Old Trout Puppet Workshop's Famous Puppet Death Scenes, presented by Theatre Junction and the Int'l Festival of Animated Objects, at Theatre Junction GRAND, March 13-28.Jason Stang
Calgary's Old Trout Puppet Workshop's Famous Puppet Death Scenes, returning home with a run at Theatre Junction GRAND, promises to cure you of your fear of death.
"No more anxiety about difficult choices, no more dreading birthdays, no more desperate pleas for immortality through fame, art or progeny," the publicity promises.
Now, as good as the show is, if you truly suffer from thanatophobia, it might be best to skip it. But for the rest of us who harbour perhaps just some mild anxiety about our inevitable demise, this is a show worth pulling strings to get to.
Billed as a sort of greatest hits of famous puppet death scenes, it is in fact composed of fictional scenes from made-up shows created by the Trouts. First performed in 2006, Famous Puppet Death Scenes has gone on to be the company's landmark production; it had a nearly four-week run over the holidays in Washington. (In a December "interview" with the show's puppet host Nathanial Tweak, the Washington Post asked: "Is there something particularly Canadian about puppets and death scenes?")
Even if you've seen this marvellously macabre meditation on mortality before, consider returning: There are new scenes of death to behold. And the puppets themselves are to die for.
At Theatre Junction GRAND March 13-28. Warning: contains mature themes, some swearing and puppet nudity.
Marsha Lederman