Unjustly: Local History Told Through Shadow Puppetry

It’s one of the most infamous stories of Prince Edward County; that of a murder and bungled criminal investigation, followed by a swift trial and botched hanging of two men. The crime took place in 1883 just outside the village of Bloomfield, about a 15 minute drive from Small Pond; the trial and hanging took place just down the road from us at the Picton courthouse and jail. No one had ever written a play about this troubling incident of local history, and never one to shy away from the macabre, I decided that I should. It's a fascinating story well worth retelling.

The Picton Courthouse, where the 1884 trial took place.
The jail and gallows are at the rear of the building.

The superb book by Robert J. Sharpe, The Lazier Murder, was a great start to my research. I consulted many other sources, and discovered some of the historical accounts were contradictory, even as told by people who claimed to have first-hand information. I always take historical sources with a grain of salt, and I certainly claim my fair share of artistic license while writing.

It was a challenging play to write. I had to make sense of 1800’s judicial processes and try to make them interesting for an audience. I decided early on that there would be two narrators: Margaret Jones, the only living eyewitness to the crime, and William, a local shoemaker, a character of my invention. 

Margaret Jones, eyewitness to the murder

Margaret was a Quaker, and William was a working class man. I had to create distinct voices for the two of them with period-appropriate language. I’d also decided from the beginning that it would be a shadow puppetry play, as I thought this would be a great device to skip around in time and location, as well as a good way to deal with some rather grisly subject matter. Plus I would get to work with some of my favourite collaborators; I’ve been making shadow shows with Guy Doucette and Craig Morrison since 2008; we call ourselves Shadow of a Doubt Collective.

My telling of events suggests quite plainly that
George Lowder and Joseph Thomset were hanged unjustly.

Writing the first draft of anything is the hardest. Somehow, I slogged through it, and in the summer of 2014 we had a public reading. Lots of people came. Even more astonishing, they liked it! After the reading I did a few revisions, and then I met with Craig, designer extraordinaire, to plan how we should proceed. We decided to make a video trailer for the play to help get some funding to produce the show. When, eventually, we staged the play, I edited the ending so we could use the same video for promotional purposes. Here it is:

I’ve worked on and off with Festival Players of Prince Edward County over the last 6 years, and they agreed to come on as a co-producer, which was huge for our little puppetry company. We applied for funding and got it. This puppet show was going full-steam ahead!

Craig and I went through the script and broke it down scene by scene, deciding on what shadow puppet imagery we would use to tell the story. The puppets were built by Craig and Guy at Small Pond Arts. The puppet factory, a.k.a. The Shadowlands, is always an intensely productive time, with hour after hour hunched over cutting mats as characters and backgrounds spring to life from black bristol board.

Guy Doucette and Craig Morrison

Once the puppets were made, everything was taken away to be laminated. Back from the print shop, puppets were assembled and gels and sticks added. Let the rehearsals begin!

Puppetry rehearsal at Small Pond Arts

In addition to being a great puppeteer, Guy is also a terrific actor, and I’d cast him in the role of William. 

Guy Doucette as William in Unjustly

New-to-Picton actor Joan McBride joined us in the role of Margaret; she gave a tremendous performance. 

Joan McBride as Margaret Jones in Unjustly

We rehearsed at Small Pond for a little more than a week before loading into our venue, the beautiful Macaulay Church Museum in Picton. Our puppeteers and stage manager were the Festival Players’ Young Company, and Toronto puppeteer Andrew Young mentored the new puppeteers and ran the show backstage. Check out this time-lapse video of them in action:

The show ran for ten nights and was whole-heartedly embraced by the community, with full houses and standing ovations. This enthusiasm from the audience was the true pay-off for two years of work invested in creating the play.

Poster by Milé Murtanovski

Following each performance, Joan, Guy and myself led the audience on a tour of the jail and gallows, just a block away from our venue. It was really rewarding to have this opportunity to engage in a dialogue with the audience each evening, and a creepy and powerful experience for them.

Jail courtyard where spectators would have watched the hanging.
With both doors open, the condemned would have been visible
through the upper door, and after hanging,
 visible through the lower door.

The gallows

I am so proud of this production and I hope to stage it again some time in the future. A heartfelt thanks to all the talented artists for their contributions, to Festival Players of Prince Edward County, The Ontario Arts Council, Museums of Prince Edward County, and everyone who came to see the show. Theatre needs an audience, and we really appreciate your support! 

