August 2008: The 20th anniversary of the Festival International de la Marionnette in Mirepoix, France
I received an invitation to take part in the exhibition celebrating this anniversary. So many sweet memories … wow, time flies. When our children were little kids (they are 25, 20 and 14 years old now) we used to go to Mirepoix every summer for our family holidays. One of these weeks I was teaching in Mirepoix and exhibiting in the town hall during the festival.
Mirepoix is a beautiful medieval littele town in the south of France and the old market place is perfect for outdoor performances. One of these years I had a cute boy from Spain in my class who was a puppeteer. He brought his puppets and one evening he decided to give a performance on the market place. Unfortunately it was the wrong time of the day because my students and I were the only audience. Later that week his friends came from Spain. They played in a folk band and we had a private concert.
The festival takes place in the beginning of August. When I entered NIADA it was not possible anymore to go there because the NIADA Conference takes place during summer as well. If you happen to be in France during the beginning of August you should visit Mirepoix.
In the meantime I have moved the workshop in France to Fall and another location (Paris): my yearly Paris Doll Holiday and Workshop Week.

Maybe we will meet on the 3th DABIDA day (Sunday April 5th 2009) in Essen (Dutch and Belgian border near Antwerp).

In 2009 I will be teaching a 3 day class together with Ankie Daanen in Ajax, Ontario (Canada) at the CDAA Annual Spring Conference. We already have spent a lot of time preparing this special workshop. For the class we designed a wooden theatre. The students will fill it with two hand sculpted puppets and decorate it. On the pictures you can see the basic sketch we have made and the pile with bases for the head and also the body / costume bases. It is going to be a fun class and Ankie and I are looking forward to it.

The Canada class was scheduled for April 2008 but the CDAA has cancelled the 2008 Conference. In April 2008 Ankie Daanen and I will be teaching our ‘Meet the Dutch Touch’ 5 day class in Las Vegas. For our workshop schedule please select ‘workshops’ in the menu. In November we will be in Rye Brook, NY and in 2009 in Houston (for the 5th time) and Sacramento, CA.