JUDD PALMER

The Old Trout Puppet Workshop isn’t afraid of difficult subjects. The avant-garde puppeteers have used colourful visuals and dark humour to explore love ( The Erotic Anguish of Don Juan), happiness ( Ignorance), and mortality ( Famous Puppet Death Scenes). Their newest production, an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s poem Jabberwocky, opens Feb. 21 in Calgary after runs in Edmonton and Vancouver. Peter Hemminger caught up with Trout co-founder Judd Palmer after the Vancouver premiere to discuss the delicate art of working with the Jabberwock with its

“jaws that bite, the claws that catch.”

How do you go about finding meaning in a nonsense poem? The show ultimately is about monsters—monsters that we may be able to identify as monsters, or monsters that may be more existential—you know, shadows lurking in the night that keep us staring at the ceiling when we should be asleep.

One of the joys of reading Jabberwocky is that it conjures images without ever defining them. How do you bring that to the stage? Certainly the gibberishness of it was one of the attractions. It’s whimsical but also mysterious, so it seemed a natural kind of thing for us to adapt, and we attempted to preserve that foggy heart. We like to make a show that conjures more questions than answers. But, and I guess further to that idea of nonsense, we think of that as being a nihilism but with a sense of humour.

Are the Trouts really nihilistic, though? Your plays all seem to be about finding meaning. You’re right—we actually like to think of ourselves as anti-cynical. Maybe our function as artists is to draw attention to some part of the world that enchants or surprises or confuses or provokes us. Our job is to add delight to the world in one way or another.

You use a lot of old-fashioned technology in your plays; puppetry in general is pretty anachronistic. Do you find more enchantment in older techniques? (Puppetry is) an act of collective imagination. You’ll see the person there manipulating the creature through its travails, and the fact that the puppeteer is there means we’re all in this together. You’re not fooled—you know that’s a puppet—and that’s the fragile act of magic and the gesture towards wonder and beauty that a puppet show is. I’m making this thing move, but you’re going to believe in it.

This interview has been edited for clarity and condensed for length. Read the full interview at swervecalgary.com.