L to R: Guy Doucette, Scott Kuipers, Krista Dalby, Andrew Young,
Gabrielle Graham-Stevens, Leah Snyder, Joan McBride (front row),
Braelyn Guppy (back row), Gabrielle Kaduc-Stojsic

Sweet, Sweet Summer

As our fourth summer at the farm draws to a close, here's a look back at what we've been up to over the last few months. It's been the best kind of whirlwind, full of art, guests, gardening and creative work of all sorts!

Find your happy place.

In June Milé completed his latest epic painting project, 33 on 33, which took him from one end of the County to the other, plein air painting this beautiful place. The paintings were exhibited at Blizzmax Gallery.

Meanwhile Krista was plotting her cardboard revolution and brought Cardboardia to Skeleton Park Arts Festival in Kingston.

July brought more residents from near and far.

Australian artist Della Jackson works on some paintings in the Art Barn.

In August, the Bicycle Music Festival rolled into town to perform a pedal-powered concert at the farm. Local musician D'Ari Lisle of Nine Mile wrapped up the concert with singing and playing guitar while pedaling to generate all the electricity needed to power his own amplification. Well done, D'Ari!

After the concert, we did a little 'silo session' recording with Jessica Moore, Abigail Lapell and Dana Sipos:

August also brought us a house full of puppeteers working on our program Shadow Puppetry Plays for Grown-Ups. It's always so great to have this crew here, they are such a fun and talented bunch.

Rick Zimmerman as Professor Murk in The History of Shadows

Guy Doucette and Kat Letwin as Him and Her in Almost

Cast and crew (L to R): Krista Dalby, Craig Morrison, Susanne Larner,
Brie Kaduc-Stojsic, Guy Doucette, Kat Letwin, Rick Zimmerman. 

We had many, many more guests and resident artists, including painters, puppeteers, musicians and playwrights. 

Paul Densmore does some early morning plein-air drawing near the silo.

Our last guests of the season were our dear friends Tamara and David, who enjoyed a mini-vacation camping out in the clearing. David Anderson is a long-time collaborator and co-conspirator, and was a great mentor to me during the four years I worked beside him at Clay & Paper Theatre. By special request, he played some music in our silo as part of our ongoing 'silo sessions.' I just love this song!

What a sweet end to a most memorable summer!

Shadow Puppet Music Video

Here's a shadow puppet music video we made a while back at Small Pond. You can read about the making of the video below. Enjoy!


Home - Nine Mile [Shadow Puppet Music Video] from josh lyon on Vimeo.

Music: Home by Nine Mile
Puppets: Shadow of a Doubt Collective
Shot at: Small Pond Arts
Written & Directed by: Krista Dalby & Craig Morrison
Puppeteers: Nicole Armour, Krista Dalby, Cecila Jost, Susanne Larner, Josh Lyon, Craig Morrison, Laura Todd
Shot & Edited by: Josh Lyon

Each August, the puppeteers of Shadow of a Doubt Collective descend on Small Pond Arts to work some magic and create a live shadow puppetry show. We had intended to do so again this year, but due to some personal issues we were unable to go ahead.

Craig Morrison and I still wanted to make something, so he suggested that he and I do a music video. It had to be done quickly; the last days of the summer were upon us and we both had other fish to fry. Craig wanted to use Small Pond as the setting of the video, and I started thinking about music. It didn't take too long to find the perfect song, Home, by local band Nine Mile. The refrain about "never want(ing) to go home” resonated with me, because that's what so many of our resident artists say when it's time for them to leave! I asked the bands’ front man, D’Ari Pouyat, if he’d be okay with us making a video, and having no idea what he was agreeing to, he said yes!

Puppets in progress

Craig and I jammed on some ideas; I came up with a script and he started cutting puppets. When he arrived at the farm pretty much all of the character puppets were finished. As so often occurs with Craig's designs, the characters all looked very familiar... not only were the members of the band represented, but there was a puppet of me at the oven, Milé on stilts, and Craig and his wife Elizabeth - as Sasquatches! Craig and I spent two long days in the barn, cutting and ‘sticking’ puppets. Our friends Lindsay and little Sebastien came out to help.

Lindsay Reid and junior puppeteer Bassie at work in the Art Barn

As there were some scenes with a lot going on, I knew we needed many hands on deck, so I put out a call for puppeteers, and four awesome local women – and first-time puppeteers - responded. Kingston puppeteer/filmmaker/musician Josh Lyon came to mind as a potential collaborator, so I contacted him, too, and he responded with enthusiasm. Such is the beauty of working in a puppet "collective" - new members come and go on a very fluid, informal basis.

A peek backstage!
From front to back: Nicole Armour, Susanne Larner, Krista Dalby, Laura Todd , Josh Lyon.

It was the day of the shoot, and Josh and Susanne arrived in the afternoon. Then Craig broke his thumb and went to the hospital for a few hours. Josh took some time out to play accordion in the silo.

