It’s been a massive year for Larrikin Puppets, full of live performances, workshops and touring.
2023 began with final puppet footage being filmed for the HILARIOUS 8-episode comedy series “IT’S A CULT!” by Cheeky Moon. Our own Brett Hansen performed the puppetry of Professor James Gilmour in one episode, plus a singing, dancing end credit sequence. The series premiered in a movie length screening at New Farm Cinemas in early February. It’s such a funny, quirky and heartwarming series (and we’re not just saying that!). Well worth a watch.
Our puppet shows and workshops for the year began with some Vacation Care/OSHC visits in January before Term 1 kicked off with several Childcare Centre visits.
Our first short tour of the year was in early February. A trip down to Coffs Harbour to run a Puppetry Performance Workshop for the CHATS Productions Inc. cast of Avenue Q. The CHATS (Coffs Harbour Amateur Theatre Society) production of Avenue Q was the fifth one we’d worked with. We always really appreciate when theatre companies look to puppeteers to provide training for their cast of actors, many who haven’t used puppets before. Puppetry is a type of acting and deserves to be done well.
While in Coffs Harbour we performed our puppet show for kids and families at Bunnings Coffs Harbour. We’ve performed at many Bunnings stores over the years, so it was great to treat the locals in the area with a fun puppet show while we were passing through.
By mid February, the primary school bookings had begun for us, so we spent the rest of February visiting many primary schools and childcare centres, plus one birthday party. Receiving positive feedback makes our hearts sing!
“That was hands down the best incursion I’ve ever experienced.” – Year 1 teacher
March was similarly full of school performances, but with the addition of a very special performance at The Brisbane Synagogue at The Jewish Festival of Purim. This was our first time visiting a synagogue, where we were given a lovely tour before the puppet show. We also did our annual day of performances at South Bank Parklands for Kids Collective, with hundreds of children and families attending. Such enjoyable shows there.
We went on a short break in late March/early April down to Melbourne to enjoy the Melbourne International Comedy Festival before immediately starting back upon our return with Easter puppet shows, more vacation care/OSHC performances, a library performance and a huge festival called the ImagiNation Children’s Festival at the Kingston Butter Factory Cultural Precinct. At the festival we performed our puppet show inside the Butterbox Theatre, which is the same theatre where we performed our production of Hijabi Girl: A Musical Puppet Show in 2022. We LOVED performing in the theatre and the audience was NEXT LEVEL wonderful. We even had a Dad and his kids return to see us there after seeing us perform the week before at a library!
In April, for the first time ever, we launched our Film and TV Monitor Puppetry Workshop for High School students! The first school to enjoy this workshop was Tamborine Mountain State High School on Tuesday 18 April, 2023. And then we presented the same workshop at St Eugene College in Burpengary on Monday 17 July, 2023. We received our film and TV monitor puppetry training in the USA, and now we teach film students here in Australia. We would like to run these workshops in more high schools, as well as universities and TAFE colleges. Most Australian film makers have not been trained to work with monitors for the filming of puppets, so that’s where we come in.
Throughout this year, we’ve worked with music producer Aaron Shanahan from Imagine Music (formerly Sunny Island Music) to record two new songs – “Party Hat” (written for us by Liam McAlary from Yeah Nah) and “I Like How I Look, Think, Feel” (coming soon to Spotify).
This has been a year where we’ve been pretty popular at special schools – Goodna Special School, Maryborough Special School, Logan City Special School and TWO visits to Western Suburbs Special School (Inala). These kids are so much fun and we find these gigs very rewarding.
A lot of festivals have had us this year! Starting with the previously mentioned ImagiNation Children’s Festival in Kingston, we also performed four puppet shows over two days at the Brookfield Show, three performances as part of the Moreton Bay Region leg of the Anywhere Theatre Festival, eight puppet shows over three days at Snowflakes In Stanthorpe, six puppet shows over three days at the Rockhampton River Festival – where we shared a stage all weekend with renowned, ARIA-nominated children’s band The Vegetable Plot, a performance at one of Australia’s biggest country music festivals the Gympie Music Muster, two performances at the Mary Valley Show, shows at the Condy Park Teddy Bear’s Picnic in Hervey Bay, the Sherwood Community Festival, the Bribie Lions Camp Quality Christmas Picnic, the Montville Festive Tree Lighting and the Centenary Community Carols in Middle Park.
In Stanthorpe, we had a RECORD SET by one of our fans! One 4-year old girl and her father attended our show 5 times over 3 days! It was so surreal! We also had another 9-year old girl attend a 3rd show because she kept missing the first 5 minutes of our show. Her Mum said we were the only reason they came back on Day 3. So fun.
For the first time in a good few years, we presented our two-day Island Puppetry Workshop & Play Jam on Bribie Island where we’re based. And once again, folks came from far and wide to learn puppetry for stage and screen, and to jam and have a great time with puppets on the weekend of 17-18 June, 2023.
While the workshop was attended mostly by adults seeking professional development, we were particularly excited about 12 year old Sam joining us. He was so very talented and passionate. We hope he keeps up his puppetry skills! Sam saw us perform at a corporate Christmas puppet show in 2019 and has been hooked on puppetry ever since.
Months and months later, people on social media are still talking about our school holiday puppet show at The Village Redcliffe. The retirement village in Rothwell invited all of the grandchildren and great nephews and nieces to join the residents for a jolly good time in the community centre dining room. Much fun was had by all!
We had two memorable puppet shows this year in pub/club/RSL type venues. Both City Golf Club in Toowoomba and the North Lakes Sports Club had us during the June/July school holidays.
In addition to our tours to Coffs Harbour, Rockhampton and Stanthorpe, we also performed some shows in Dalby, Childers and Gin Gin, as well as an EPIC three week tour of puppet shows in Central and North Queensland throughout late September and early October! Beginning with shows in Hervey Bay, Maryborough and Bundaberg, we travelled all the way up north to perform shows in Cairns, Townsville, Burdekin (Ayr), the Whitsundays (Bowen, Collinsville, Cannonvale, Proserpine), and Mackay. Every audience on our tour was so unique and so special to us. We even made a new 2 1/2 year old fan from Townsville who apparently can’t stop talking about Troggg and his friends – and has been practicing her puppeteering ever since!
One of our biggest achievements of this year was presenting a TEDx talk at TEDx Brisbane. TED conferences (Technology, Entertainment, Design) are huge conferences where influential people make inspirational speeches about their areas of expertise and big ideas. TEDx conferences are independent versions of TED, which are run all over the world. In the lead up to the big event, billboards with the image of Elissa and Troggg were displayed all over Brisbane. We presented our talk about puppets on Saturday 14 October, 2023. A video of our talk will hopefully be released online in 2024.
As I write this, we are in our final week of performances for 2023, as we are heading to Europe to enjoy a snowy Winter Christmas. A once in a lifetime opportunity to get away from the Queensland Summer heat and humidity to experience the magic we hear, see and read about in all the Christmas songs, movies and books.
We didn’t do any major collaborations this year. You might remember we’ve worked with such high rollers as Regurgitator, Todd Sampson, Chef Jason Roberts and Illy. But we have some great experiences lined up for 2024. We can’t wait!
This has been a really action packed year that has felt very quick! Thanks to all who supported Larrikin Puppets this year!
You can find out where we’re performing next on our gig calendar, and be sure to get in touch if you would like a puppet show, a puppetry performance workshop, a monitor puppetry for film and TV workshop, or a sock puppet making craft workshop.
Merry Christmas to you all!
Brett Hansen – Principal Puppeteer, Larrikin Puppets
