Green Fools Theatre

Established in 1991 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Green Fools Theatre is a non-profit, charitable society that creates, performs, and teaches physical theatre arts focusing on masks, puppets, and stilts for diverse audiences locally and internationally. Green Fools Theatre reaches thousands of audience members each year through performances, community events, festivals, and creative training opportunities. We have an extensive history of local, national and international touring.

Artists are at the centre of our Fools’ society; we are writers, musicians, painters, sculptors, inventors, singers, actors, acrobats, instructors, puppeteers, and clowns led by Co-Artistic Directors Dean Bareham and Jennie Esdale. Over the years, many artists have shaped the company and created our ever-evolving work.

We are a magnet for physical theatre artists and offer multiple training, creating and performing opportunities. We are a building ground for artists and we have fostered the development of other puppetry troupes and performers, including The Old Trout Puppet Workshop, the Calgary Animated Objects Society, and several Cirque du Soliel performers. In addition, we have developed strong relationships with other sectors, including the Calgary Zoo, the International Crane Foundation, the Glenbow Museum, and the Alberta College of Art & Design to research, produce or present our work in traditional or non-traditional theatre venues.

Our diverse programming, including workshops, puppet and mask shows, street theatre, spectacle animation, events, and fundraisers, allows artists and audiences to fully explore physical theatre across a wide spectrum of artistic styles and forms. With an eye on the past and a respect for a hands-on tradition, Green Fools Theatre strives to advance our art form by inventing and engineering new puppetry styles and ways of storytelling. We utilize a variety of physical theatre, puppet and mask techniques as well as multiple artistic disciplines to tell our original stories. Styles meets the needs of the story. Puppets may share the stage with actors and masked characters. In a single production we may we also challenge the boundaries of scale from a finger puppet to a giant stilt character. Our work often explores non-text based storytelling. Our performances often include music, dance, performance art, video, and animation. Our work is collaborative, contemporary, handcrafted, and original.

Green Fools Theatre gratefully acknowledges Annual Operating Funding Support from Alberta Lotteries, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and Calgary Arts Development and occasional project support from Community Initiatives Program, Calgary Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts