BEAR’S GARDEN

UPCOMING SHOW DATES

October 18 - Hotel Wolfe Island, Kingston, ON (tickets)
October 20 - Bastard Coffee House, Delta, ON (tickets & info)
October 24 - near Golden Lake, ON (tickets & info)

Bear’s Garden picks up where the folk tale left off. Twice Bear has been tricked in his home in the Wild. Now the Peasant, who has eaten by theft, needs the help of messengers from above and beyond to leave the confines of impossibility and be dreamt into another story. The wrestling happens in kitchens.

In this work we are driven to consider colour and dream-inducing composiiton by the beautiful prints and collages of Slovak illustrator Viera Bombova. While this show could never be an hommage, it certainly is lifted by the breath her pictures release into the world.

Birdbone Theatre is 14 years old, so naturally the puppeteers and show makers have aged some, and their imaginations too, a little leathered and pounded flat by the demands of the times. So we pray, in making this show let our minds split like ripe fruit and flower with impossible colour, to in the least, honour so beautiful of a World in all her glory. Let in the colours, let dreaming twist open the dry torn-paper of rationalizations worn thin. Let them make fertile ground for stories. Meaty stories. The ones that nourish.

Given the situation, we have decided to formally center young people in this work, not because our other shows were excluding of them, but because their willingness to be enraptured by Mystery, and their instinct for Story, can help their older people see other things.

We are humbled and ever grateful for the generous support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts, which not only makes the creation of this work possible, but also allows us to continue our partnership with the Rideau Lakes Public Library in Elgin, Ontario, to offer quality artistic programming to young people in our communities.

Bear’s Garden company is Aleksandra Bragoszewska, Alison Gowan and Ekaterina. We are grateful to our sponsors and funders: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Maitland Tower, Rideau Lakes Public Library, and CFRC 101.9fm Queen’s Radio.