Role: Shadow Puppeteer & Foley Artist

Company: Illuminating Theatre (Performed at The Edmonton Fringe Festival)

For this production, I worked with a small, independent team of artists, cast and crew, and I served as one of the shadow puppeteers/live foley artists. This unique setup had myself and the other shadow puppeteer onstage, rear projecting to our projection surface, using four overhead projectors and a series of shadow puppets made from transparent sheets. Additionally, I upheld some live foley duties for an immersive experience, this included clapping wood for a gunshot, slamming shotglasses and a thunderdrum amongst others.

This show taught me a lot about independent theatre-making and working with tight and chaotic schedules. The process of this show began four months prior to its staging, though through unique complications we only had about a month's worth of actual rehearsal before staging this production. As well, we had a 15-minute set up and tear down window before and after a performance, which is the tightest turn-around I have worked with and I found that experience to be very useful. It was also, all together, a very enjoyable experience getting to work with talented creators and experience the Fringe Festival for the first time as an artist.

Actors/Crew: Barbara Gordon, Marina Hanley, Alaina Quarin, Connor Thiessen, Joelle Wyminga, Andrew Whiteside, Corbin Kaczynski, Susan Backs.

Puppet Design by: Mackenzie Delaney

Role: Props & Paint Crew

Company: Freewill Shakespeare Festival

This production taught me a lot about sustainability and resourceful theatre-making. The shows design theme was trash and waste coming together in a semi-fantasy setting, creating a unique prop-making experience where we did our best to build using sustainably acquired materials, much of which was repurposed from local reuse centers. This show was the first to allow me to really stretch my creativity as an artist and trust myself as a prop builder. Many of the builds were collaborative and some were more individual and overall the different strengths and weaknesses of the team blended together well to keep a consistent product within the timeframe we were working with. 

After the building process, I became the Prop Maintenance Tech and a part of the set Build/Strike Crew. As Maintenance Tech I gained a lot of experience in problem-solving and communication. There were not many major repairs needed, even with the touring element of the show, mostly small touchups here and there to help sustain props for the duration of the show. The show-run portion of this production gave me a lot of experience with set installation, working outdoors and operating within a touring show. This was my first outdoor festival and my first touring show, so I definitely learned a lot about both aspects, and while set-construction, especially steelwork, is not my preferred field of theatre, I am glad to have the experience and knowledge I gained from building and striking the set.  

Cast: Nadien Chu, Hal Wesley Rogers, Chariz Faulmino, Cody Porter
Set & Costume Design by: Stephanie Bahniuk

For the completion of my Bachelor of Fine Arts, my Capstone project was the research, design and build of a full-scale Audrey II puppet from "Little Shop of Horrors". This puppet stands at roughly 5'-6' and can be manually articulated by a sole puppeteer. The project consisted of three sections: The Head, the Neck and the Garden Pot. The head consists of a PVC pipe frame, a fabric mouth lining (with a tongue that can be puppeted), a layer of foam and a layer of fabric. The neck is a large tube of denim fabric with hoola hoops sewn in to provide structure. The Garden Pot is constructed from intricately angled wood panels and a stool mounted to the base on a platform.

This project was the largest individual build I have done to date and was a self-guided project. I got experience with sourcing materials like plywood, pvc and landau foam. I got a lot of experience with problem-solving, the room for compound error on a project with big, but I was able to figure out a solution when something didn't go as expected. I also managed to complete this project while balancing a full-course load and working the build and run of a show.

This was a reproduction of the "Box of Doom" dice rolling tray prop commonly used on the internet game show "Dimension 20".

The project was built using primarily plywood, hard foam and air-dry clay. Making and applying air-dry clay as well as the carving foam in this way was new to me and will prove to be a valuable experience.

This project was a re-creation of "The Hand of Rodin" by Auguste Rodin.

I formed the held object out of plasticine and cast it in a silicone mold, which I then filled with plaster. With my own hand posed like Rodins, I repeated the casting method, this took a couple of attempts to get right but ultimately created an excellent sculture. Once dry, I combined the held object cast and the hand cast and painted them.

This is a leather D20 shaped die bag that I built, a D20 in case you are unfamiliar, is a twenty sided die commonly used in tabletop roleplaying games such as "Dungeons & Dragons". 

This project consisted of twenty identical leather triangles that I stitched together and carved numbers into (I even used an actual D20 for reference when assembling the bag as D20's have a standard arrangement for where numbers are on a die). Five of the pieces were left unstitched so that they could have a drawstring run through them.

Fun Fact: I made this project in my second year of university and I still use it to this day.