Since the late 1980's when I began making puppets, most of my puppetry projects have centered around creating my own live puppet shows and a cast of original character. However on occasion I have also contributed as a puppeteer on productions for a variety of clients. Below is a chronological list of these projects.
Information about my live puppet shows is found on the Past Shows page of this blog.
During my high school years in the late 1980s I performed my puppet character Bruno the Dog (above) on the first season of "Homegrown Café" on CJOH (CTV). This was the first time that I performed a puppet on television! "Homegrown Café" was a variety show that showcased local talent. Each show had judges to pick the winning skits, but in truth they were tasked with comparing apples with oranges. Unfortunately I lost to a baton twirler who set the ends of her baton on fire. So of course the joke there... next time I should light my puppets on fire! The above photo shows Bruno the Dog sitting at the judges table.
Kiddie Corner
Here I am at 15 or 16 years of age with Bruno and Mr. Noodlehead in the "Homegrown Café" studio at CJOH. The building that this studio was in has since been torn down. It was located next to the radio station at the corner of Clyde Ave. and Merivale Rd. in Ottawa. Below, Bruno meets one of the flamingo set pieces.
McYIG Mascot Costume
From the early to mid 1990's I worked at the Westgate Mall Your Independent Grocer store packing groceries and doing car orders. During this time I built a mascot for the store named McYIG. He was a giant smiling paper bag filled with groceries. This photo was taken during his unveiling which was promoted as being his first birthday party! There were balloons, cake, and face painting. I wore the costume for the "big reveal" and had to walk outdoors from the back of the mall to the front of the store where the party was. Some staff followed behind McYIG in a jeep playing the Rocky theme song. Unfortunately it was a windy day and the whole costume acted like a giant sale. I almost blew over several times! One of the staff walked next to me to catch me just in case I started to tip over. The Rocky theme song ended up being all to appropriate for the occasion as I struggled to walk against the wind in that thing! It all worked out though and kids really liked McYIG. Over the next few years I had fun wearing the costume on several occasions, during which many people took a picture of him with their kids.
In the mid 1990's, shortly after creating my Jack and the Beanstalk live puppet show, Jeremy (who played the role of Jack) became my first puppet TV star when students in the Television Broadcasting course at Algonquin College asked me to do some puppetry for them. At first they weren't sure what type of puppet they wanted, so after looking at a few of my puppets they chose Jeremy to become their star. It was destiny! He went on to appear in six episodes of "Kiddie Corner" which aired on the local community access TV station several times. On the program, Jeremy became Shopkeeper Sam's assistant in the corner store where all the friendly neighbourhood characters interacted.
During the show, the Audrey II flytrap plant grows from a small plant into a giant one. To get that effect the play requires four different sized puppets of Audrey II. I made the first three sizes on my own and refurbished the giant sized plant that was donated by Orpheus Musical Theatre, which had previously mounted a production of LSOH in 1994. In the above photo I'm lying inside the giant Audrey II puppet while holding the smallest version of Audrey II. There were two more puppets in different sizes in between these, one was a larger mouth puppet and one was a costume that I wore. The voice of Audrey II was performed by a very talented singer, also named Mike, who did a remarkable job. It's a shame that the musical score from this show wasn't recorded, it was very professionally done.
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Originally Posted Online: Feb 2016
Most Recent Update: June 2024
Legal stuff:
Please contact me through my website at www.artellepuppets.ca
The contents of this blog page are TM and © Mike Artelle, 1987, 2016 as detailed below. Use of any material from this blog page for any purpose requires advance permission from the copyright holder, Mike Artelle. Contact information can be found at: www.artellepuppets.ca
Puppet Characters
Bruno the Dog, Jeremy, Mr. Noodlehead, Lampwyn the Elf, Smash Cut clown, puppet designs, character names, likenesses, and puppets are TM and © Mike Artelle, 1987, 2010
Additional Information
Homegrown Café, Kiddie Corner, Little Shop of Horrors, Evil Dead the Musical, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, Smash Cut, Spadasheo, are TM and © their respective owners. Ownership of these productions is in no way being implied by Mike Artelle. In these cases only the original puppet or photograph being presented is TM and © Mike Artelle, 1987, 2010
All remaining puppets, text, stories, photographs, and art presented on this blog page are TM and © Mike Artelle, 1976, 2016
In one episode Jeremy wore a superhero costume, transforming into.... Super Jeremy!
Most of the cast and crew for "Kiddie Corner".
Toque: "Eight Seconds" music video
In the late 1990's another group of students from the TV broadcasting course contacted me about doing a music video for a local band. Rather than mouth puppets, they wanted to use marionettes in the video so I ended up making puppets of each of the band members. I had never made marionettes before, and they needed all six puppets finished in one week, so it was quite a challenge! All things considered the puppets didn't turn out that badly, but they weren't jointed very well at all which made the movement awful. Fortunately, the director wanted the "bad puppetry" look for this project, so the crudely jointed marionettes worked out perfectly! The video was for the band "Toque", which had just completed their first CD. The song in the video was "Eight Seconds".
Since the band was called Toque, they wanted some of the puppets to be wearing toques. My mother, who painted the faces of the puppets, came up with a brilliant idea and made their toques using the toe end of a pair of socks!
This is Vul-Gar the Ogre, one of the puppets that I made for the Toque music video project. The director asked me to make a monster and said that I could do whatever I wanted with the design, as long as the monster was scary. By this time I was in my mid 20's and very interested in drawing medieval fantasy characters and weird creatures. A few days prior to being told that a monster puppet was needed, I had drawn a picture of a really nasty looking monster which had appeared to me in a dream! I though the monster in my dream looked really cool so I drew a picture of it as soon as I woke up. This became the design for the marionette, which I named Vul-Gar.
