Café Concret: experimental puppet and performing object cabaret in Montreal + photos

Get a warm meal and a puppet show all in one go!   There’s a lot of info below, so for puppet fans with short attention spans, the FB event is here.

Café Concret is a cabaret of experimental puppetry, music, and performing objects founded in Montreal by Mark Sussman.   Based on the Spaghetti Dinner evenings produced by Great Small Works and founded by New York-based veterans of Bread and Puppet Theatre in 1978.

The common formula is: to produce events that offer opportunities for new, young, or more established artists to try out new object-based performance work in an informal setting and with a supportive audience; to expose audiences to new kinds of theatre, often mixing the old stage techniques of puppetry with contemporary mixed-media forms; and, to offer performance evenings at low cost, with a warm meal included in the price of the ticket.

The Humorists rehearsing Uh Uh Oh Oh. photo by Zuzu Knew November 2009.

Café Concret 6

Mardi/Tuesday 1 Decembre 09

20:00 12$/8$ étudiant(e)s

Theâtre Ste-Catherine

264 Ste-Catherine E., Montreal

Featuring:

Lisa Pietersma & Frances Adair Mackenzie – “Coat of Mail” – Storytelling and animation.

Meredith Holch – “Neighbors” – Animation.

Nervous Hunter – Projection, shadows and sound.
info at http://www.nervoushunter.com/

Quality Slippers Productions – “For You, Emmy.” – Excerpts of a new play for puppets and actors.
info at http://www.qualityslippers.ca/

Sarah Mangle – info and music at http://www.myspace.com/buysabear

Sarah Tracy & Jeremy Riehl – “ZYMO-XYL” – Narrative dialogue, sound, action.

The Humorists – “Uh Uh Oh Oh” – A new mind’s eye manifestation.
images at http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2503/4073477011_aa9c5204c3_o.gif
(catch the humorists performing tonight in the window of Monastiraki from 8pm-12am http://monastiraki.blogspot.com/2009/11/under-glass-eye.html )

A still from "Stay Calm" a shadow puppet music video by myself and Stephanie Gaidica with music by Over.I feat. Ida Maidstone. photo by Mark Sussman March 2008.

A performance of 27 Dirt Cheap Money Dances by the Lubberland National Dance Company from Bread and Puppet Theater in Vermont. photo by Mark Sussman March 2008.

An occasional series, Café Concret serves to connect the vibrant – and largely Francophone – puppetry community in Québec with experimental, political, and Anglophone puppetry artists. Local artists have included musical guests Elfin Saddle, Merrill Garbus (aka Tuneyards), the Chaotic Insurrection Ensemble, Sarah Mangle, and the Electric Voodoo Band; and Montreal-based puppeteers Clea Minaker, Marcelle Houdon, Salim Hammad, Chloe Beaulé-Poitras, Magali Chouinard, Jesse Orr, Sarah Chenevert-Beaudoin, and Billy Dee. Recent American guests have included: the Lubberland National Dance Company, a project of the Bread & Puppet Theater (Glover, VT); Clare Dolan & the Museum of Everyday Life (Glover, VT); the Awareness Theater Company (Burlington, VT); and Great Small Works (NYC).