friend Fraser Hooper for his ticky-tour to Scorching Bay and Wellington’s resident whale expert and magician Anton Van Helden for his dumbfoundingly dazzling card tricks.

Castlemaine State Festival

How appropriate that John, our welcoming driver to bring us to the historic gold-mining town of Castlemaine for our French-smelling theatre show, has also been a guide on Aroma Tours specialising in the most aromatic sites of Provence.

And how lucky we were to be hosted by some of the town’s friendliest arts-loving folk. Rick was hosted by Lynne while two doors down Elspeth and Richard were chez Ken and Lynda Pollock who are wine growers. Their Blackjack winery has a deservedly splendid reputation for their wonderful hearty shiraz. The harvest began the week we were there and we had a fascinating peep into the hard work of the plunging process.

Rick plunging the new vintage

Our shows at the packed-out Phee Broadway Theatre went down amazingly well but perhaps our highlight of the week was giving an extra show at Ellery House the local hospice for an audience whose average age was in the late eighties. With hair as white as Old Elzeard’s and eyes as twinkly as Dog’s they were a really beautiful audience.

Elzéard at Ellery House

We had a lovely time reconnecting with puppetry friends Eliza-Jane Gilchrist and Mark Pencak who used to live in Edinburgh and now are Castlemaine locals – or ‘blow-ins’ as you’re called if you’ve only lived here a generation or so. Their compact and bijou show Transplant was so captivating, transporting, intricate and funny. Thanks to Martin, Matt, Iggy, Coll, Callum, John and everyone who helped make for a really memorable week.

Sydney Opera House

If ever there’s a time when we have pinched ourselves in disbelief at our good luck, this was it. (And the two weeks in 2010 when we were here as well, but too swept away to blog about it.) Going to work in the morning and walking towards this iconic building was a real privilege. Even the people who work there the whole time think so!

Sydney Opera House from the Botanic Gardens

One bonus feature of our run was taking part in the Sydney Opera House’s first live stream of a performance to multiple remote audiences. In addition to the audiences in the Studio Theatre, 500 pupils in 16 classrooms across New South Wales were able to watch the live stream and many of them also experienced the multi-sensory elements. Our ingenious puppet maker Ailie Cohen shared simplified design ideas for schools so children could make their own tree-shaped fans, flying birds and customised ‘weather system’ plant sprays. The live streamed shows came off with barely a hitch and we even managed to extend the post-show question and answer session to the remote audience too. We felt very honoured that our show was chosen to reach digitally beyond the sail-like walls of the Opera House.

Mike switching between feeds from the cameras

Some of our other performances had enhanced access by being audio-described for audience members with visual impairment and we enjoyed introducing the puppets to people in the pre-show touch tours.

In Sydney, we relished the opportunity, as we did back in Montreal last year, to connect with Agnes Durbet and Pauline Ramsey, the granddaughter and great granddaughter of Jean Giono.

And although we didn’t like to mention it at the time, now that the UK seems to be edging out of winter, perhaps it’s safe to admit that we had a little time off on Sydney’s Northern Beaches back in March – Australia’s late summer.

Arts Centre Melbourne

In 2010 we also performed here but it was called Melbourne Arts Centre back then and our performance space was smaller, squarer and darker than the wide, curved pink embrace that is the Fairfax Studio. Our public shows this time have been part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. One review even gave The Man Who Planted Trees “five stars for side-splitting comedy as a highlight of the MICF.” Chief among our own Comedy Festival highlights are the constellation of shining stars who form The Chipolatas.

We had a very fitting partnership with Tree Project who handed out native seeds to our audiences – ones chosen to germinate well at this time of year and suitable for planting in gardens or contributing to the organisations wider land regeneration initiatives.

Arts Centre Melbourne spire at dawn

For many students, our education shows have been subsidised the First Call Fund while the experience in the theatre is enhanced by these excellent teacher resources. Several schools are also benefitting from interactive video editing workshops at the Digital Learning Hub as part of Arts Centre Melbourne’s ‘Sustainable Visions Digital Project’. At these sessions, students create a short video that illustrates their response to a discussion question such as: ‘What would the world be like without trees?’ or ‘What would the world be like if animals could talk?’

After performing this show for almost seven years, it has been really encouraging to see the innovative ways that people continue to respond to the stimulus of Jean Giono’s enriching story.

Here is a particularly heart-warming piece of feedback we received during the tour via our facebook page:

Just wanted to say thank you for The Man Who Planted Trees. I was in the audience (full of school kids!) on Wednesday morning, and I am still thinking about your beautiful show.

It has inspired me to think about my life’s purpose, as I see those trees as the metaphor for the legacy we all leave behind. I want to encourage young people to engage with their imaginations, that is my forest! And one person (little by little) can make a difference.

Thank you for telling such an important story with integrity, tenderness and hilarity. It highlighted for me a simple truth in life: from little things, big things grow. X Sarah N Dippity

So, that’s 52 performances over 7 weeks to 10,500 people. We’d like to say a very big thank you to ALL the lovely, talented and inspiring people we’ve met right across New Zealand and Australia for a truly memorable trip!

Richard watering a tree with used prop fountain water

L’homme Qui Plantait Des Arbres à Montréal - April 22, 2012

This six-week tour of North American began in Montreal and what a good start to the tour that was. Pourquoi? Well, il y’a 5 bonnes raisons (that’s 5 good reasons):

1) Louise Lapointe.

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!

2) Ronnie Burkett

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.