I absolutely love this puppet and have kept Vul-Gar on display in my house ever since, alas, minus his strings. Many years later in 2006 I made a second version of Vul-Gar (shown on the "Hand Puppet Heroes" page of this blog), this time as a rod puppet rather than a marionette, for a medieval fantasy show. This is when I realized that he was meant to be an Ogre, so he became Vul-Gar the Ogre!
Most of the music video was shot against a blue screen to allow for footage of a mountain to be added in behind the puppets. This photo shows Vul-Gar the Ogre's big moment on camera, while I operate the puppet.
Little Shop of Horrors
In March of 1999 I got the opportunity to build and perform the puppets for "Little Shop of Horrors", which I had wanted to do for some time. It turned out to be a very enjoyable project. This was for the production by Sock N' Buskin Theatre at Carleton University. They had a very talented group there and managed to have a cast of 40 in the show in addition to a live band, choreographer, and music director, along with all the scenery changes and costumes. It was quite a remarkable production.
CTV Pilot: Spadasheo
In 2001 I was part of a cast of puppeteers for a TV show pilot made for CTV called Spadasheo. I played the part of Trevor the Snail. Although CTV was interested, one of the partnering production companies decided to pass on the project, so unfortunately they didn't end up doing any additional episodes. Trevor was a neat puppet and it would have been fun to have more opportunities to perform with him and develop his character. I think it would have been neat to explore what it was like inside his shell which could have been shown as an entire apartment with furniture and a refrigerator and so on. Trevor also doesn't have any arms or hands which would have made things interesting to figure out logistically. Fortunately, the complete pilot episode has since been posted on YouTube:
Canadian Museum of Nature
In 2006, while I was a student in the Applied Museum Studies program I did a co-op placement at the Canadian Museum of Nature. I was asked to build three puppets for the museum to be used for an upcoming educational program for kids. One of the puppets was a baby polar bear, which I'm constructing in this photo. The other two puppets, a beaver and a birdwatcher, are shown below.
Sock N Buskin Theatre: Evil Dead the Musical
In 2010 I created the Moose puppet for Sock N' Buskin theatre's production of Evil Dead the Musical. I had previously done Little Shop of Horrors for Sock N' Buskin back in 1999 (shown above). As with Little Shop I was once again impressed with the professionalism of the cast and crew from the production of Evil Dead the Musical. It was truly a remarkable show performed by a very talented cast of singers, actors and musicians. This specific production was the premier presentation of Evil Dead the Musical in Ottawa.
While I was busy making the moose puppet, my mother Peggy made two Necronomicon books to be used as props in the show. One was giant sized and seen at the very beginning of the play, while the other was the regular sized one used throughout the show. I also made the chainsaw costume prop, as well as the "severed hand" puppet and prop. The latter are seen above on the ledge in the background.
Max Ottawa Giant Parade Puppets
Max Ottawa is a gay men's heath organization that I did many art workshops for, beginning in 2017. In 2018 my workshops became one of Max Ottawa's ongoing programs which I facilitated for two years until the pandemic shut down. I'm no longer associated with Max Ottawa, but I'm still very proud of the work that I did over the three years that I was involved there.
In addition to the workshops I made three giant puppets for Max Ottawa with help from their awesome volunteers! The first two puppets were built in July and Aug 2018 for the Pride Parade held on Sunday, August 26, 2018. The third puppet was built in 2019 for that year's Pride Parade, it was a long parade dragon style puppet but instead we made it a unicorn.
The pink puppet on the left is named Eric, after Eric Levitt, the super, terrific, awesome, coordinator of this puppet project for Max Ottawa, while the blue guy is Max! The cool dude in the bottom left corner is Lucien, one of the many volunteers who helped to build and paint the four puppet hands, and paint the blue head and neck. They also sculpted and painted some emoji shapes (a peach, an eggplant and some water drops). I sculpted the heads and made the bodies of the puppets. Lucien also helped to operate the blue puppet's right hand during the parade, while another volunteer, David, was on the left hand. The Pink puppet was operated by volunteers Steve, Joel, and Nathan as well as Eric. I also have to mention Matt Harding, Community Coordinator for Max Ottawa, who played a big role in making this project happen, and he even helped to make the puppets too. Everyone did an amazing job! This was a fun project and I'm very greatful that Max Ottawa gave me this opportunity to build some giant puppets for them. :)
Here is the Unicorn parade puppet that we built the following year in 2019.
It's 20 feet long and requires five puppeteers!!!
Thanks for visiting my blog!
-Mikey
-Mikey
The next page of this blog is Hand-made Toy Puppets
Originally Posted Online: Feb 2016
Most Recent Update: June 2024
Legal stuff:
Please contact me through my website at www.artellepuppets.ca
The contents of this blog page are TM and © Mike Artelle, 1987, 2016 as detailed below. Use of any material from this blog page for any purpose requires advance permission from the copyright holder, Mike Artelle. Contact information can be found at: www.artellepuppets.ca
Puppet Characters
Bruno the Dog, Jeremy, Mr. Noodlehead, Lampwyn the Elf, Smash Cut clown, puppet designs, character names, likenesses, and puppets are TM and © Mike Artelle, 1987, 2010
Additional Information
Homegrown Café, Kiddie Corner, Little Shop of Horrors, Evil Dead the Musical, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, Smash Cut, Spadasheo, are TM and © their respective owners. Ownership of these productions is in no way being implied by Mike Artelle. In these cases only the original puppet or photograph being presented is TM and © Mike Artelle, 1987, 2010
All remaining puppets, text, stories, photographs, and art presented on this blog page are TM and © Mike Artelle, 1976, 2016
