THISTLE THEATRE
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Mission Statement
Thistle Theatre enriches family and school communities by performing professional puppet theatre productions with social, cultural and educational significance.
About This Cause
Goals 1) To create original, professional puppet productions that exemplifies the art of storytelling through puppet theatre. 2) To serve the community as a cultural performing arts resource for tabletop Bunraku-style of puppetry. 3) To train artists and performers in the art of puppetry. 4) To promote arts education by creating and distributing supporting printed materials and offering workshops for productions. 5) To maintain the Children’s Ticket Subsidy Program, offering underprivileged children and families the opportunity to experience live puppet theatre. History Thistle Theatre, based in Seattle, is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to creating unique and diverse puppet theatre productions for the entire family. Founded in 1991 by Jean Enticknap, Thistle Theatre specializes in a tabletop variation of Bunraku, an ancient style of puppetry from Japan. Starting with a single production as a guest company at the Northwest Puppet Center in 1992, Thistle Theatre now performs a 4-show season at three locations. In addition to these shows, Thistle Theatre performs discounted daytime school shows for students aged 3 to 12. Free tickets are given to all teachers as well as a PDF of education guide complete with Common Core alignment done by Trish Oberst, certified teacher. Committed to providing a range of social and cultural works that both educate and entertain, Thistle Theatre has a repertoire of 26 shows including traditional or contemporary stories from Africa, Denmark, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Norway, Russia, England and the USA. Created with careful attention to historical accuracy, each show features hand built puppets, props and scenery and original music. Theatre Theatre’s fully stocked studio and productions serve as resources for puppeteers/actors, designers, choreographers, musicians and playwrights to ply their trade, hone their skills and continue their appreciation for the art of puppetry. In 1999, Thistle Theatre undertook its first large-scale production, Scheherazade. Eight puppeteers operated thirty original puppets (varying in sizes from 18 inches to 16 feet) that filled the stage with exotic images of the Arabian Nights. Scheherazade was first performed with the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra at Meany Hall, University of Washington. A National Endowment for the Arts grant funded performances of Scheherazade with three different symphonies in the Pacific Northwest. Following that success, the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra approached Thistle Theatre in 2005 for another collaborative project also to be performed at Meany Hall. The result was Frog Lake (2006) a frog puppet version of Tchaikovsky’s classic ballet, Swan Lake. Choreographed by professional ballet dancers, fourteen frog puppets operated by five puppeteers danced across the stage to the live orchestral music. The project was partly funded by the Jim Henson Foundation and 4Culture, an arts funding organization in King County, Washington. In 2012 we were one of only seven companies in the United States to be awarded a Jim Henson Foundation Family Grant. We created King of Dinosauria, celebrating the launch of 20th season for schools and families. We have recently been award a 2015 family grant for our next new production called the Funny Woman Who Lost her Dumpling. Thistle Theatre performed Brother Coyote and Sister Fox at the 75th Puppeteers of America Festival in Atlanta. We were invited back to Atlanta to perform the same show at the Center for Puppetry Arts (the largest puppet center in the United States) for a three week run in January of 2013 as guest artists and again in September 2013 to perform Tales of Peter Rabbit in their 2013-2014 Season. We will return to the CPA in January of 2016 for another run of Brother Coyote and Sister Fox.