3) Agnès Durbet

Agnès is the granddaughter of the French author Jean Giono whose wonderful fable The Man Who Planted Trees is the inspiration for our puppetry and storytelling adaptation. We first met her in New York’s New Victory Theatre in 2009 and it was a great pleasure to see her again – and her wonderfully sparky teenagers Pauline and Timmy. Agnès helped coordinate the screening at Theatre Outremont of the documentary about her grandfather, Le Mystere de Jean Giono – through which we learnt that while Giono spent most of his life in Provence, it was Scotland’s mountains and lochs that really captured his heart. Thank you, Agnès, for your hospitality. Who knows where in the world we might cross paths again …

Louise Lapointe, Frédéric Back, Rick Conte, Agnès Durbet, Richard Medrington

4) Frédéric Back

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.

Frédéric Back meets Dog (apologies for strange aspect ratio)

5) 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.

“It’s Been Five Years, Dog!” - May 31, 2011

Our recent performance of The Man Who Planted Trees (the 100^th of this North American tour) at the Millennium Place Theatre in Whistler marked the 5^th 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 5^th 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.

John Muir was a man of extraordinary talents, including one for getting himself into (and usually out of) apparently impossible situations. He would become a world-famous naturalist, explorer, inventor of bizarre machines, a prolific writer and pioneer of the conservation movement, but in 1849 he was an eleven year old schoolboy with an insatiable thirst for adventure, living in a small town in Scotland, when one evening his father announced “We’re gan to America the morn!”

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.

Finally, if you’d like to hear about our next blog post – including a wonderful pre-show lecture from the Chicago Humanities Festival – sign up through the ‘Email Subscription’ button over there —>

Thanks for swinging by!

Whizzing Across The Map - April 27, 2011

I hope you enjoy clicking above on the video whistle-stop view of where the tour took us in March. (It’s made using a snazzy slideshow feature that comes with iPhoto ’11 in case you were wondering.)

Thanks in New Bedford go to the Zeiterion Theatre and the Whaling Museum as well as Ailie Cohen’s family and friends who took good care of us there. Don Cuddy wrote a lovely piece about our show for the regional press. (Oh and Elspeth’s grubby nose is from overly keen sniffing of ambergris.)

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.

The Atlanta spell was a break between performing engagements when we enjoyed the hospitality and company of Rick’s family and friends. (Elspeth made the spring-themed
painted poem plate at All Fired Up.)

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.

(And we didn’t visit the Yankees Stadium, by the way. But it was a landmark on our way upstate.)

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!

There will be pictures and music to come from our lovely long run in Seattle. But for now, two reviews: one from Seattle’s Child (“No Mom, not funny,” my 8-year-old corrects me. “Hysterical!”) and one from The Seattle Times. My favourite pull-out quote: “And it smells good, too.”

(And the North American tour tally up until Kingston: 33 performances to over 6,000 people. That’s not including the Seattle shows. With them included – 69 shows for well over 15,000 people!)

A New York State Start to the 2011 Tour - March 5, 2011

We’re 10 days and 11 shows into a 107 show tour of North America with The Man Who Planted Trees that takes us through till June.

Our first shows in Albany, NY were our last chance to say “our last gig before this was at the Sydney Opera House”. You might not believe this, having not read anything about it here but look – here’s reliable evidence:

Dog at Sydney Opera House

So, Albany also has a distinctive performance space with iconic architectural features – Steamer Number 10 Theatre. Check out the quaint drawbridge … and the weather!

Steamer Number 10 Theatre

Because of the snow, many people who had booked tickets were unable to come which was a shame. But we were delighted to see folk who braved the knee-deep for a dose of warm French storytelling and evocations of the plains of Provence.

At Flushing Town Hall, as well as several performances, we took part in two workshops. One pre-show workshop for adults and children involved sock puppet making while the other was a masterclass with professional puppeteers from New York City. In a short time we saw some brilliant work and look forward to keeping in touch with people so we can see more from them in the future.

Masterclass with Professional Puppeteers at Flushing Town Hall (Photo: Steven McIntosh)

While not far from Manhattan, we only had the briefest chance to get a hit of the big city. However, we made it to the last night of Lily of the Conservative Ladies by Glass Beads Theatre Ensemble starring our actor, writer, puppeteer friend Danna Call.

And as a bonus, in the subway at Times Square, our favourite Beatles tribute band The Meetles were performing to a crowd of smiling, twisting, shouting passengers happy to press pause on their busy journeys.

Occasionally after our shows we meet young folk who are particularly keen on theatre and puppetry and at The Tilles Center at Long Island University we were honoured to meet Madeline. Here she is with a fabulous puppet she made of herself. She and a friend are currently working on their own adaptation of The Man Who Planted Trees and we are hoping later to see a video of their piece.

Madeline and Madeline

Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center was a little gem of a venue, and one that attracts big names to perform in its beautiful intimate auditorium. We were sorry to near-miss Robert Cray, Garrison Keillor and Patti LuPone, among others.

Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center

We left Long Island by ferry and now we’re in Massachusets where our next shows are at the New Bedford Whaling Museum under the auspicious umbrella of the Zeiterion Performing Arts Center. We delighted to be hosted by Puppet State extended family, Scott and Chrissy, brother and sister-in-law of Ailie Cohen who designed and built most of the puppets and set. Their friend Don wrote this lovely preview for our Sunday show.

Our next stop is Winnipeg at Manitoba Theatre for Young People. You can see a list of all our tour dates here.

Meanwhile, you might like to visit The Man Who Planted Trees group on Facebook or go ahead and click ‘like’ on the Puppet State page.

Auckland Arts Festival

Capital E Festival, Wellington

Castlemaine State Festival

Sydney Opera House

Arts Centre Melbourne

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