Everyone else showed up around dusk, and without a moment to spare, we launched into shooting. The whole thing was shot in three wild and woolly hours with Josh behind the camera and Craig and I tag-team directing. Josh took the footage away and worked his editing magic, and ta-da! A music video is born.

Look at that focus! L to R: Nicole Armour, Cecilia Jost, Craig Morrison

In case you’re wondering Why Sasquatches? Why lightning bolts?  you can read about that HERE.

Thanks to everyone who helped out - it was so fun working with all of you!

The Speed of Winter

At Small Pond the summers are crazy busy, but winter is a whole other speed: S-L-O-W.  The visitors are few and far between.  Sometimes we don’t change out of our pyjamas. The quiet is deep in the absence of the crickets, frogs and the buzz of artists at work and at play.  In the fall we mentally prepared ourselves to “hunker down,” anticipating the long months we would spend gazing through frozen windows over fields of snow.  But winter has been decidedly non-committal.  Does this look like Ontario in mid-February to you?

We’ve seen hardly any snow all winter, and when it does snow it is usually gone within a day or two.  Sure, it makes things more comfortable for us, but it’s bad for farmers, and probably for plenty of things in the natural world.  It also makes you wonder if climate change is starting to make itself known in ways which we can no longer ignore.

During these tranquil months we’re keeping busy, including making a few improvements around the house.  We just got a wood stove put into the dining room, ensuring the coziness of future winters.

I’ve been sewing some funky garlands to hang up come spring.

I’ve been visiting schools and doing shadow puppetry workshops. This last week I was at Quinte Mohawk School where I worked with four classes to tell the story of Creation.  It was a very ambitious project, but a ton of fun.

Last month I spent a week in Toronto writing a new play with David Anderson.  This is the fifth play we've written together.  The History of Forgetting will be produced by Clay & Paper Theatre and play in Dufferin Grove Park through July and August 2012.  David’s in Africa right now; we’re going to finish the play when he gets back.

I’ve also been teaching myself to play the concertina!  Trust me, I’m as surprised as anybody.  I’m working on playing my first song, Shepherd’s Hey.  I’m practicing for about an hour every day and things are really coming along.

Meanwhile, Milé has been painting up a storm.  He’s working on his last 2 paintings in a 15-painting series entitled Barnscapes.

They're oil paintings of barns and landscapes, based on his own photos taken around Prince Edward County.   You’ll be able to see them in the coming months at Arts on Main gallery in Picton, and of course at the gallery here at Small Pond.

But it hasn’t been all work.  We’ve been reading and watching movies and baking and visiting with friends and staying up late and sleeping in. So as slow as it is here in the winter, we manage to keep ourselves occupied and enjoy the down time; spring is just around the corner, and we'll be suitably rested to switch back into high gear.

How I Got Into Puppetry

"How does a puppet come into being?  It happens when someone sees an image of himself, or some aspect of the world, in the crooked glass of his imagination and gives it form, movement, and sound. Someone has the urge to bring his drawing to life and make it move and talk.  Or maybe he thinks of a sound first and gives it shape and movement.  Or it may be an intangible, like the force of the wind, that inspires him and he gives it a shape and character.  The primitive urge still applies." - Bil Baird, The Art of the Puppet

Yeti puppet by Krista Dalby

Bil Baird's attempt to explain how a puppet comes into being could just as easily be a response to how a puppeteer comes into being. "How did you get into puppetry?" is a question I'm often asked. I usually give a short answer, one that is not very truthful but is efficient for cocktail parties or classroom conversations. I say that I tried out regular theatre and found it boring. It's not much of an answer. What follows is the rather long but far more accurate response.

From my Dad: "This is Krista's first puppet performance - she was about 4 years old - I  brought a kit called DUSO (Developing Understanding of Self and Others) home from grad school [he was studying Psychology] and the world has never been the same."

Like  many other North American kids in the 1970s, I grew up with the Muppets, who were as famous at that time as any other celebrity.  When I watched Sesame Street or The Muppet Show I completely bought in to the fantasy,  rarely considering that the characters were puppets, objects being manipulated by humans. These oddballs clearly had an influence on me, as I named my first pets after them; a trio of goldfish I called Ernie, Bert and Big Bird (epic misnomer).

I grew up in Calgary, and in high school our drama class took a field trip to Lunchbox Theatre, where we saw marionettist Ronnie Burkett perform one of his first shows, Virtue Falls; I've seen many of his other shows in the 20 years since.  I loved drama class, but hated high school, so I dropped out.

