File puptcrit/puptcrit.0611, message 353


Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 13:05:25 -0500
From: "Arnold, Phil" <PArnold-AT-fanshawec.ca>
To: <puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org>
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] shakespeare and puppets


Over the past three decades (up to 2000) Sister Corona Sharpe (English
professor) at Brescia College, University of Western Ontario, London,
Ontario, Canada, has given performances of puppetry Shakespeare.

The Sister made all the puppets and sets and organized groups of readers
and performers.  English professors and graduate students would read the
text, while student puppeteers manipulated the puppets.

I met the Sister in 2001 just after she retired from puppetry.  I told
her I was a puppeteer new to the city.  She replied, "Well don't expect
me to come and see anything you do, I'm too old."  

She showed me two of her puppets: Calaban and Ariel from The Tempest,
then suddenly said: "you don't do that Muppet stuff do you?  I don't
like that; all that bobbing up and down as they leave the stage, it
makes them look ridiculous!"  This conversation is for ever etched into
my mind.

I had been meaning to contact Sister Sharpe again over the past 6 years
but hadn't quite mustered the courage to do so.  Then, for some unknown
reason, I made a call to the college to see if she was still...there.

"Unfortunately...," my heart dropped, I was too late..."the sister fell
and broke her hip a few weeks ago and she's convalescing at Parkwood
hospital."  I was then transferred to the nun looking after my nun.  She
was thrilled to hear from me, and that someone was interested in Sister
Corona's puppetry.

The upshot of all this is that I will be considered to receive some of
the puppets when an appropriate time comes.

Next week I'm off to Museum London.  "Hey!  Do you need an exhibition
idea?!"

Phil Arnold
Fanshawe College  
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