WILD & WONDERFUL
Anything goes at the Festival of Animated Objects
There were always these kids who started with the festival that are growing up and have become interested in the festival.
While it has become a bit cliched to say a festival offers something for all ages, it is certainly true for Calgary’s long-running Festival of Animated Objects.
To be clear, the festival as a whole will offer something for all ages when it runs from March 8 to 24 in various venues in Calgary and beyond. But it’s important to note that not every performance or workshop is suitable for all ages.
“You wouldn’t want your kids stumbling into Dolly Wiggler or Multiple Organisms,” says managing producer Cosmo Christoffersen.
Those two particular shows are aimed at the adult crowd, which is part of the basic principle behind the festival. It’s meant to explore all the possibilities in the worlds of mask and puppet arts and part of that has been to hammer home the point that puppetry is not just for children. Dolly Wiggler, which will run at the Royal Canadian Legion No. 1 on March 15 and 16, is a cabaret co-hosted by festival founder Xstine Cook and former Cirque du Soleil clown Mooky Cornish. It will feature several performers offering short and occasionally unhinged showcases. While the acts aren’t necessarily adult-themed, there is an “anything-goes” vibe and a recommendation that it is best suited for the 18-plus crowd.
Multiple Organisms, held at the CSPACE Marda Loop on March 13 and 14, is performed by the Vancouver duo Mind of A Snail and comes with a bunch of warnings that the raunchy show contains “nudity, sexual content, cartoonish suicide and body weirdness.”
According to the festival’s website, the surreal spectacle involves a “multilayered psychedelic dream about having a body” and focuses on an artist’s life model stealing a magic paintbrush before falling down “a proverbial rabbit hole with a pair of sentient toothbrushes.” It also boasts “one of the weirdest personal hygiene rituals you’ve ever seen.”
“There is nudity and puppet dancing, it’s definitely one of the more offbeat kind of things,” Christoffersen says.
It is all part of the weird, wild and wonderful world of Animated Objects. The festival was founded 22 years ago, although up until three years ago was only held every two years. It is now an annual event, which is a testament to the abundance of talent eager to put on shows and mentor younger performers. Thanks to high-profile Calgary-based or Alberta expat performers such as Old Trout Puppet Workshop and Ronnie Burkett, who was recently named a laureate of the 2024 Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, puppetry has a deep legacy in the city and province. This has been strengthened even more over the past couple of years as two seasons of the Fraggle Rock reboot have been produced in Calgary using local talent.
Christoffersen says this year’s Festival of Animated Objects, dubbed Growing Together, features more than 70 local performers.
That includes an artist talk with Calgary siblings Naomi Duska and Toby Duska, a.k.a. Earthworms, who will discuss their work-inprogress puppet horror show Growth on March 13 at CSPACE Marda Loop. The show is told through mask and puppetry and “explores generational hurt and the ugliness that lurks within each of us.” The Duskas first fell in love with puppetry while attending an Old Trouts show at the Festival of Animated Objects.
Local puppeteer and puppet and mask maker Juanita Dawn will be performing One for Sorrow, Two For Joy at cspace Marda Loop on March 12, 13 and 14. The show features 30 hand-crafted puppets in its tale of Willow Mae O’reilly, a woman who braves adversity on the Canadian Prairies in the early 1900s.
The Stories We Right is performed by Calgarian Jen Bain, a puppeteer who worked on the Fraggle Rock reboot. It will be performed March 11 and 12 at CSPACE and was inspired by Bain’s mother having a stroke and being diagnosed with vascular dementia.
The festival will also feature a drive-in theatre showcase of short films created by animators around the world. Animovies at the Drivein will be held March 8 at the Canadian Grain Elevator Discovery Centre in Nanton.
There will also be several workshops for children, teenagers and adults. That includes everything from Fuzzy Friends: An Extraordinary Sock Puppet Workshop for Families, aimed at children ages five and up, which will be held March 16, to a shadow puppet workshop with multidisciplinary Calgary artist Monica Ila on March 20. Both will be held at the Sparrow Arts Space, which is partnering with the festival this year. Those are just two of 11 workshops featured this year.
