Advanced Search

Advanced Search

The Old Trout Puppet Workshop

Established

1999

Current staff listing: https://www.theoldtrouts.org/bio-contact

The Old Trout Puppet Workshop was founded on a ranch in southern Alberta back in the strange winter of 1999. We were a small gang of old buddies, with a fondness for beards and wood and wool and other old-fashioned and pleasant things; the world was uneasy with the threat of Y2K, and we felt an urge to huddle together for mutual protection, and to dedicate ourselves to something fragile, ridiculous, and gentle, out on the edge of the world. So we learned to carve puppets, and paid our rent through wholesome labour; we collected eggs, fed the pigs, cooked big stews, and premiered our first show to a bunkhouse full of cowboys and Hutterites.

For the record, the Hutterites were more impressed than the cowboys. We took that show into Calgary to the legendary alt-theatre festival known as the High Performance Rodeo, and people clapped; in that moment, an insatiable craving for applause was born in us, and the warm contentment of our ranch camaraderie turned into mean and craven Ambition.

We’ve been labouring under the lash of that evil spirit for almost twenty years now, during which time a great deal has changed. We moved to the city, for instance, and now operate out of a workshop next to an enormous distillery in industrial Calgary. It’s a thriving operation that has grown much larger than the original hairy few. Heaps of people are employed at various points in the year for various projects. We’ve got a sporadic apprenticeship program, technical and administrative wings, and a shwack of productions either in development or on the actual road at this exact moment.  (theoldtrouts.org)

Website

https://www.theoldtrouts.org/


Produced by The Old Trout Puppet Workshop

Ignorance November 27th, 2012 – December 15th, 2012