Table Top Tales
Family Stories Come to Life!
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Family Stories Come to Life! ~
Show description
SNAFU and the Snack Music Collective Present:
Table Top Tales
Family Stories Come to Life!
From the creators of the festival hit Snack Music comes a brand new work created especially for children 4 and up and their parents. Table Top Tales is an adventure in storytelling, puppetry, and music. Join us as we share stories of family and friends, and the adventures and challenges of growing up. Parents and children will be invited to tell a story from their family lore: funny stories, scary stories, embarrassing stories, silly stories, heart-warming stories, even sad stories. Then sit back and watch as the professional puppeteers bring your story to life by puppeteering fruits, vegetables and kitchen tools! From that time Aunt Dorothy got stuck in the crawl space playing hide-and-seek, to the day Maya lost her first tooth, to the night Max was born, your stories will be brought to life before your eyes through the magic of puppetry. (Feeling shy? You can also just watch.)
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About SNAFU & The Snack Music Collective
The Snack Music Collective was formed by Ginette Mohr, Elliott Loran, Ingrid Hansen and Andrew G. Young in 2015 with an inaugural performance of Snack Music at the Next Stage Festival. The team looks forward to taking their shows on tour this summer to the Edge of the Woods Festival in Muskoka and the Puppets UP! Festival in Almonte, Ontario.
SNAFU is an award-winning company most recently known for producing Little Orange Man and Kitt & Jane: A Survival Guide to the Near-Post-Apocalyptic Future. The company’s work creates dynamic spaces for people of all ages to experience art together under new terms. SNAFU’s creative collaborations connect multi-disciplinary artists in theatre, storytelling, puppetry, dance, live music, and visual art. Spectators are invited to have an active role in the action as it unfolds.
PRESS
“I want to see that show again and again!”
“A fabulous puppetry-storytelling-improv-dance-music mash up.
They bring personal stories to life in a way that is both simple and simply brilliant.
Their imaginative canvas seems to stretch ever larger as they
make the world a better place one connection at a time.”
“The puppets tobogganing was so cool.”
“The best of all the various different things you could see: puppetry, storytelling, crowd involvement, music, heartfelt...everyone’s talking about it and everyone’s going to keep talking about it.”
“Bring your best story, smile your biggest smile, and be ready to open your heart to a room full of strangers.”
“SNAFU’s work is always informed by a deep and profound reverence for taking risks and choosing to be vulnerable...about trying to get people to open up to each other and dabble in that space where marvelous things happen: tell us a story — a silly, secret story — and we promise to love you back.”
Photo by Laura Dittmann
Credits
Co-created by Ingrid Hansen, Elliott Loran*, Ginette Mohr* & Andrew G. Young*
Directed by Ginette Mohr*
Puppeteered by Ingrid Hansen & Andrew G. Young
Original score by Elliott Loran
Music performed by Elliott Loran
Stage managed by Kristina Abbondanza and Ada Aguilar
Set built by the company, with special thanks to our Design Consultant Andy Miller, and our collaborators Anne Soloman & Tim Freeman.
* Artists appear with the permission of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association.
Thank yous
Thank you to Theatre Direct for their ongoing support and encouragement!
Thank you to the Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council for their support in developing this piece AND touring it to the National Arts Centre!
Special thanks to musicians Anthony Bastianon and Kevin Wong who have also performed with the production.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Ginette Mohr
Director & Co-Creator
About GinetteGinette is an award winning director, performer, playwright and arts educator. Her career in the performing arts has galvanized her love of live experiences and direct contact with people. She seeks to fire up imaginations and cultivate new work through playful explorations of performance and design. For over 15 years she has created theatre with companies that include: The Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Neptune Theatre, Young People’s Theatre, SNAFU, The Quickening Theatre, Theatre New Brunswick, Drayton Entertainment, Theatre Aquarius, Keystone Theatre and The Second City. She has taught theatre, dance and improvisation at schools that include: York University, The Second City, Theatre Direct, Young People's Theatre and The Living Arts Centre. She holds a B.F.A. in Theatre from Simon Fraser University and an M.F.A. in Theatre from York University.
Elliott Loran
Co-Creator & Composer
About ElliottElliott Loran is an actor, singer, pianist and composer currently residing in Toronto, Ontario. Selected acting credits include Atomic Vaudeville's Dora Award-winning musical Ride the Cyclone (original Canadian cast, winner of the Toronto Theatre Critics Award and the BroadwayWorld Award for Best Supporting Actor), Alice Through the Looking Glass and Christina the Girl King (Stratford Festival), As You Like It and Long Day's Journey Into Night (Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre) and Jerry Lee Lewis in Million Dollar Quartet (The Globe Theatre and the MTC). Selected composer credits include Space Hippo (Mochinosha Puppet Company), Me With You (LooseLeaf Theatre), Snack Music, Table Top Tales, and Lost and Found (SNAFU Dance Theatre and the Snack Music Collective).
Andrew G. Young
Co-Creator & Performer
About AndrewAndrew was born and raised in Bruce County. Since graduating from the Humber Theatre Performance program, Andrew has found a passion for bringing theatre to rural areas, creating shows for the Wild for the Arts Festival in Port Elgin from 2012-14. Andrew works as an actor, director, and puppeteer. He directed Paleoncology, which won multiple awards on its tour as well being named one of CBC’s ‘Must See Fringe shows of 2014.’ He is currently directing Does Not Play Well With Others (Moon Dinosaur Theatre), which will be part of the Victoria Fringe and Vancouver Fringe later this summer. Andrew is thrilled to be back in Huntsville after being part of Nuit Blanche North in 2014. Selected performance credits include: Old Man and the River (Theatre Direct), Unjustly (Festival Players of Prince Edward County/Small Pond Arts), Snack Music (SNAFU), To The Last Cry (Theatre Lab), We Walk Among You (Artichoke Heart).
Ingrid Hansen
Co-Creator & Performer
About IngridRaised by gregarious Danish immigrants, Ingrid loves talking to strangers. A Co-Artistic Director of SNAFU Dance Theatre, she tours across the country with SNAFU performing Snack Music, Little Orange Man, and Kitt & Jane: A Survival Guide to the Near-Post-Apocalyptic Future. Outside of SNAFU, she has created and performed with Corpus Theatre, The Quickening, Theatre Direct, Theatre SKAM, Shakespeare in the Ruff, Architect Theatre, and Atomic Vaudeville. For the past seven years, Ingrid has built an ongoing collaboration with the inmates at William Head on Stage Prison Theatre, including co-directing The Prison Puppet Project with Peter Balkwill in 2013. On TV, she is a lead puppeteer and voice actor for Tiga Talk on APTN. Sometimes she roams the country teaching workshops for adults, children, and prison inmates.