Join us for CAMP’s first ever CRANK-A-PALOOZA! Crankies (or Moving Panoramas) are a unique way of sharing a visual tale over a series of minutes, sharing only what you want your audience to see, one frame at a time. Learn storytelling techniques from renowned puppeteer and teacher Peter Balkwill and create your own Crankies with multidisciplinary artist Monica Ila in this three-part series. Participants will have time to conceive a story, construct a letter-sized cardboard Crankie Theatre, and share their creations with workshop participants. All materials will be provided and no previous experience is necessary. 

Skills Learned:

• Visual storytelling and image based plot building
• Pacing through sequential imagery
• Understanding the basics and mechanics of a crankie theatre
• Translating a story into a scroll based performance structure
• Constructing a small scale cardboard crankie theatre
• Expanding storytelling through lighting, shadows, sound, and simple puppetry
• Sharing and presenting your crankie theatre within a supportive group setting

Day 1: Crankie Basics

• What is a Crankie
• How do we design a story in scroll format
• Idea generation

Day 2: Storymaking

• Explore story ideas
• Create Storyboards and start on scroll
• Creation of magic elements (puppets, shadows)
• Creating your script and finding songs for your piece
• Construction time

Day 3: Refine and Present

• Assemble crankie and storytelling elements
• Workshop with peers
• Getting feedback and time for tweeks
• Final Presentation to a small invited audience

Your Instructors

Monica Ila (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and prairie mermaid from Calgary, Alberta. Her work includes sculpture, murals, painting, and puppetry. Playfulness is at the heart of everything she makes. Monica is a resident at NVRLND. Arts Foundation and is studying Sculpture at the Alberta University of the Arts. She has had the privilege of exhibiting her artwork in galleries and public institutions across Canada. Monica believes that art is instrumental in bringing communities closer together and rediscovering the whimsy within our daily lives.

In addition to teaching Peter Balkwill is also a founding co-Artistic Director of the Old Trout Puppet Workshop, as well as founding co-Education/Artistic Director for the Canadian Academy of Mask and Puppetry, and the past curator of live performance for the Festival of Animated Objects.

Through the arc of his artistic journey Peter has focused primarily on the physical nature of theatre and live performance, with a strong emphasis on the application of puppetry, and how design integrates into the embodied form of expression. Through much of his work, design, and performance Peter has sought to elevate puppetry up to a level of sophistication, moving it past the moniker of children’s entertainment, joining the current renaissance within North America at least, of restoring puppetry to a high-art – a form that is able to address deep, dark, complex and epic themes relevant to people of every walk and any age of life