A collection of four plays by internationally renowned puppeteer Ronnie Burkett. This anthology includes the three plays of the Memory Dress Trilogy: Tinka's New Dress, Street of Blood, and Happy, as well as Provenance.

Tinka's New Dress

Two old friends become puppeteers, each performing with the same beloved folk characters, Franz and Schnitzel. Fipsi, ambitious and naive, aligns herself with the rule government, the Common Good. Carl, headstrong and outspoken, is forced underground as his satirical shows parody the censorship and oppression of the Common Good. Based on the illegal puppet shows staged in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, Tinka's New Dress examines propaganda versus truth, compliance versus censorship, and the collective society versus the individual.

Street of Blood

When Mrs. Edna Rural pricks her finger and bleeds onto her sewing he sees the face of Christ in a quilt square. As the media and the faithful converge on her sleepy prairie town, a has-been Hollywood vampire seeking rejuvenation and a karaoke-singing gay terrorist intent on revenge join the fray. And just as the bloodbath begins, the man in the quilt appears in the flesh to the odd trio, revealing that the bonds of blood are thicker and stranger than their individual thirsts led them to believe.

Happy

Happy, a cheerful veteran, homespun philosopher, and pensioner, wanders through episodes of grief in the lives of his fellow rooming-house tenants. Alongside Happy is Antoine Marionette, the emcee of the Grey Cabaret, who introduces arch presentations of sadness in song, pantomime, and burlesque that mirror and parody the stages of grief experienced by each character.

Provenance

Pity Beane, a young art academic, travels to Europe to trace the provenance of the subject of her obsession, a painting of a young man known simply as Tender. What she finds is so much more than she had ever imagined. In a broth run by an aging madam, the twentieth-century art scene is played out from Paris, London, and Vienna in an unrivalled exploration of beauty: our obsession with it, our fantasies about it, our addiction to it, and our ownership of it.

Ronnie Burkett has been captivated by puppetry since the age of seven and began touring his shows around Alberta at the age of fourteen. Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes was formed in 1986, continuously playing on Canada’s major stages and as a guest company on numerous tours abroad. Ronnie has received the 2009 Siminovitch Prize in Theatre, the Herbert Whittaker Drama Bench Award for Outstanding Contribution to Canadian Theatre, a Village Voice OBIE Award, and four Citations of Excellence from the American Center of the Union Internationale de la Marionnette. In 2019, Ronnie Burkett was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada. Forget Me Not is the fourteenth production from Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, following the international successes Penny Plain, Billy Twinkle, 10 Days on Earth, Provenance, and the Memory Dress Trilogy of Tinka’s New Dress, Street of Blood, and Happy. The Daisy Theatre, Ronnie’s wildly popular and ever-changing marionette vaudeville show, and the Daisy Christmas show, Little Dickens, continue touring to great acclaim. Ronnie lives in Toronto, and from his studio (known in puppetry circles as Puppetland) he continues to imagine and create new work.

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Liz Nicholls is a theatre writer, traveller, and appreciator of all matters theatrical.

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