“The festival has definitely seen that intergenerational continuation,” Christoffersen says. “There were always these kids who started with the festival that are growing up and have become interested in the festival.”
A few years back, a few members of the Old Trout Puppet Workshop prepared a short piece for the Dolly Wiggler Cabaret.
The beloved, long-standing Calgary troupe has always possessed a certain irreverence with its focus on puppet shows for adults but, even by Old Trout standards, this three-minute performance was definitely odd.
“The Old Trouts dressed up in Depends and black singlets and shouted in German,” says Xstine Cook, co-host of the March 15 and 16 Dolly Wiggler Cabaret at the Royal Canadian Legion #1 and founder of Festival of Animated Objects. “It was so funny. There are some very thoughtful pieces, but it does tend to lean towards ‘Let’s have a good time.’”
It’s all part of the “anything-goes” vibe Cook and her cohorts have established since Dolly Wiggler first began in 2002. It is a feature of the Festival of Animated Objects, which runs from March 8 to 24 at various venues. Even when the festival only ran once every two years, there was always an annual Dolly Wiggler for fans of irreverent puppetry and mask theatre to look forward to. The Old Trouts will not be participating this year, but there will be more than 20 performers offering performances lasting three minutes or less. Cook co-hosts with former Cirque du Soleil clown Mooky Cornish, a former Calgarian she worked with in Green Fools Theatre.
“It’s really the gateway drug for puppetry,” says Cook. “There are some people (who) are very seasoned performers who have a very polished piece and then you have people who are putting something on the stage for literally the first time and everything in between as well as some video work. So you will see all kinds of different puppetry, different subject matter, all different approaches to masks and puppetry. It’s usually pretty goofy and fun. Our audience really embraces the bravery it takes to get on stage and try and make something.”
The cabaret got its name from what Medicine Hat native and pioneering marionette master Ronnie Burkett called puppeteers. This year, the talent will include some performers who are also in separate shows at the festival. That includes Fraggle Rock puppeteer Jen Bain, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks performer Kaja Irwin, Korean-american multidisciplinary artist Bonnie Kim, Vancouver duo Mind of a Snail, Calgary puppeteer Juanita Dawn, Brazilian puppeteer Nina Vogel and local siblings Toby and Naomi Duska. Other performers include standup comedian and visual artist Victoria Banner, local filmmaker and special-effects designer Leo Wisner and Calgary puppeteer, actor, musician Ellis Lalonde, who recently starred on stage with Rebecca Northan and Bruce Horak in Goblins: Macbeth.
Performers are not given any solid direction from Cook or Cornish, other than perhaps a time limit. Anything is allowed, which means it is hard to predict what might unfold on stage.
“(Ellis Lalonde) was working on a number of pieces this summer that he hasn’t shown anywhere yet,” says Cook. “So he’s going to be showing one of his new ones and he is saying ‘I may use a giant penis prop.’”
Cornish, who has co-hosted many Dolly Wiggler Cabarets, says Calgary’s rise as a hot spot for puppetry was carefully cultivated by Old Trout, Green Fools, the Festival of Animated Objects and the International Puppet Festival.
“Now there are many people that are main performers in the festival who were originally volunteers,” she says.
“Everywhere has an alternative part of town. Definitely, Calgary has always had this interesting, cool and courageous alternative part of town that it’s managed to maintain. Now it feels like the more conventional city is on board as well. People are going out, going to live shows and supporting live musicians. It’s really cool.”
It’s usually pretty goofy and fun.
Our audience really embraces the bravery it takes to get on stage and try and make something.
The Dolly Wiggler Cabaret will take place March 15 and 16 at 8 p.m. at the Royal Canadian Legion #1. The Festival of Animated Objects takes place from March 8 to 24 at various venues.