Arts On Atlantic Reliquary

"Reliquary" is a show that explores the intersection of puppetry and sculpture and looks to harness the energy of spiritual fingerprints instilled by humans unto objects. The artists have combined pieces of antiquity with created puppets to examine how the collected energy flows from one to the other. The viewer is invited to manipulate certain puppet/sculptures themselves, and a narrative that joins the pieces together is either imposed or imagined. As the puppets sit they slowly collect deeper layers of human contact.

The Old Trout Puppet Workshop was founded on a ranch in southern Alberta in the fall of 1999. Our first show, The Unlikely Birth of Istvan, premiered to a bunkhouse full of cowboys and Hutterites. We've come a long way since then: we have since toured across the country and into the United States as well as Europe. We've created six more mainstage productions that have received national and international acclaim (The Tooth Fairy, Beowulf, The Last Supper of Antonin Carême, Pinocchio, Famous Puppet Death Scenes, and The Erotic Anquish of Don Juan). We've also built a forty-five foot tall wind-powered puppet machine on permanent display at Big Rock Brewery, adapted our shows into books (two have been shortlisted for the Governor-General's Award for Children's Literature). We've made three short films, which have played at festivals across the world and garnered several awards. We've created a video for the international popstar Feist, which received a Juno for Best Music Video. We've collaborated widely, with dancers, directors, musicians, and other companies. And we've got a house band, The Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir

which tours around the world. This will be the first venture into the realm of installation.

BRIEF COMPANY HISTORY