Village Squire, 1977-03, Page 5Richard Keeland and Cheryl Smith have been putting on hundreds of puppet shows this winter under
Local Initiatives Program grant.
No Strings Attached
fun for the kids
and the puppeteers too
In the darkened school gym 150 pairs of young eyes (and a
few adults' too) were rivetted on the little box at one end of
the room. Tiny characters acted out their parts in living
colour. A children's educational television program?
No, it was something far rarer in local school: a puppet
show performed by the area's only resident puppet theatre
and on around time taken out for giving birth to two children.
They're enjoying No Strings Attached theatre's version of
Hansel and Gretel with the various characters all being
portrayed by puppets all manipulated by Cheryl Smith and
Richard Keelan. It's a performance which will be repeated in
many a school gymnasium and community library in the next
few months.
The pair are presently working under a Local Initiatives
Project grant which will keep them performing for and
working with children until June. and getting paid for it for a
change.
"It's having the grant," says Cheryl, a vivacious young
woman who looks 18 although she says she's nearing 30. "It's
great to have the time and the supplies." For the first time,
she says, she hasn't had to scrounge through second hand
stores and every other place she can find for used cloth and
other materials needed for the show. Cheryl's interest in
puppetry goes back eight years to when she was working in a
Hamilton library and the staff began looking for ways to
attract more children into the library. The puppet show idea
was hatched and Cheryl soon became deeply involved in
puppetry. She's been working with puppets ever since, off
and on around time taken out for giving birth to two
children.
It was four years ago that she and another woman founded
No Strings Attached. The past two years she has worked with
Richard and they've kept up a steady pace of mounting and
THE VILLAGE SQUIRE/MARCH, 1977. PG. 3.