Clay & Paper Theatre

Clay & Paper Theatre is a community arts theatre company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada that produces narrative theatre using large-scale puppets, masks, stilts, visual imagery, music, and poetry. A fundamental component of Clay & Paper Theatre's mandate is social inclusion.

WWW clayandpapertheatre.org

Origins

Clay & Paper Theatre was founded in 1994 by its artistic director, David Anderson. David helped to establish the organization in community-centered Dufferin Grove Park, Toronto, where they have a small workshop and storage facility.

Festivals

Clay & Paper Theatre delivers an annual multidisciplinary summer festival called Day of Delight. Coinciding with summer solstice, Day of Delight is a celebration of love, courtship and desire.

Plays

Each summer, Clay & Paper Theatre produces a new Canadian play which runs for up to 5 weeks in Dufferin Grove Park. These plays are built, rehearsed and performed in full public view and admission to all performances is on a pay what you can basis.

Community Parades

Occurring in late October on the Saturday before Halloween, Night of Dread is an annual community event in which giant puppets and images of fears are paraded through the streets and then burned in a bonfire at Dufferin Grove Park with live music, dancing and fire spinning. Attracting thousands of revelers, 2010 marks the eleventh annual Night of Dread celebration.

Projects

Puppets Without Barriers Project Partners: Centre for Learning Technologies at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) and Picasso Pro. Funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage.

An accessibility initiative to reduce barriers to audiences who are blind or deaf. Basic adaptations have been made to scripts and programs as well as additional interpretation including ASL, audio description, tactile tours, Braille and Large-print.

Cyclops: Cycling Oriented Puppet Squad Project Partners: Toronto Cyclists Union, Bike Pirates, Sweet Pete's. Funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

Clay & Paper Theatre's 3-year bicycle-based theatre project. This 4-person mobile performance squad animates and energizes environmental and cycling events across Toronto, bringing theatre and cycling enthusiasm to the unsuspecting public, drawing attention to urban environmental issues and promoting active living.

Building Local Stories Project Partners: Friends of Dufferin Grove Park.

Productions

Art Ambulance II
Art Ambulance
The Echoes Project II: Pigeon Pie
The Echoes Project
Animal Nature
Our Last Best Hope
Day of Delight
A History of Forgetting
The Pedaler's Wager
The Circus of Dark & Light
Night of Dread
Cycling Oriented Puppet Squad
Night of Dread
Day of Delight
Between Sea & Sky
Bicycle Revolution
Leap Year Pudding
Puppets On Ice
Song of the Innocents
Horse Feathers
Night Of Dread
Day of Delight
Night of Dread
We Need Help!
Day of Delight
Puppets on Ice
Night of Dread
Camões, the One-Eyed Poet of Portugal
Night of Dread
The Space Between
Lilith
Day of Delight
Puppets on Ice
Night of Dread
Day of Delight
Puppets on Ice
The Sylliad
GOLD in Dufferin Grove Park
Night of Dread
Night of Dread
Night of Dread
The Lost City of Wagadu
Lilith Unfair
The Ballad of Garrison Creek
Democracy
The Epic of Mael Duin
The Resurrection of Fornax
The Return of Green Man
''Gilgamesh''

Awards and honors

2009 Davenport Community Builders Award
2008 Short listed for William Kilbourn Award for the Celebration of Toronto's Cultural Life
2007 Chalmers Arts Fellowship, Ontario Arts Council