Presenter Pack
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Presenter Pack Hijabi Girl: A Musical Puppet Show By Larrikin Puppets [Photo Credit: The Puppet Creation Lab] PRESENTER’S INFORMATION Contents COMPANY PROFILE ....................................................................................... 3 ABOUT THE SHOW ......................................................................................... 3 PERFORMANCE SPECIFICS ........................................................................... 9 AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT ........................................................................... 10 MARKETING .................................................................................................. 11 PRODUCTION DETAILS ................................................................................ 14 CONTACTS .................................................................................................... 18 [Hijabi Girl: A Musical Puppet Show] Page 2 of 18 COMPANY PROFILE Larrikin Puppets performs colourful and exciting puppet shows and interactive puppetry workshops featuring zany characters and catchy songs for live, online and TV audiences. They have a fun, catchy debut music EP for kids aged 3-9, available across 150+ music streaming services. Highly entertaining and captivating, Larrikin Puppets’ fast-paced, feel-good puppetry celebrates fun, kindness and diversity while nurturing child development, encouraging audiences to talk, dance, sing and play along. Hijabi Girl: A Musical Puppet Show is Larrikin Puppets’ biggest theatre production to date. Larrikin Puppets regularly tours its smaller pop-up theatre comedy variety puppet shows, storytime puppet shows and puppet performance workshops to festivals, schools and libraries across Queensland, including rural and regional communities, for audiences 7 and under and their families. This performance is the first one developed by Larrikin Puppets that is specifically for older children aged 6 to 9 years (early primary) and designed for performances in theatres and halls with professional sound and lighting. Award-winning Larrikin Puppets, established in 2012, is a thriving Queensland puppetry arts company founded by puppeteer and musician Brett Hansen. His wife Elissa Jenkins joins him as co-puppeteer and human host. They specialise in children's entertainment and kids’ music through puppetry arts. Brett and Elissa, who received training in the USA under Jim Henson puppeteers from The Muppets and Sesame Street, provide child and family audiences with wide-eyed wonder, joy and laughs from beginning to end. A full-time professional puppetry arts company, prominent performances include Woodford Folk Festival, Puppetry Arts Festival of Brooklyn (USA), Hamilton Island Resort, Horizon Festival, Cooroy Fusion Festival, Redcliffe Sails Festival, Ipswich Festival, Bundaberg Pageant of Lights, and Gladstone Harbour Festival. Notable TV appearances include puppetry on The Bureau of Magical Things, Totally Wild and Juiced TV, and in music videos for Regurgitator and Tia Gostelow. ABOUT THE SHOW SHOW SYNPOSIS Hijabi Girl: A Musical Puppet Show is a colourful and thought-provoking theatre production by Larrikin Puppets for ages 6-9 based on a children’s [Hijabi Girl: A Musical Puppet Show] Page 3 of 18 book by Australian author Hazel Edwards OAM and Turkish-Australian Muslim co-author, Ozge Alkan. Hijabi Girl is a refreshing look at the diverse mix of cultures within most Australian schools. With themes around diversity, identity, anti-bullying and creative problem solving, the show is a celebration of multicultural Australia and a statement about acceptance, and coping successfully with being different. Hijabi Girl features 14 colourful hand puppets and creative rod puppets hand-crafted by seven different puppet builders from across Australia, Indonesia and the USA. The innovative show includes spectacular UV blacklight puppetry plus bizarre and delightful food, pencil, football, eye glass and shark puppets. Larrikin Puppets, from regional Queensland, are writing an original script and original songs based on the book. For authenticity, the main puppet cast are voiced by seven Queensland child actors and singers aged 9-12 with a Turkish-Australian child as narrator, all prerecorded for the show. Astonishingly, Hijabi Girl is performed by just two puppeteers - Brett Hansen and Elissa Jenkins – who were trained in the USA by Jim Henson puppeteers from The Muppets and Sesame Street. Hijabi Girl book co-author Ozge Alkan wears a hijab and was harassed on the train after The Lindt Café terrorist incident. Co-authoring this book is her response, with a view to creating social change and impact with children. The creative development of Hijabi Girl: A Musical Puppet Show began in the