Recently, at Puppet Central, I spoke with Tim Gosley, instigator of Puppets for Peace festival, which he called a “mini Fringe Festival for puppets.”
Gosley is a thorough-going puppet person, a child of his father’s Victoria legend, the Smile Show.
“A puppet isn’t like an actor, coming out from behind a curtain, boxed in a theatre,” he explained. “It’s a piece of art that kind of vibrates within you, and goes beyond art into spirit and psychic stuff. Somewhere in there I seek that … as well as doing my dad’s music hall.”
What on earth is “Puppet Central”? It’s on the third floor of the Bay Centre (just to the right as you get off the elevator) in a lovely big storefront provided by the Bay Centre (through the good offices of the Community Arts Council).
Gosley and his merry band have installed a museum’s worth of little purpose-built stages of many sorts, each hung about with the accompanying cast of puppets. Amid this are tables with glue guns and bric-a-brac from which you can cobble together some character from your imagination.
Watching over it all are huge parade puppets: larger-than-life people or animals or impossible flights of fancy. You’ll meet a giant Amor de Cosmos, Will Shakespeare and a chiffon elephant that takes three people to manipulate.
So Puppet Central is part museum, part make-it space, and also the necessary collaborative backstage and launch pad for bigger, more public events. Gosley and I sat down amid the puppetry and he told me about the P4P Festival.
Puppets for Peace was proposed to Gosley a few years back by the Puppeteers of America, who suggested Victoria was the right sort of place to host a regional festival. Last year, he spent eight months bringing together the first version, with a parade that ended at Government House, where the lieutenant-governor hosted — and sponsored — shows and performances amid much fun and frolic.
Buoyed by this success, Gosley again worked through the year and, in keeping with a “neighbourhood-building” orientation, this year has moved the festival to Fernwood. There, the P4P festival will be partnered with the annual Vining Street Party, and it’s going to make one memorable weekend in Fernwood.
(The Vining Street Party on the Plaza, with its own dynamic, will take flight immediately after the puppetry).
On Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 12-13, there will be puppet performances at the Paul Phillips Hall, 1923 Fernwood Ave. Saturday morning there will be puppet shows for young children at 10 and 11 a.m. — even better than cartoons on TV! Then at noon you can catch a shadow magic show by University of Victoria visual art educator David Gifford, “renowned for his musically accompanied magic performances.”
This is followed at 1 p.m. by something from Moth Orbit Object Theatre of Vancouver. Their advertisement explains: “Each act of puppetry holds a mirror to the existential condition and suggests a solution: It is possible to remain enchanted despite an awareness of the mechanisms at play.”
Later in the day, two artists, one Canadian and the other Japanese, bring Debris, a tale of the incredible journey of some of the flotsam of the 2011 tsunami. And finally, at 8 p.m., The Little Orange Man by Snafu Dance Theatre: “Kitt fires up homemade technology to enact the audience’s dreams,” we are advised. Puppets, it seems, are much less restricted than their human counterparts. (Note: there is an admission cost for each of these performances.)
Sunday, Sept. 13, is the big day. Registration for the parade and a general look-around begins at noon. At 1 p.m., things really get going with the lion dance by Hung Fut Kung Fu of Victoria. At 1:30, Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps will make a peace proclamation, for this parade is aligned with the UN Day of Peace (Sept. 21).
By then you might find it irresistible, so join in and make this puppet parade bigger than ever. In an area centring on Victoria High School, you’ll find throngs of happy, boisterous people in outrageous homemade parade gear, including the Raging Grannies, a three-metre-high African drummer and a Mother Earth with hands big enough to hold the whole world.
This is not one of those parades sitting on the back of a truck, waving. It’s going to be noisy and colourful and free to all ages for participation in any way.
The parade culminates in Rick Scott’s presentation. Scott is a well-known entertainer and a grandparent — did I mention this is also Grandparents’ Day? He’ll be hosting a talent review and fast-paced show. Theatre Inconnu’s Youth Programs will present Punch for Peace in which Mother Earth disarms Punch and turns his club into a bouquet of flowers.
Enough already. For details, I suggest you look it up online, at puppetsforpeace.org or, failing that, call 250-598-7488. With no paid staff, they might be too busy to answer the phone, following the dictates of their imaginations down at Puppet Central.
