The Boy and the Heron, a large-scale puppet, a walking, flowing theatre piece won the First Place award at the Bowfest Parade this year.
Created by a new Island-based troupe of puppeteers that includes Liz Nankin, Blair Hayashi, Paul Hoosen, Michael Florendo and Angie Balbon, the puppet, named Sandy (after Blair’s father) is meant to share something meaningful in a poetic, gentle and unexpected way for this year’s parade.
Liz Nankin created the intent to bring puppetry to the island and found like-minded artists to create a new puppet theatre based on Bowen. Co-creator of Bowen Fables, shadow puppet films about the history of the island, Liz was trained at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Los Angeles. She is also a costume designer in film and theatre.
Blair Hayashi is an interdisciplinary artist in clowning, puppetry, stilt walking, music making, painting, illustrating and writing.
Paul Hoosen is a master puppeteer and creator with a lifetime of work, including the TV show, Stargate. He founded Cirque Alexander, a theatre clown company which toured internationally for 40 years.
His puppetry experience lies in hand-and-rod and animatronics. He also created the Therapeutic Clown Program at BC Children’s Hospital which has been going strong for 30 years.
Michael Florendo is a civil engineer with a love of design and building.
Angie Balbon has been in the business of makeup artistry for over 15 years. She recently won Makeup Artist of the Year for North America Hair Awards.
The group realized that Bowfest was a wonderful way to introduce spectacle puppetry and bring other like-minded souls together – especially with this year’s theme: Sacred Creatures Across Cultures.
The idea of a Heron was born of Blair’s Japanese ancestry and Liz’s love of Japanese stories and art. She had already been working on a puppet version of the story of the paper cranes.
Sandy is named after Blair’s late father and he wore his father’s kimono in the parade, leading the Heron and carrying the cherry blossom banner with traditional Japanese characters of the title.
The group worked through the summer, engineering, designing, rigging, painting, rehearsing and learning how to bring life to the 18-foot bird. The Japanese cloud block print theme was added as walking theatre set pieces and the foam clouds were carried by Aaron Gustafson, his wife Vanessa, and their two beautiful boys, Arlo and Shep, participating in the parade procession.
Creating illusion and sharing the experience with an audience and our community gives energy to possibilities and wonderment.
