Puppets About: A Puppetry Residency

Puppet Centre Trust (PCT) in collaboration with Bristol Old Vic (Bristol Ferment), Farnham Maltings and mac Birmingham is delighted to announce an exciting one year (1st April 2011 – 31st March 2012) puppetry residency with three highly creative and dynamic companies.

After a rigorous selection process from 50 applications from artists across the UK, the panel consisting of Kate Yedigaroff - Producer for Bristol Ferment, Bristol Old Vic; Fiona Baxter – Associate Director at Farnham Malting's; Louisa Davies – Producer in Performing Arts at mac and Linda Lewis - Director of PCT have chosen the following artists/companies to participate in PCT’s inaugural cross-regional residency.

About The Artists:

Corina Bona, resident with Bristol Old Vic (Bristol Ferment): http://corinabona.blogspot.com/2011/04/puppet-centre-trust-residency-2011-2012.html

Corina Bona trained at the University of the West of England in Cultural Media Studies and Drama, The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in set and costume design and then completed Green Ginger’s professional development programme Toast in The Machine. She is a dedicated Puppeteer, with a long experience in making puppets and facilitating workshops. She has worked with Gongoozler, Pickled Image, Green Ginger, Stuff and Nonsense Theatre, Puppets and Pandemonium, Soap Soup, Pins and Needles Productions and The Tobacco Factory.

Using a combination of objects and figures that vary in scale this residency with Bristol Ferment will give Corina the space and time to collaborate with a group of artists to explore material for a new  piece that involves puppetry, dance and movement. Her focus will be on telling a story through live music and movement with figures.

Kristin Fredricksson from Beady Eye, resident with Farnham Maltings
http://beadyeyetheatre.blogspot.com/

Beady Eye was founded in 2009 by artistic director, Kristin Fredricksson. It is a UK based structure for local and international collaborators to create innovative contemporary theatre.

Kristin returned to the UK in 2008 after fifteen years work in France, Portugal and Japan as a performer and theatre-maker. She trained with Jacques Lecoq in the mid-90s and went on to work with many innovative companies and practitioners such as Cie AMK, Alain Gautré, Teatro Bruto, Akiko Motofuji, Peepolykus, Ken Campbell and Mark Whitelaw. Her work as an independent artist in France has been supported by Espace Périphérique (La Villette), Graines de Soleil and la Nef - Manufactures d'Utopies.

Beady Eye is an Associate Company of Theatre Royal Margate and a supported artist at the Basement, Brighton.Under the working title ‘Cooking Ghosts and Children’ Kristin will be developing a piece that combines the use of stop-gap animation with new kinds of projection surfaces as well as actors and puppets.  She will be exploring the themes of puppets and images, and puppets as images and the violence inflicted on us by the society we grow into.

Pete Gunson and Eleanor Hooper from Pif Paf, resident with mac
http://www.pif-paf.co.uk/ 

Pif-Paf is a genre-subverting company working in sculpture, performance, engineering, sound and natural history creating work for informal performance spaces and audiences to surprise and engage the public. The creative core of the company is lead artists Pete Gunson (engineer/maker), Eleanor Hooper (circus and physical theatre performer/fine artist) working with  talented collaborators and mentors who have included Forkbeard Fantasy and members of I.O.U, Peepolykus and Faulty Optic.For several years Pif Paf has been developing a hand-powered counterbalance crane originally designed and used for animating giant puppets. Last year they crossed into investigating the crane as an object in its own right that can transform into different images and suspend and manipulate its operators.
 
In the residency Pif Paf will explore new possibilities of the crane, its interaction with human movement, its choreographed transition between object in its own right, mechanism for puppets of various scales and an object for manipulating performers.
 
Louisa Davies comments: “mac birmingham is delighted to be working with Puppet Centre Trust, Farnham Maltings and Bristol Ferment (Bristol Old Vic) on this exciting project, enabling artists time and space to develop new ideas and create new venue partnerships. As an arts centre located in one of Birmingham’s most visited parks, we are particularly excited to be working with outdoor company Pif Paf with whom we are looking forward to exploring the potential of our surroundings.”

About the Residency programme:

This project has been initiated by The Puppet Centre Trust in collaboration with the three partner venues and is based on the experience of a three year residency programme at BAC in collaboration with the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

Fiona Baxter says: “it’s great that this initiative is about a number of artists and a number of venues working together.  Not only are the artists able to experiment and play but collectively we are sharing our ambitions, ideas and resources.  I’m looking forward to seeing what’s happened by the end of the year…”
 
The residencies provide research and development opportunities to explore an idea and an aspect of puppetry. The selected artists will receive practical advice, support and mentoring for their specific needs in terms of artistic, technical and business skills; as well as much needed financial investment to assist in producing their various projects.
 
Linda Lewis, says:“We are extremely pleased to be working with our 3 host venues as this is the first regional residency programme that PCT has facilitated. All the participating artists will receive highly valuable input from their host venues and producers as well as mentoring, networking and workshop opportunities from PCT.
 
This initiative provides a rare opportunity to explore new ideas and techniques which will be beneficial to artists, venues and the development of the art form in the long term.”

This initiative assists in delivering a key goal for PCT to nurture talent development across the puppetry sector and broaden our scope to include all art forms that embrace puppetry and animation. The residencies encourage each venue to build relationships with artists with whom they have a symbiotic approach to developing new work.
    
Kate Yedigaroff adds: “Bristol Ferment at Bristol Old Vic is delighted to be a partner on this exciting new collaborative residency which offers an invaluable opportunity for exploration, experimentation and risk-taking without the pressure of producing a ‘finished show’. The Ferment is about supporting and nurturing inspiring theatre artists to explore new theatrical ideas, and facilitating a context for these ideas to grow and be the best they can be. This partnership with Farnham Maltings, MAC and PCT continues to extend our network beyond the South West and it is very exciting to consider where Cori, Kristin and Pif Paf’s journey will take us all.”