Punch and Judy puppets by Krista Dalby

A few years later, I found myself in the theatre program at Mount Royal College, where I took classes in costume- and set-making, stage management, and a variety of others on the technical side of things.  For an assignment in our props class, my class partner and I built an evil wasp marionette; it was pretty well-made, from what I can recall.  I graduated from college and decided that I never wanted to do theatre again, and proceeded to spend a whole bunch of years working dead-end jobs, traveling, and partying.  I wasn't doing a whole lot creatively, but I was writing.

Even sock puppets like to get their drink on.

Eventually I went to Concordia University in Montreal and got a degree in Creative Writing.  I wanted to be a novelist.  No, a short story writer.  No, for real this time, a screenwriter.  Or maybe a tv writer? Who was I kidding?  Resistance was futile.  The theatre dragged me back and I started writing plays.  Most of them were pretty terrible, but then they started getting better.

After university I moved to Toronto, where I got a Real Job and paid off my student loans. One day I heard that artist Lisa Pijuan-Nomura was holding a puppetry workshop. I had no idea what to expect but soon discovered her beautiful vision: a flock of puppeteers would create small portable puppet shows in cardboard box theaters. During one of the famously fun Red Cabarets, we would simultaneously descend on individual tables and perform short puppet shows. I had never heard of anything like it but I'm adventurous and I was eager to give it a try. My show was about two formerly conjoined twins; one was about to depart for space camp and the other was having severe separation anxiety. The performances began and the cacophony was unbelievable, the delighted surprise of the audience and the energy of the puppeteers were a potent mix. I'd never considered myself much of a performer, but when I performed my puppet show, I was delighted to discover that it wasn't about me at all. My audience was watching these two freaky little dolls being moved around in a cardboard box. And they were riveted.

This was awesome.

The possessed look on my face says it all.

That was the night I fell in love with puppetry.

Milé reads a book to Little Milé (puppet by Krista Dalby)

Some time before this I had fallen in love with a man.   Two years later, Milé and I moved in together.   He was living in a tiny third floor apartment (which we called The Shoebox) in Toronto's West end, and the day I moved in with him I met his downstairs neighbor, David Anderson.  I knew that David was a theatre person, so I suggested that we have dinner and get to know each other.  Our dinner date rolled around, and when Milé and I showed up, David was totally distraught; his producer had just quit, and he had a show opening in just a few weeks.  As it so happened, I had just left my Real Job and had no immediate prospects, perhaps I could help him out for a few weeks?  I was hired over dinner that night, and wound up working with David at Clay & Paper Theatre for the next four years.

David Anderson of Clay & Paper Theatre

Clay & Paper creates outdoor theatre, parades and festivals using a myriad of puppetry styles, from giant puppets to hand puppets, and everything in between.  David and I wrote four plays together (soon to be five!), and I produced all of the company's shows and events from 2006 to 2010.  This was where my true education in puppetry took place.  David had been creating public space performances since the sixties, and there was no idea that was too crazy.  Turn a wheelbarrow into a puppet herd of race horses?  No problem.  Form a bicycling-oriented puppet squad?  Sounds perfectly reasonable.  Burn twenty-foot skeleton sculptures in the park?  Terrific!  I wrote, I produced, I built, I performed, I led workshops, and over the years organized hundreds of people.

That's me walking my dead frog in a baby carriage,
representing The Fear of Species Extinction,
At Clay & Paper's annual Night of Dread

Thus it was that puppetry conspired to take hold of me.  Meanwhile I had met young performer and producer Guy Doucette, who invited me to attend one of his shadow puppetry plays.  I was instantly fascinated by the art form. Guy and I became fast friends and soon we were collaborating on shadow plays.  I also met teacher Craig Morrison through Clay & Paper; he's a kick-ass designer, and soon he started collaborating with us, too. Over the last four years we've created half a dozen shadow puppetry plays, which have become increasingly complex and refined.

Shadow puppets from The History of Shadows,
designed by Craig Morrison and Guy Doucette

When I made a brief foray into the world of opera with Tapestry New Opera Works, of course my puppet-brain came with me, and I wrote two operas for puppets: The Shaman's Tale (composer Kevin Morse) with giant puppets and shadow puppets, and sock puppet opera The Perfect Match (composer Anthony Young) which was eventually made into a Bravo! short film.

Scene from The Perfect Match

I can't seem to quell this madness for puppets, and now spend a good deal of time doing puppetry workshops through ArtsCan Circle, the Ontario Arts Coucil's Artists in Education program, and at Small Pond Arts.

So there's the long answer to how I got into puppetry.  Or perhaps, how puppets got into me?

Scary Clown says "BYE BYE!"
Puppet by Krista Dalby