A little bit of puppet theatre
Man starts project to entertain young cousin in Ontario
Tobias Romaniuk is homebound like just about everyone else these days, so a new project to put some of his woodworking skills to use sounded ideal. It even has him venturing into uncharted waters — writing for puppets.
His wife, Meghan Devereaux, is an elementary school teacher in St. John’s and had access to puppets, and that got Romaniuk thinking about a way to entertain his four-year-old cousin in Ontario.
“I looked up some pictures on the internet and got interested in 18th- and 19th-century Victorian puppet theatres,” he said.
“There’s a whole bunch of crazy ones. I’ve got a little workshop and I went to town with it.”
The theatre is blue and red, with colourful balls arranged along the top and red drapes that can be pulled back to unveil the performing puppets. He even has some flickering lights set up to help give it some extra sparkle.
He intends to use it with books, and make videos that he may even post to Youtube. Romaniuk also wrote what he calls “a silly little play” that he’s going to perform for his young cousin.
“I’ve been sending her construction photos and getting her all hyped up,” he said. “It’s going to be a little video puppet show for a four-yearold online, because you can’t do it in person.”
Devereaux is impressed with her husband’s work.
“I thought I was the only creative one in the household,” joked Devereaux who, like many other sewers across the province, has lately been producing homemade facemasks. “It’s great. I think he was really excited once the project started going. He just kept coming up with bigger ideas — adding sparkle and adding pom-poms and stuff like that. The idea just grew from a wooden little thing to hold a puppet up to, to a bright and colourful (theatre).”