Kristi Friday wants to bring art and theatre to rural Saskatchewan. Through Dancing Sky Artist in Residence program funded by the Saskatchewan Arts Board, she is doing that in communities such as Watrous, Cudworth, Middle Lake, and Humboldt.
Seniors and public daycare children gathered at the Community Gathering Place on Oct. 13 and Oct. 20 to learn about putting on a pupport show through Friday鈥檚 teaching.
Friday talked about how to make a puppet come to life, putting on a play, creating voices, and phyicalization of the puppet.
This combination of older people and preschool aged children is a pilot project for Friday who has other programs for her residence that focuses on K-6 grades. She wants this to become a community wide activity that brings that interaction between young and old.
鈥淭here is some programs happening like this where they are bring seniors and daycares. Community involvement, engagement, and it鈥檚 good for both to come together and sometimes they don鈥檛 get that exposure to one another as much as they have in the past.鈥�
Humboldt Co-op Daycare Centre Executive Director, Loriann Bodnard says her kids got to learn about puppetry hands on with Friday giving the kids the opportunity to join her and physically use the puppets.
This program was therapeutic for the seniors, says Bodnard and allowed the kids to socialize with them.
鈥淚t鈥檚 good for the children to experience elderly people and have compassion for them and also to learn to communicate with them. Not everyone has that experience to interact with the elderly.鈥�
Friday saw the benefits to programs like these in a program she did in Bruno. The kids wrote and performed for seniors and many people in the community came out to support them.
Friday started as a puppeteer because as an artist in Saskatchewan, she needed to be versatile in order to constantly keep working.
Friday loves puppetry because she can be anybody she wants to be compared to when she is hired for live theatre.
鈥淲hen I get hired as an actress, I have a certain look and certain sound so I tend to get hired for certain roles. When I鈥檓 a puppet, I can be anybody. I can be the witch, I can be the frog, I can be the princess, I can be the king.鈥�
This freedom of identity is a great thing for kids, says Friday because they are free to be whoever they want to be. Puppetry has brought many kids out of their shell, says Friday.
鈥淚n almost all workshops I鈥檝e done, I鈥檝e had teachers or parents come up afterwards and say, 鈥業 can鈥檛 believe that this student did that. Normally they are so quiet and don鈥檛 engage.鈥�
In theory, the puppet鈥檚 鈥減erformance鈥� gives kids that safety because they are the ones behind the current.
Next for Friday is storytelling events where people from the community come in and tell their stories.
鈥淗opefully, it creates a conversation because that鈥檚 the one thing feels like is starting to be missed in a lot of our communities with modern technology. To be able to bring people together and tell their stories again like we used to always do.鈥�
