Actor-puppeteers Rachel Jones, Tim Coates and Brandon Jones have the puppet Evangeline row a canoe.
The Empress Theatre hosted its inaugural one act play festival before a large audience Friday night.
The festival featured plays directed by Amberly Plourde and Maren Coates in what is hoped will become an annual tradition.
“Most one acts are an hour or less,” Coates said. “So if you were to compare theater to books, a full stage play is a novel, a one act is a short story.”
The one act play festival at the Empress is intended to showcase local talent and innovative storytelling.
Unlike some festivals, the Empress event was not competitive, instead providing a safe place for experimentation and innovation.
“A lot of people who do one acts love one acts because it’s a way to try something different without having to put in as much time as a full show,” Coates said. “So when I say different, you might try something that is stylized, you might try something that is a different genre.”
“You might try movement pieces. You might do puppetry pieces. It’s an awesome chance to try something that you’ve maybe not done before in a mini scale.”
Plourde chose a one act titled Evangeline, a devised physical theatre piece with ancient Japanese form of puppetry known as Bunraku in which the puppeteers are in plain sight.
In devised theatre there is no playwright or script.
“Through improvisation techniques, you build the show from scratch,” Plourde explained. “So at the end of the day, no one is the author. All of us are.”
The cast of Evangeline included actor-puppeteers Tim Coates, Rachelle Jones, Brandon Jones and Carol Laing. Music composer was Hannah Bullock.
Coates chose an absurdist piece called Cut, in which cast members became confused as they acted a play within a play within a play.
The cast of Cut included Emily Kenney, Ross Jacobs, Aaron Broszat, Ben Wilson, Erik Kok, Sarah Bullock, Naomi Boors, Miles Poytress, Tim Coates, Monty Orr, Richard Amery, Olivia Lybbert, by Spencer and Chelsie Wolff.
