Young Hearts Theatre/ Le Théâtre des Jeunes Cœurs
Montreal, Canada
This spring, we are SOOOO happy to announce that we’ve received a grant from the Canada Council to conduct a residency for Windy. Yay!!! Thanks Canada Council!!
With those funds, we are going to complete a two week residency in May, followed by a short run of performances in June (to test and share what we worked on in May).
Check out the experiments that we have already begun below. And stay tuned for info on the shows to come in June.
Since finishing our puppet show feather tales in June, we have been thinking a lot about what we would like to do next. And now, we’re ready to share our next step. Introducing – Windy:
Suffice it to say, we can’t wait to share more details about this show with you all!
What a magical experience we had this past June 2022. We were able to put feather tales in front of an audience!!! Whoop whoop. Such a joy. So many thanks.
If you missed out on seeing us in person, check out this summary video of the show:
Here is also a little summary of the show from a production point of view:
| No. of Shows Performed @ MCT | No. of Shows Performer at External Venues | No. of External Workshops Completed | Audience Reached during Shows |
| 5 | 1 (St Margaret’s CHSLD) | 2 (with Papa et Moi NDG) | 263 |
| Audience Reached during Workshops | Total Show Revenue (including fundraising) | Partner Organisations | |
| 30 | $3000 | Montreal Children’s Theatre Papa et Moi NDG Bienvenue à NDG La Lune Sitters West End Daycare Garderie Vendome CHSLD St Margarets |
Overall, we were really proud of what we were able to achieve in June. And we can’t wait to share with you what we have coming up next!
In early 2022, we have been working away on 2 different puppets in the same parade style puppetry that we have worked with recently.
The first puppet was just for the sake of trying new techniques and dreaming big. We tried to create a large backpack style bird. The aim was to get to a goose and while everything was looking good for a while, unfortunately we hit a few snags. We are hoping to return to this puppet in the coming months.
The second puppet was more specifically for the Montreal Children’s Theatre. They are putting on a production of Shrek: The Musical (Jr) this year and they asked us to help them with a dragon puppet. While it is not quite finished yet, you can see the work so far in the video below.
Now that is an excellent question.
In short, they were really fun. Over two workshops in December, we had about 20 people join us to make our holiday themed winter animal puppets. In each workshop, we started by creating a simple mouse design all together. And then participants were given the option to go on and make more complicated animals (which many did).
With all of the puppets created, we then ended each session with small performances from those puppets in a make shift puppet theatre. Look, it was just a hoot. Check out some of these pictures and videos to see what we did:
Hey everyone! WOAH! We’ve had a huge few weeks. Can we tell you a little bit about it? Great! Thanks.
1. Our Halloween Workshop
On the day before Halloween, we held our first ever public puppet building workshop (not the first workshop any of us have run, but our first workshop as a theatre collective). And it went so well!!!!!
We had over 20 people attend to make monster hand puppets. And the puppets that people made ranged from excellent to amazing. Take a look at some of these wonders.
2. Fundraising
Now, this workshop wasn’t just for kicks and giggles. It was one of the first steps in our fundraising campaign – aimed at raising money for a rehearsal and production of feather tales in 2022.
We are so happy to announce that at this stage, having completed this workshop, performed a few small shows and received some super generous online donations, that we have raised…$750! Woot woot!
3. Our Next Fundraising Step
Spurred on by the success of this first part of the process, we have decided to push even further along with our fundraising. Our next steps are: a) we will be participating in a holiday market in NDG this november, hoping to generate some interest in; b) we will be hosting a few more puppet building workshops this December. Check out what we’re doing:
Our first fundraiser! Woot woot!
This halloween, we are teaming up with the wonderful folks at the Montreal Children’s Theatre to run a few Halloween Puppet workshops. The majority of the proceeds from these workshops will go towards the funds for feather tales campaign!
Another woot woot!
Workshop # 1 = MONSTER HAND PUPPETS!
Workshop #2 = SHADOW PUPPETS
Full details at: https://montrealchildrenstheatre.ca/halloween/
After our really successful workshop period in May 2021, we’re itching to get feather tales into a theatre, onto a stage, in front of an audience. With that goal in mind, we are launching a fundraising campaign. Our goal is to raise $7000, which would pay a creative team for 1-week of rehearsals.
While we know that this fundraising goal is large and daunting, we are taking it one step at a time.
Whenever we’ve been testing a new design, exploring, building, tearing down, creating, glueing…etc, and its time to put everything on and see what it looks like – step #1 = dance!
In a grant application we wrote recently, we described Young Hearts Theatre as a fluid collective of artists, coming together as different groups to work on different projects. And that seems so right in this busy spring time period.
On the one hand, we have just accepted our Research and Creation grant from the Canada Council for a 65 hour workshop period on feather tales. Caite, HeatherEllen and Daniel are so excited to bring this little piece into a staged format. If you missed our trailer at the end of last year (our pre-workshop, help us do a workshop trailer), here it is:
On the other hand, Daniel and Lily Schwarzbaum have also been cooking up ideas for the return of Jay the puppet this summer. After an afternoon of playing and dreaming and building and writing, we put forward the following idea to the Conseil des Arts de Montréal’s program Quand l’Art Prend l’Air:
Fingers crossed for both!
Young Hearts Theatre/ Le Théâtre des Jeunes Cœurs