Anouska and Rosa Go to Find the Sun (2000)
This heartwarming story takes place in a miniature theatre, with all of the magical effects that string puppetry allows. The velvet curtain opens on two little girls setting off to find the sun and bring it back for their mothers. Every time the scene closes then opens the heroines come across a new adventure that tests their patience, courage, and friendship until eventually one of them gets to the sun …
Between marionette scenes, their two mothers’ desperation escalates as they search for their lost daughters; they express the joys and stresses of parenting through song.
The story is composed of things that two real-life little girls, Anouska and Rosa, told their real-life puppeteer mothers Lois Anderson and Cathy Stubington, when they were three years old. Alison Jenkins emerges as the third puppeteer/musician in a surprise accordion trio.
A marionette play with all the bells and whistles.
Performed at the Vancouver Fringe Festival, at Western Canada Theatre in Kamloops, at Vancouver Spring Festival, and eleven towns in the Shuswap and Okanagan.
Written by: Lois Anderson and Cathy Stubington, with Anouska Anderson-Kirby and Rosa Saba.
Directed by: James Fagan Tait.
Performed by: Lois Anderson, Alison Jenkins, and Cathy Stubington
Puppets created by: Cathy Stubington, props and puppet making assistant Rick Holloway
Made possible through support from the Canada Council, BC Arts Council, and the Youssef Warren Foundation.
Artistic Process
This was Runaway Moon’s first touring show, and the beginning of an exploration of stories and their relationship with their tellers.
The adventure began when Cathy’s real-life three-year-old daughter Rosa, while watching the sunset in Enderby, vowed that one day she’d go over the hill and find the sun and bring it back down for her mother. Cathy and her friend, performer Lois Anderson who also had a three-year old daughter Anouska, took this impetus to ask Rosa and Anouska to tell us more about the journey and to draw the characters they’d meet.
We created this marionette play from what they told: of the epic journey that took them dangerously close to the sun, where they found that children from all over the world had come with the same plan to take the sun home.
Style
Marionette (string puppet) theatre was an ideal way to portray the world of the boundaryless imaginations of the little girls. It allows for scenic elements and effects that would be impossible in human scale, solving technical impossibilities with simple materials and tricks. The theatre-in-miniature fully engages the audience’s imaginations, with its many marvels assisting the illusion of being real. For the audience, it is always a surprise at the end of the performance when the puppeteers appear to be giants coming around with their puppets. When they show that everything was made from paper, wood, and cloth, the magic is extended rather than dispelled.
In between scenes, when the scenery for the next scene is being set up behind the curtain, one or two of the puppeteers came out in front where the story level of the puppeteers is taking place at the same time. In Anouska and Rosa Go to Find the Sun, the puppeteers were (are) the mothers of the lost girls frantically searching for them, with accordion and songs, reflecting the difference of living in an urban and rural reality, clashing in attitudes towards parenting and safety as their desperation grew. Musician Alison Jenkins completed the accordion.
The play was directed by James Fagan Tait, who also has experience as a puppeteer.
“Directing marionette theatre is like directing physical theatre where the gesture is everything and the word is secondary. This show about children and mothers exhibited the delight that the creators had in creating and performing it. “- James Fagan Tait
Anouska and Rosa Go to Find the Sun was nominated for a Jesse Award in design.