(en français)
The Old Trout Puppet Workshop is a puppet theatre company, founded on a ranch in southern Alberta in 1999. Our first year of operation was an experience of intense collaborative isolation – we lived together, cooked together, and worked together. We collected eggs, fed the pigs, and premiered our first show to a bunkhouse full of cowboys and Hutterites. (Our administration office is now located in the Arrata Opera Centre in Calgary.)
We’re dedicated to making professional puppet theatre, for both children and adults, that blurs that distinction. We launch forth to explore the outer edges of the puppet medium, and to create original, unique, and exuberant art. An Old Trout show strives for delightful allegory, joyful tragedy, and purity of spirit. We’ve created six productions: The Unlikely Birth of Istvan, The Tooth Fairy, Beowulf, The Last Supper of Antonin Carême, Pinocchio, and now Famous Puppet Death Scenes.
We’ve toured our productions across Canada and into the United States, but in addition to our own puppet theatre, we also collaborate widely in a variety of media.
With Dandi Productions, we have done several children’s productions for orchestras: Roald Dahl's Red Riding Hood, Jack & the Beanstalk, & Snow White.
Old Trouts have served as puppet masters on Disney's Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Nickelodeon’s Littleburg with Whoopi Goldberg and YTV's Nanalan’. They’ve toured California with The Death of Benvenuto Cellini, a puppet operetta in collaboration with the Green Fools, and traveled the world with a Punch and Judy show in a suitcase.
We’ve made three short films: two with Silent Clown Productions, and another with DKR Pictures, which has won several awards including an Alberta Motion Picture award for Best Experimental Short.
We also do sculpture in a puppet-ish way. For instance, we built a forty foot tall puppet machine/wind-powered clock commissioned by Big Rock Brewery, built out of ancient combine harvesters and train whistles dragged out of junk graveyards across Alberta.
We’ve written magazine articles on puppetry (shortlisted for a National Magazine Award), and created five books, Preposterous Fables for Unusual Children, published by Bayeux Arts (two were shortlisted for the Governor-General’s Award).
We’ve created a music video for Canadian musician, Feist.
The Old Trout Puppet Workshop is a company of artists dedicated to re-imagining the art form of puppetry.
“Mind-blowing originality… [The Trouts] are boldly reshaping puppet theatre into sophisticated adult entertainment.” – Fast-Forward
