Magic Lantern Puppet Theater
Color shadow puppets from The Tale of Fatima the Spinner, by Anne Sawyer-Aitch, 2000
Puppeteers Anne Sawyer-Aitch and Amy Ballestad along with musician Laura Harada, founded Magic Lantern Puppet Theater in 2000.
Magic Lantern’s mission is to create and perform high-quality shadow puppet presentations with live music, and to make those shows accessible to all.
Some other artists who have lent their talents to Magic Lantern in the past are Chicago-based performer/director Lisa Abbatomarco, Willis Bowman (Barebones Productions) Tracy Yue, Joel Walther, accordionist Sam Adams, Rachel “Olli” Johnson (Full Moon Puppet Cabaret, Bedlam) Reid Knuttila, Jennifer Weaverling, Tara Fahey, and UNIMA award winning Janaki Ranpura.
The group does not perform regularly or have an annual budget; rather, the artists come together for specific projects. The Tale of Fatima the Spinner (2000) and Parvatibai, The Cleverest Woman in India (2002) were color shadow puppet shows of folk tales. The purpose of these shows was to educate in an entertaining way and bring theater to kids who might not have access.
The shows were presented with support from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council and the Blake Foundation to groups such as the YWCA, Lino Lakes East Juvenile Correctional Facility, and St. Joseph’s Home for Children.
Bate Bate Chocolate by Anne Sawyer-Aitch, 2007
Ala Dean and the Marvelous Lamp
In 2006, Magic Lantern presented the highly successful multi-media shadow show Ala Dean and the Marvelous Lamp at the Center for Independent Artists, providing free tickets to many of the aforementioned groups. A Minnesota State Arts Board Artist’s Initiative Grant that was awarded to Anne Sawyer-Aitch supported this production. Sawyer-Aitch wrote and produced the show in addition to building all 150 puppets for the piece.
Bate Bate Chocolate
In 2007, Magic Lantern created an original bilingual puppet show called Bate Bate Chocolate for the Heart of the Beast’s Saturday Matinee series, and took it to various Spanish Immersion schools. This show featured a blend of rod puppets and shadow scenes and was also written and built by Sawyer-Aitch.
Children and Other Optical Illusions
June 17-19, 2010, Magic Lantern will present its most ambitious project to date at Dreamland Arts in St. Paul. Titled Children and Other Optical Illusions, it is the first show the group will do that is intended for adults. It is challenging from an artistic view, both in its subject matter and the new blend of technical elements being employed, adding live feed video and more stop motion animation into the mix. In this sense, we feel that we are growing as artists. We are stepping outside of the comfortable realm of folk tales, and innovating/expanding our visual vocabulary. We continue to be committed to educating through our shows and making our performances accessible to as many people as possible. We can do so only with community support and funding from organizations such as the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, who has generously given us a Community Arts grant for this project.