Ronnie Burkett and The Daisy Theatre a hit in Montreal

Ronnie Burkett is a story-teller with strings attached. His characters, his marionettes, each a labour of love, allow him to fill a theatre with laughter and love.

There’s a kind a spell cast when an audience full of adults is almost transported back to childhood watching him operate.

On a recent Tuesday night in March, with yet another snowstorm bringing Montreal to a standstill, Burkett managed to fill the theatre with people eager to embrace his work.

Plucking participants from the audience everyone’s all the more engaged… and the mastery of the craft of puppeteering is not hard to appreciate.

“Half of my life is on stage performing, being that guy, and the other half is the sort-of hermit-like existence in my studio” 

At first his little people appear so small on the big stage, but as the stories continue, it is Ronnie who appears the giant, if you notice him at all.

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It all started in Medicine Hat, Alberta, with the “P” volume of the family encyclopaedia he tells me in an interview last week.

In an attempt to distract a seven year-old, while she made lunch, Bukett’s mother told him to go look at the books.

“And it fell open to a two-page article on puppets and I looked at it, and thought, ‘Oh, that’s what I’m gonna’ do!’, and she called me for lunch, and I closed the book and that’s all it’s ever been for me.” Burkett remembers.

“I think that seven year-old saw in this little article and the photos accompanying it, I think it appealed to the loner child who liked telling stories, who liked making things, who liked crafts and who liked putting on little shows in the basement. So for me it was an all encompassing art-form that said you can make it, you can write it, you can wiggle it around and you’re not locked into just being you; you can be the princess and the prince, and the dragon and the evil wizard.” Burkett explains.

“I have fallen so deeply in love with the audience”

And he appreciates it all even more now, realising he’s not locked into his own physical form or age and he says that’s what keeps him going.

The puppets, exquisite things, have a life of their own.

Ronnie Burkett says he did seek out the best in the field of puppetry and apprenticed himself:

“It is a huge part of what I do, and I sought out many, many old puppeteers when I was young who took me under their wing and taught me their techniques, and I’ve experimented with my own,”.

He says he was very lucky to be mentored in that old school manner.

“And yes the construction of the marionettes is very time-consuming and all-consuming, and so that’s the other half of my life; half of my life is on stage performing and being that guy, and the other half is the sort-of hermit-like existence in my studio”

He is an early riser in the studio, starting to work before dawn. “It’s very satisfying” he says of this movement between extrovert and introvert..

He has many fans across Canada who are always happy to see his name on a marquee and the word-of-mouth accolades help fill the theatres. There can be several years between shows.

It’s a major physical undertaking. Moving around the stage, out of the spotlight bringing life to his characters with his fierce and flexible voice.

“It’s vocal gymnastics out there, it’s over four octaves range” he says of this show, and he is careful to rest his voice the following day.

This production, The Daisy Theatre, is a break from Burkett’s usual form.

“The Daisy Theatre is, is completely different because there is no set script, and so I, over the last five years have gotten to build whatever character I’ve wanted to create who have no sense with the other characters, or create a character just for a song, and, so I have this sort of rep company of characters who shouldn’t all be hanging around backstage together but over time relationships have evolved and story lines have evolved, so it’s been kind of my play box in a way, that I get to do what appealed to me in the first place, which is “play” really,and invent stuff.”

But it’s also an homage to Czech puppeteers during the Nazi occupation who did illegal shows which were called ‘Daisies’.

Burkett explains that it’s based on “either the truth or the myth, that a daisy can grow in the dark, or a daisy can push itself through concrete, that a daisy is this resilient little growing thing.”

Ronnie Burkett has taken his work to many places in the world. From Moscow to the Sydney Opera House and the Vienna Festival as well as five runs in London’s West End and he’s been awarded generously including an Emmy Award in 1979 for work on the PBS production of Cinderabbit.

Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes has been entertaining audiences with bawdy and delightful shows for over 30 years now, And in that time, Burkett says, “I have fallen so deeply in love with the audience.”

“I realise an audience comes in with a full life experience and a frame of reference; everyone in that room knows absurdity and knows family relationships or personal relationships, they know loss, they know joy, they know the politic of what’s going on, so I don’t have to start from scratch with an audience because we’re all human beings in the room. So  I get to just tell my little stories from an entrance point w what it’s like to be human     we’re all human beings in the room.  And I love the audience now; it’s why I leave home, it’s why I go on tour, I can’t wait to see for example who’s coming tonight, I have no idea who’s coming tonight, so I’m excited to meet them.”

This current run at Montreal’s Centaur Theatre winds up this weekend and it is back into the studio in Toronto to begin his next work

With these next creations he will go back to a scripted format. But there will be another tour later in the year, and if you get the opportunity, go!.

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