Velveteen Rabbit

Cortland Repertory Theatre 2017

     Velveteen Rabbit, adapted from the children’s book by Mark S. Reynolds, was the children’s theatre production at CRT for their summer season.  The children’s theatre piece is staged on an existing set and has to be setup and taken down by the actors each time.  For this Mark and I were very interested in using shadow puppetry to transform the nursery location into the woods outside.  

    We spent several weeks working on ideas about how this could be used and how it would affect the audience’s imagination.  We developed what specific shadows would be needed to tell the story.  I wanted to utilize the imagination of children and employed my 7 and 9 year old niece and nephew to create artwork for the show.  I took their art and made large 4ft tall cutouts to make the shadows.

    This was something I had ever done before.  I spent a lot of time learning about shadow puppets and shadow theatre.  The result were exciting, playful and helped tell the story.

    I worked closely with Mark as we both wanted to explore new ideas and learn how to execute them practically and efficiently.