AUDITION CALL: ATTN MUSICAL THEATRE KIDS!!!!!
Larrikin Puppets is seeking four children aged between 9-12 who can act and sing to provide voice acting and broadway musical style singing for a recording studio project. The auditions and recordings will take place in Brisbane. This is for a voice cast recording for ‘Hijabi Girl: A Musical Puppet Show’ and not for a live stage performance by the children. Hijabi Girl is a children’s book for ages 7-9 that Larrikin Puppets will transform into a musical theatre performance featuring puppets. We are seeking four different children – three girls and one boy. Their spoken voices and sung vocals will be used as character voices for the puppets in the upcoming touring show. We encourage children from Turkish and Vietnamese backgrounds to apply, as two of the puppet characters have these backgrounds. We do have a budget to pay, but it is only very small. Voice cast will be credited wherever possible. Super fun opportunity to work alongside puppetry arts professionals. Please send expressions of interest to elissa@larrikinpuppets.com.au
Blue Card holders:
Elissa Jenkins – 690261/3
Brett Hansen – 1161011/3
This year we traveled down to Kyogle in NSW for the Fairymount Festival, Coffs Harbour in NSW for the Special Children’s Christmas Party and up to Rockhampton in Central QLD for the Festival of the Bazaar.
Our biggest festival experience this year was at the Brisbane Festival – performing puppetry on stage at The Tivoli with legendary rock/fusion band Regurgitator as part of their new children’s act, “Regurgitator’s Pogogo Show”. Working with the members and management of Regurgitator was amazing for us. We also worked on one of their music videos. More on that below.
We performed a very large number of childcare centre puppet shows this year, with most centres opting to book our bigger and better childcare show with both performers. Elissa has also served as story teller during our “Story Time with Larrikin Puppets” performances.
We were back in Rockhampton this year to visit all of the libraries in the region – this time to run our puppetry performance workshop. We also presented our Storytime with Larrikin Puppets show at the Fraser Coast Libraries and Logan Hyperdome Library. Our premium sock puppet making craft workshop (which includes a puppet show, a performance workshop and the construction of your very own detailed sock puppet) was presented at Lockyer Valley Libraries and was a big hit with all ages in the Gatton and Laidley communities.
In the June/July school holidays we were flown to beautiful Hamilton Island for a series of puppet shows and puppetry performance workshops for tourists visiting the Whitsunday island. While most of 2019 has been dry and hot, most of the rain we saw this year occurred on the usually sunny Hamilton Island during that time – so our puppets made for great indoor entertainment for families unable to take part in water sports and other outdoor activities.
When Larrikin Puppets began seven years ago, the option to book Troggg the blue monster as MC for your wedding reception was always there, but never booked. Over the years Troggg has emceed other events such as film screenings, festivals, annual general meetings and media launches. But in 2019, Troggg hosted the glamorous wedding reception of Thomas and Allison at Events On Oxlade – a lovely venue in New Farm on the banks of the Brisbane River.
Hijabi Girl is a children’s book for ages 7-9 that Larrikin Puppets began transforming into a musical theatre performance for schools featuring puppets. Co-authored by prolific Australian author Hazel Edwards OAM and children’s librarian Ozge Alkan, this fun, musical puppet show will shine a spotlight on much-needed multicultural themes around diversity, identity, anti-bullying and creative problem solving for presentation at schools across Australia in 2020. We ran a successful crowd funding campaign, raising $8,321 to help fund new puppet and set builds and exceeded our crowdfunding goal. Thanks to everyone who contributed! Melbourne-based The Puppet Creation Lab have begun work on the main cast puppet builds, and we began work on scripting and song writing.
With so much else on our plate, we didn’t feel up to running our intensive public puppetry performance workshop this year. We really enjoyed the successful 2017 and 2018 events in which participants joined us on Bribie Island from Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Mackay and Brisbane. After we received a request for some private puppetry tuition from professional New Caledonia entertainers Olivia Buna and Eric Chivot, we decided to open the day up to a small, low key gathering in our home so that Olivia and Eric could riff off more than just each other during the workshop. It was a fun and rewarding day for all.
Larrikin Puppets will be out in the communities again providing exciting and colourful Christmas entertainment this year. So far we have a roster of puppet show performances at schools, childcare centres, vacation care and one corporate Christmas party at a Brisbane law firm. Interestingly we have not yet been invited to perform at any public events this year such as community Christmas carols or shopping centre Santa’s Arrival events. If you would like Larrikin Puppets at your shopping centre, festival or Christmas carols event, please be in touch! Many dates are booked up but there are a few dates still available.
Larrikin Puppets has continued to thrive in 2019 with puppet shows and workshops all over South East Queensland, Central Queensland and Northern New South Wales. We recently performed a series of school holiday puppet shows on Hamilton Island and in Rockhampton. We were also a feature act at the Pine Rivers Show this year, performing three puppet shows a day for all three days of the event.
We present colourful and exciting Christmas entertainment with our comedy-variety Christmas puppet show for all ages, featuring zany Muppet-style characters performing songs, skits, jokes and live interaction with the audience. These shows encourage the audience to dance, sing and play along, and involves audience participation. The show features two puppeteers and has become a family favourite at many Christmas events over the years.
