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1 Jul. 2024

Punkerpine Puppets was a touring theatre company that operated professionally (registered as Punkerpine Puppet Arts Ltd.) in the Canadian province of Alberta from 1979 to 1990. Based in the City of Calgary, the company produced a number of original works and workshops, for schools and communities, combining educational content and entertainment using a variety of styles, and employing local artists and musicians. Punkerpine became notable for two original puppet plays performed in hundreds of Alberta schools under sponsorship by the provincial government. Both plays were written by Rick McNair, then artistic director of Theatre Calgary.

Later works included "A Fantasy of Baba Yaga" and "Tales of the Trickster".

Founding and first projects
The company was founded by Jeannie Englebright (1944-2015) who, as its principal member, was a producer, builder and performer in all of Punkerpine's projects. Englebright, who had a Masters Degree in Drama from the University of Denver, 'discovered' and fell in love with the special attractions of sophisticated puppet theatre while on a trip to Poland in 1975. Upon returning home to Calgary, she found that the University of Calgary Drama Department was offering a puppetry course taught by Roy Small, a professional puppeteer who, with his partner Lynette Maurice, also ran Patchwork Puppets, a two-person company that did classical shows. Englebright studied with Small for two years and assisted in a number of Drama Department productions.

In 1977 Englebright was hired to take over the university puppetry program. During the spring of that year, she organized and hosted a professional puppetry festival in association with Puppeteers of America, inviting three prominent Canadian companies to perform: Coad Canada Puppets from Vancouver, B.C., and from Toronto, Lampoon Puppettheatre and Puppetmongers Powell. During her third semester of teaching, Englebright mounted her first show, "Puppet Magic", a single-puppeteer, full-fledged magic act with tricks performed two traditional glove puppet characters.

The company was organized during the summer of 1978 after AADAC (the Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission), a government agency, approached Englebright with a major project idea for an entertaining educational program aimed at elementary-school children. Englebright hired Rick McNair, the soon-to-be artistic director of Theatre Calgary, to write an original script. He wrote "The Way There", a story about a boy who resists peer pressure, overcomes the alluring promises of a 'fun-filled' perilous adventure, and saves his dog from a monster in a cave. AADAC sponsored the touring of "The Way There" for nearly two and a half years, between February, 1979 and June, 1981. It was performed up to eight times a week, in hundreds of Alberta schools, and often for audiences of over 400 children, eventually reaching tens of thousands of students, both elementary and junior-high. AADAC followed this experimental success with a new project, sponsoring a second original play called "Double Trouble"—also written by McNair—about a daring brother and sister team on a space-travel adventure, with a spacecraft, a 4-footed robot, and a 2-headed creature just for fun. The second show also toured busily for two full school-years.

Style
Both AADAC plays were performed with voices, electronic music, and sound effects all pre-recorded on audio tape, while two puppeteers staged the action in pseudo-Bunraku style: the puppets were small but full-bodied rod-puppets that were manipulated from behind with the puppeteers fully visible and unmasked, standing in front of a large black back-drop. In The Way There, the puppeteers wore black, but wore colorful costume for Double Trouble. For transport, the packing crates for puppets and equipment fit compactly in the back of a small station-wagon; the empty crates when expanded doubled as the puppet-stage which required the space of a school gymnasium.

Other projects
In the summer of 1982, Punkerpine presented a series of puppet-theatre workshops for librarians of the Southern Alberta Libraries Association.

In February 1983, the University of Calgary theatre hosted a faculty piano recital by Charles Foreman. The recital program included Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" which Punkerpine dramatized with a full-stage five-puppeteer production titled "A Fantasy of Baba Yaga". Calgary puppeteer Wendy Passmore-Barnett contributed to the show's design, inspired by characters from Russian fairy tales and the artwork of Mussorgsky's friend, Viktor Hartmann;

..... Pictures at an Exhibition

In 1985, as part of the province's 75th anniversary, Punkerpine joined in a celebratory production called "Alberta People" that traveled to Nova Scotia with two puppets, Napi and Alberta Al. The company also developed a live-voice, story-telling "Tales of the Trickster" series that toured schools and communities. It presented characters from Africa and China, plus the native American "Coyote" who was a hit at the 1989 Calgary International Children's Festival. JJJJJJJJ including Englebright's primary partner, Ben Sirota,

Repertoire

 * 1) Pocket Puppets
 * 2) Puppet Magic
 * 3) The Way There - about a boy, his dog, and how they beat the monster in a cave;
 * 4) Double Trouble - about the outer space adventures of Susan and Darryl;
 * 5) Tales of the Trickster
 * 6) Tales of Creation and Destruction
 * 7) Ladders and Strings
 * 8) A Fantasy of Baba Yaga