Fans of Ronnie Burkett will have the chance to spend a very special up-close and informal evening with this gifted artist while he is in Ottawa. On March 26th, during a “night off” from his run of “Penny Plain”, Ronnie will appear at the Fourth Stage of the NAC in a special benefit appearance in support of Almonte’s Puppets Up! International Puppet Festival.

“RONNIE BURKETT… UNSTRUNG” is an event that is particularly suitable for Ronnie’s fans, puppetry lovers over 16, and supporters of Puppets Up! During the evening, Ronnie will share stories and reflections on his career in puppetry, and demonstrate his magnificent marionettes. Live music and a few friendly puppet ambassadors from the Puppets Up! festival, will also be included as well as a personal question and answer session with Ronnie in the second half of the program.

This fundraiser is generously sponsored in part by business owners in Mississippi Mills. Tickets for this unique event can be purchased at Mill Street Books in Almonte (256-9090) and via the NAC’s Box Office (613-947-7000). The ticket price is $25. All proceeds will go to Puppets Up!, a not-for-profit charitable organization. This year’s festival will take place August 11th and 12th, 2012.

We had stupendous puppet shows, lots of kids, busy parents and grandparents, many adult visitors without kids, fun venues, great entertainment, loads to eat, tons to see and the parade! OMG, the parade! Even on Sunday when it rained, we had a parade! I won’t forget the laughter and the fun for a long, long time. Well, at least until next year.

Huge hugs and thanks go out to some very special people who made it all happen again this year. I’m talking (and you know I don’t actually talk) about all of our volunteers, our sponsors (including our media sponsors) listed below, our local businesses, the families who billeted visiting puppeteers, and the many “angels” who provided personal financial contributions that are so important to sustaining our festival.

Of course, we also want to thank the puppeteers and entertainers.  You charmed the pants off us. You gave us thrills and chills. You gave us cats and dogs in love, puppet school, aboriginal stories, ancient Greek myths coming to life, knock ‘em sock ‘em Punch and Judy, whacky pirates, crazy balcony commentators, talking turtles, songs that stick in our heads, lots of frogs and bugs and the amazing Kids Power Project!

And, finally, our audiences. You broke an attendance record this year and we loved seeing your great big smiles all around our town. Thank you for bringing your kids and your spirit of adventure to Almonte.

Thanks to all of our supporters and thanks to everyone who came to Almonte for the 2011 Puppets Up! International Puppet Festival!  Consider yourself hugged and hugged hard.

Nick

Puppets Up! is all about family fun and since we get a lot of questions from parents and grandparents about festival activities and about what is appropriate for children of different ages, we’ve prepared this Festival Guide.

A Festival for Families

Puppets Up! provides great entertainment for families with children of all ages.  Many of our puppet shows and street entertainers are designed for the very young, while others will keep the 8 and 9 year-olds fully engaged.

Nearly all of our activities happen within the downtown core of Almonte, along our main street, Mill Street. All the venues are located within an easy stroll and there are plenty of shady places to sit and for kids to run in the grass.  Many of our downtown restaurants offer full meals, snacks and take-away, and several refreshment and food vendors are located on the street.

We offer a small market bazaar too, where you can purchase puppet paraphernalia.

Washrooms are well signed and easy to find.

The Puppet Shows

This year, our 11 puppet troupes will offer 66 separate puppet shows in tented theatres and in some of the historic buildings in downtown Almonte.  The Performance Schedule on this web site indicates show times and locations, and our printed program will be available on-site and inserted in the August edition of theHumm, our local arts newsmagazine. The schedule is slightly different each day, but the parade begins at the same time each day (See Puppets on Parade below).

Our shows are produced mainly in English with one production being offered in French by the Tenon Mortaise troupe each day. Please check the schedule for more details.

Most shows are approximately 45 minutes long.

Seating options include low benches at the front and chairs with room at the back of the venues for strollers.

All Creatures Great and Small!

That’s our theme this year. Birds, and bugs, and all the huggable (and not so huggable) creatures of the natural world will inspire the puppeteers and their audiences at this year’s Puppets Up! International Puppet Festival.  Almonte’s world-famous festival will be “alive” with the natural talents of the acclaimed puppeteers, and their puppets, who will creep, crawl, sprout, fly and wiggle their way to the festival and into your hearts.

Puppets on Parade (1:45 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. daily)

Once a day all of the puppet energy in Almonte comes together for one great big parade.  Puppets of every shape and size, along with musicians and street entertainers, take a joyous stroll down Mill Street.

The parade starts each day at 1:45 p.m. at the top of Mill Street and ends at 2:15 p.m. at Kirkland Park behind the new Post Office. It’s not to be missed.

The Puppets Up! Craft Tent

Get bedazzled at the Puppets Up! Craft tent!  Kids 2 and up will learn how to make puppets or just have fun of playing with sparkles. There are creative challenges in store for older kids too.

The craft tent is free and is located in Kirkland Park (behind the new Post Office building.  Kids need to be accompanied by an adult.

Tons of Street Entertainment

For your added enjoyment, and free of charge, Puppets Up! welcomes a fun list of guest entertainers who will perform up and down Mill Street.