aftermath of the Christchurch NZ Mosque tragedy in 2019 when we raised $8300, exceeding our target, to crowdfund the puppet build and set design - a huge cry of support for love, tolerance and understanding of other cultures at a time of extreme hate and prejudice. Larrikin Puppets is self-funding script development, songwriting, paid music production, paid child performers, marketing and promotions. We’ve had 12 of the 14 puppets built and have auditioned and cast 7 children to provide the acting and singing voices of the puppet characters, including narration in both Turkish and English. A stage set is under construction. The script adaptation and songs are in development. The show was set to premiere in July 2020, but due to Covid restrictions we were unable to record songs with children. We hope to begin recording in November 2020 with a premiere performance set for 2021. [Hijabi Girl: A Musical Puppet Show] Page 4 of 18 ARTFORM • Children’s / Family • Music Theatre / Opera • Puppet Theatre ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Hijabi Girl Book Authors: Hazel Edwards and Ozge Alkan 93 crowdfunding supporters Puppeteers: Brett Hansen and Elissa Jenkins Scriptwriter: Elissa Jenkins Songwriter: Brett Hansen Music Producer: Dylan Kreis Set Design: Steve Beeston Puppet Builders: School children - The Puppet Creation Lab & Puppet Tribe, Melbourne AFL Football - Prairie Puppets, USA Turkish Kebab and Rice Paper Roll - Feriana Tiarnida, Indonesia Pencils - Katherine Hannaford - Sydney Sharks and tadpoles - Top Of The Stairs Puppets, Perth Glasses rod puppet and book parade rod puppet - Margie Salvatore, USA Voice Cast: Melek Voice - Mabel Tamone, aged 12 Melek Singing Voice - Caitlin Trappett, aged 12 [Hijabi Girl: A Musical Puppet Show] Page 5 of 18 Tien Voice - Madeleine York, aged 10 Zac Voice - David Hill, aged 12 Lily Voice - Ella Kennedy, aged 11 Aimee (AFL Football) Voice - Lily Skelson, aged 10 Turkish/English Narrator Voice - Zaid Seker, aged 11 BIOGRAPHIES Brett Hansen: Children’s entertainer Brett Hansen is the founder of and principal puppeteer at Larrikin Puppets. Brett’s weekly puppetry work is mainly focussed on live performances at schools, childcare centres, festivals and libraries around South-East Queensland plus regular tours across Queensland from Rockhampton in the north to Roma in the west. Brett also runs beginner puppetry workshops at schools and for casts of theatre productions and for film and TV productions. In 2016, Brett spent three months in the USA for professional development where he networked, trained and performed with puppeteers in New York City, Los Angeles and Texas. He received formal puppetry training at the Beyond The Sock advanced puppetry workshop at the University of North Texas under Jim Henson puppeteers from Sesame Street and The Muppets; Marty Robinson and Noel MacNeal, with puppet construction training from Pasha Romanowski (Project Puppet, The Moe Show). Brett also trained at The Puppet Kitchen in Manhattan, New York under Michael Schupbach (Sesame Street, The Jim Henson Company). Brett performed his puppet show with Troggg and friends in New York City at the Puppetry Arts Festival of Brooklyn. In theatre, Brett was puppetry consultant (trainer of puppeteer cast members) in both the 2012 and 2014 Brisbane Arts Theatre productions of Broadway musical, ‘Avenue Q‘, as well as the 2017 Sunnybank Theatre Group production and 2019 Toowoomba Shoe Box Theatre production. Brett was also a puppeteer cast member of the show in 2012, co-performing Nicky and Trekkie Monster. Brett’s own casted stage shows ‘Thank Troggg You’re Here: A Puppet Impro Spectacular!’ and ‘Show Of Hands’ have been performed several times to large audiences as part of the Anywhere Theatre Festival in 2014 and 2018. [Hijabi Girl: A Musical Puppet Show] Page 6 of 18 In film, Brett performed the puppet characters in Richard Bell’s ‘5 for 35’, a film which screened in 2015-2016 at the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8) at GOMA (Queensland’s Gallery Of Modern Art). He also assisted with the puppetry in ‘Cluck: The Web Series’, puppeteered Troggg in the short film ‘Heart of a Thousand Souls’, and puppeteered two characters in the short film ‘Kev’. In television, Brett has performed puppetry on “Totally Wild” (Network Ten / Eleven), “The Bureau of Magical Things” (Jonathan M. Shiff Productions and Network Ten / Eleven), The Late Nite Show” and “Showreel” (31 Digital) and appeared (as Troggg) on two episodes of “Juiced TV” (Children’s Hospital Foundation). Brett performed the puppetry in the music video for Regurgitator’s Pogogo Show song ‘Best Friends Forever’ which was a finalist at the Queensland Music Awards for Best Music Video and aired on ABC Kids TV. He also performed puppetry in the music video for Tia Gostelow’s single, ‘That’s What You