Wakefield puppet show makes it to the big screen

When Wakefield's Nadia Ross put out a call two years ago for local residents to make puppets that looked likethemselves for a new, unwritten theatre project,she had no idea what to expect.

Ross, the founder of a local indie theatre company, ended up with 50 peopleshowing up at her studio with puppets madewith everything from toilet paper rolls to paper mache some were even full-blownart pieces.

There were not only puppets thatlooked like their creators, butpuppets that represented people's alter egos, and others that came completely from people's imaginations.

Ross, who didn't have a particular storyline in mind for this next production, wasleft with the task of wrangling all those characters into some kind of narrative.

"I opened up a big bottle of wine and thought what have I gotten myself into?" she said in an interview on CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning.

Ross is the founder of STO Union, an indie theatre company that works with live performance, video and other disciplines.

Writing the script for this initiative took her months.

Some puppets fell into their roles

"Basically I was looking at all these puppets saying, 'Speak to me. How do you want to be in this story?'" she said.

For Ross, some puppets simply "fell into their roles." But for others, she had to use a more deliberate approach.

"One day I took a pen and just threw it at the puppet group and if it hit a puppet, it was like OK you're in that role," she said.

The result is a 70-minute movie called The Twilight Parade featuring 54 handmade puppets (although not all have speaking parts), voiced by eightperformers live on stage.

It tells the story of people in a small village debating the future of their community well and beginning tounderstand the larger forces at play that can erode communities.

The production premiered in Wakefield last month, and will be shown at this years undercurrents theatre festival in Ottawa, which runs Feb. 7 to 17, 2018.

Creepy challenge

It's a pretty big undertaking for a woman who admits she, like others, can find puppets creepy.

"But that is the kind of challenge I like as an artist," Rosssaid. "If I don't like something, it intrigues me."

As for creating a script for puppets that resemble people she knows, she said it wasn't so much creepy as awkward.

"Nobody is safe in this movie," she said with a laugh. "Everyone gets ribbed."

For Ross, the decision to do this as a film, rather than a puppet show, goes to the heart of what the production is about community.

She wanted the entire project done in the La Peche region, but there aren't many theatre spaces available that could accommodate them.

"We had to adapt because we want to work in our region, and the only way you can do that is through video.Video makes it easier to bring people together and do a large scale project," she said.

"It is about community building," Rosssaid. "Art allows us to come together in a different way and to make connections."