The list includes:

• Juggler, stilt walker, puppeteer and comic, Tim Holland, from Cambridge, Ontario
• Montreal puppeteer, Salim Hammad
• The RILTS Puppet Troupe, comprised of young actors from Rideau Lakes district
• Tom Joron’s group from the Ottawa Valley Youth Talent Association
• Almonte face painter, Maureen Dagg
• Ottawa face painter, Aamina Badran
• Ottawa balloon twister, Brad Wood

Loads of musicians including:

• Singer/musician/guitarist, Jake Differ, from Peterborough
• Mississippi Mills Musicworks will present a variety of local talent (including Terry Tufts, George Turcotte and teachers and students of the music school).
• Talented young Almonte fiddler, Danny Albert
• Local celtic band, The Barley Shakers
• Singer and guitarist, Phil Stevenson, from Peterborough
• Almonte’s version of “Stomp”, our own Impact Percussion and their garbage pails
• Old Time fiddle group, The Fiddleheads, featuring Ron Caron

Puppets Up! Street shows will feature:

• The Balcony Puppeteers – think Statler and Waldorf from the Muppet Show, but worse!
• Saints and Sinners, a puppet troupe from Toronto perform “Noah’s Ark” and “Adam and Eve” out of the back of a wheeled cart!
• Aside from performing their show in a main venue, Aboriginal Experiences will perform a Pow Wow dance in front of the AOTH before the Saturday night cabaret.
• Clowns including Almonte’s own Silly U

Au Naturel – For Adults only (August 6, 8 p.m Saturday night, Almonte Old Town Hall)

On the Saturday evening of the festival, the stage at the Almonte Old Town Hall is reserved for a puppet cabaret for adults only. The cabaret will include over a dozen adult puppet sketches with hilarious puppet continuity by puppeteer and producer, Matt Ficner, and some of his saucy friends. Well-known comedian, Dan Redican, will headline and he is bringing is very bad puppets!

The performance begins at 8 p.m. on August 6 in the Almonte Old Town Hall. Tickets are at Baker Bob’s or at Mill Street Books, along with tickets for the full festival.

Read more about the Cabaret

Parking

The main parking area is at the Almonte Fairgrounds on Water Street, a three-minute walk from the Almonte Old Town Hall, the main entrance to the festival. Gus the Shuttle Bus will be running back and forth between the parking lot at the fairgrounds and the festival entrance. Ask staff at the festival gates to direct you to designated handicapped parking spaces in Almonte.

Accessibility

All of the Puppets Up! public venues are wheelchair accessible and several wheelchair accessible washrooms have been placed around the festival site.  Gus the Shuttle bus can also transport someone in a wheelchair.

Ask staff at the festival gates to direct you to designated handicapped parking spaces in Almonte.

Strollers

Since Puppets Up! is super kid-friendly strollers are welcomed throughout the festival site.  Families will be asked to leave their strollers at the back of the theatre venues, however, where they will be carefully watched by festival volunteers.  Benches are positioned at the front of each theatre to improve the view for small children too!

Tickets

Children’s single day passes (in the from of a wrist band), Adult single day passes and weekend passes to the Puppets Up! festival are available on-line, through Mill Street Books, and at the festival gates.

Cash, debit and credit payments can be made on-site.

ADVANCE TICKET SALES:
Location:
Mill Street Books
52 Mill Street
Almonte, ON
K0A 1A0
613-256-9090

ONLINE PAYPAL TICKET SALES:

Advance tickets are available on-line via PayPal.

DAY PASS

Saturday or Sunday (Make sure you remember which day you selected if pre-ordering tickets)
Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Adult – $15 (CDN)
Children (ages 3 – 12) – $10 (CDN)
Kids under 3 get in FREE

WEEKEND PASS

Adult – $25 (Cdn)
Children – $15 (Cdn)
Kids under 3 get in FREE

Cash, debit and credit payments can be made on-site.

And guess what?  It’s happening at the same time as the Puppets Up! festival.  In between puppet shows you can wander over to one of the street “courts” and catch the action.  There are competitions for little kids, medium kids, teens and grown-ups (of all sizes)…almost 100 teams!  Zowie!

See you there!  Now where did I put my Air Nicky’s?

Nick

Most festival puppet shows take place in tented theatres (with lots of room for kids at the front) scattered all around the downtown core. And some of the big productions take place in the Almonte Old Town Hall. Some even take place right on the street, out of a box, or a cart, or from behind a garbage can. This year, The Balcony Puppeteers even got a new balcony! Wait ‘til you hear the insults they shout down from up there! They make those guys from The Muppets look like cream puffs!

And, like always, our downtown businesses are getting into the festival spirit. They’ve been busy painting theatre curtains on their shops because you never know when a puppet show might break out!

Almonte (Town of Mississippi Mills) Ontario, July 21, 2011 — Two students from Sheridan College’s Advanced Special Effects, Makeup, Prosthetics and Props program have arrived in Almonte for a two-week field placement under the supervision of the Puppets Up! International Puppet Festival.

