Saturday, March 05, 2011
Toy Theatre at the Library
Mariella Bertelli is a storyteller and librarian with an extensive background in puppetry and theatre. She has recently worked on a retelling of the 16th century Italian classic Orlando Furioso and on her own stories inspired by material in the Toronto Archives.
I contacted Mariella to ask about her involvement in toy theatre. She shared that "...toy theatres are my passion after discovering them while working at the Osborne collection of Early Children's books...With my friend (and fellow librarian) Mary Anne Cree we have developed and performed (to private audiences) two shows -real adult content- adapting two stories from Boccacio's Decameron, and have had lots of fun doing them."
The source material sounds very challenging to adapt, but from the still shots I found of her doing one of the productions, shared here, it looks like it was an amazing occasion, complete with live music according to the notes!
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OOH! I have read the Decameron and it is very adult (and often quite funny). I had heard about the book so many times that I had to read it. There were famous paintings throughout history from those stories. Here is a link to Waterhouse's painting of the Decameron:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.johnwilliamwaterhouse.com/pictures/tale-decameron-1916/
Would love to see a puppet version!