Can't bear the the thought of sitting in a theatre in the middle of August? With their new production, The Pedaler’s Wager, Clay and Paper Theatre bring the entertainment to you by bicycle.
A parade of bikers—towing drums, horns and three over-sized mechanical puppets—shanghaied a sleepy Shaw Street on Sunday with a cacophony of bells, yelps and cries, calling bystanders to join their migrating pageant.
It was intermission between acts one and two during a performance of The Pedaler’s Wager, a multi-site mobile play by the Cycling-Oriented Puppet Squad from Clay and Paper Theatre. The three-part play requires performers to pack their puppets, instruments and set decorations into blue wooden bike trailers and travel between makeshift stages in Dufferin Grove (#BCT), Fred Hamilton (#OSS) and Trinity Bellwoods (#WQW) parks.
“We were quite curious as to whether the audience would follow us,” said David Anderson, the theatre’s artistic director and co-author of the play, which debuted in mid-July. “Our performers are very brave people, and sometimes the audience isn’t quite as brave.”
At least 50 people—many of them curious pedestrians and idle park-dwellers drawn in by the spectacle—turned out for the three stationary acts, and a dedicated handful of cycling playgoers joined the parades between stages.
“I like this play a lot,” said Isaak North, a nine-year-old who, with a few friends, decided to tag along for the whole two-hour show when he caught the first act after his soccer practice. “It’s funny, it’s really entertaining and really creative.”
The play, a vaudevillian allegory about the evils of wealth and excess in the modern era, tells the simple story of a poor family—played in turns by small blue puppets and burlap-clad actors—forced from its farm by developers. The villains, Baron Boots and Lady Grabsome, are two enormous-headed, 10-foot-tall papier-mâché puppets perched on the shoulders of actors. Thirsty for oil and in need of workers, they greedily lure the family to the city with promises of glitz, leisure and cheap iPods.
“The theme is forced migration, which is endemic in this world,” said Anderson, adding that biking to different locations reinforces the idea and is “an attempt to illustrate how effective bicycles can be.” Anderson hopes the show will help lure more investment in the puppet squad, because its three-year federal funding deal is about to run out. Performances continue tonight until Aug. 14; check Clay and Paper Theatre’s website for schedule.