This special course is one of a few of its kind in North America and the only one in the Ontario college system. Through intensive lab experiences, students gain a solid knowledge of casting, molding, sculpting and developing prosthetics, props, puppets and animatronics.

Liz Heaslip (left) and Katherine Theriault (right) painting windows for Puppets Up!

Students Katherine Theriault and Liz Heaslip are in their final semester of the one-year Sheridan post-diploma program and must complete 100 hours of unpaid work experience with a host institution in order to graduate.  This field placement will allow them to apply the knowledge they have gained in the classroom to a work place setting.

Partnerships of this kind are recognized as an invaluable opportunity for Sheridan students engaged in this sector to further develop and apply recognized professional industry practices. “This program’s success would not be possible without the support of our community partners, ” says Nisha Lett, Sheridan’s Faculty Supervisor for the course.

The students are working in a beautiful studio space generously provided by Stephen Brathwaite in the Thoburn Mills.  Under the watchful eye of the festival’s Artistic Director, Noreen Young, they are tackling a whole range of projects that will contribute to the success of the festival which is only weeks away.

Drop by the studio and say hello to them!

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Media Contact:

Susan Wright: (613) 730-2020, (613) 314-2021 (cell)
e-mail: susan@suzwright.com

The festival schedule includes performance times for this year’s 12 visiting troupes. The guide includes key information and links to help festival goers, especially those with young children, plan their fun in Almonte.

“I love everything about Puppets Up! but its best features are world-class family entertainment in the theatres and on the streets, hassle free (and free) parking, a very walkable and visitor-friendly festival site, great local shops and festival vendors, our hundreds of helpful volunteers, and plenty of green space where kids can play,” says the festival’s loveable mascot, Nick. “Oh, and it is only a half hour outside Ottawa!”

For more information on about the festival, tickets and pricing, visit www.puppetsup.ca.

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Media Contact:

Susan Wright: (613) 730-2020, (613) 314-2021 (cell)
e-mail: susan@suzwright.com

Manuel Morán, founder and Artistic Director of the Society of Educational Arts Inc. (SEA) and head of the Teatro SEA (Society of the Educational Arts, Inc.) – Los Kabagitos Puppet and Children’s Theatre in New York City will chair the meeting. He has been working in professional theatre and television as a performer, writer, director and producer in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and the United States. Among the attendees will be Oscar and Laura Guarduno from Leon, Guanajusto, Mexico (Oscar is president of UNIMA Mexico), Montreal’s  Jacques Trudeau (Secretary-General of UNIMA throughout the world and President of UNIMA CANADA), Karen Smith of Los Angeles (President of UNIMA USA),  Claudia Orenstein (Professor of Theatre at Hunter College, City University of New York  and board member of UNIMA USA), and Kingston Ontario puppet performer and musician David Smith  (Vice President of UNIMA CANADA and Past President of the Ontario Puppetry Association).

UNIMA’s objective is to promote the development of the art of puppetry in North America by creating opportunities for exchanges and encounters between puppeteers, puppet companies, producers and festivals in Canada, United States, Mexico and the Caribbean.

For more information on about the festival, tickets and pricing, visit www.puppetsup.ca.

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Media Contact:

Susan Wright: (613) 730-2020, (613) 314-2021 (cell)
e-mail: susan@suzwright.com

August 6^th and 7^th. See you there! It’s sure to be WILD!!!

Nick

For your added enjoyment, and free of charge, Puppets Up! welcomes a fun list of guest entertainers who will perform up and down Mill Street (Almonte’s Main Street). Their talents add to the festivities and the daily parade.

The list includes:

• Juggler, stilt walker, puppeteer and comic, Tim Holland, from Cambridge, Ontario
• Montreal puppeteer, Salim Hammad
• The RILTS Puppet Troupe, comprised of young actors from Rideau Lakes district
• Tom Joron’s group from the Ottawa Valley Youth Talent Association
• Almonte face painter, Maureen Dagg
• Ottawa face painter, Aamina Badran
• Ottawa balloon twister, Brad Wood

Loads of musicians including:

• Singer/musician/guitarist, Jake Differ, from Peterborough
• Mississippi Mills Musicworks will present a variety of local talent (including Terry Tufts, George Turcotte and teachers and students of the music school).
• Talented young Almonte fiddler, Danny Albert
• Local celtic band, The Barley Shakers
• Singer and guitarist, Phil Stevenson, from Peterborough
• Almonte’s version of “Stomp”, our own Impact Percussion and their garbage pails
• Old Time fiddle group,The Fiddleheads, featuring Ron Caron

Puppets Up! Street shows will feature:

• The Balcony Puppeteers – think Statler and Waldorf from the Muppet Show, but worse!
• Saints and Sinners, a puppet troupe from Toronto perform “Noah’s Ark” and “Adam and Eve” out of the back of a wheeled cart!
• Aside from performing their show in a main venue, Aboriginal Experiences will perform a Pow Wow dance in front of the AOTH before the Saturday night cabaret.
• Clowns including Almonte’s own Silly U

Enjoy performances by "Saints and Sinners", a mobile puppet troupe, on the streets of Almonte during the Puppets Up! festival.