Cowgrrl Bea

Humble Wonder Theatre was commissioned by the Telus SPARK Science Centre to create a new Peculiar Puppetronic Phenomena puppet show for their Adult's Only Night for July 2013. I wrote the show, designed the puppets and animations, and do the puppetry when the show is being performed.

As this edition's theme was 'Midway Science', we decided to create a bawdy country-western ballad about a polygamist cowgirl named Bea, who kept a colony of lovers out on the frontier. It was mostly an excuse to make a lot of dirty western puns and rodeo jokes.

The very talented Rachael Cardiello composed the music and sang the ballad for us. The show would not have happened without her. She managed to take my clunky limericks and turn them into a grand country ballad, complete with piano and violin and cowbells.

Technically, my goal for this project was to push the integration of shadow puppetry and digital animation further than in previous shows. This puppet show contains far more animated content than our previous ones, and certain sequences involve the puppets interacting fluidly with the projected video content. One sequence, for example, involves a real-life puppet hand lassoing a puppet, and as the lasso drags the puppet off the screen, hearts appear and trail off behind him as he disappears.