Victoria puppeteer Timothy Gosley has gone from working on puppets for popular television shows in decades past to using his skills to raise awareness; he says the two are connected (photo by Peter Freedman).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u201cWorking on Fraggle Rock<\/i>, which was in the early \u201980s, occurred because I had just moved to Toronto, and I was a young hippie, and I was looking for a career,\u201d he says. \u201cThey had come to Toronto to do Fraggle Rock<\/i> at the same time that I had been there. Fraggle Rock<\/i> was really like a master\u2019s degree after my acting degree, and then I got the role of Basil the Bear on Canadian Sesame Street.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Gosley, Puppets for Peace is well in line with Sesame Street<\/i> values and is a community effort incorporating many forms of talent (such as, for example, local slam poets) making it a logical progression in his career in puppetry.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is kind of my vanity project,\u201d he says. \u201cI really love the fact that there\u2019s this whole poetry world smashing into the Fraggle Rock<\/i> world. Fraggle Rock<\/i> was created to help with world peace and how to live together, so it kind of makes sense in an odd way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gosley says that the event is full of opportunities to be entertained, as well as to gain awareness.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a parade with giant puppets,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s actually really neat. Kids bring their puppets and it\u2019s intergenerational. More people are walking in the parade than watching it, so it\u2019s actually pretty cool. I think this year we have a little Buddhist group, we\u2019ve got Boy Scouts, we\u2019ve got the Shakespeare Society, we\u2019ve got all of our crazy puppets, and then we all walk through the Fernwood area, and it\u2019s kind of a community walk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Underlying all of the components of the production, Gosley stresses that the building of awareness is a crucial element, particularly because, as he says, \u201cIn Victoria, we are very fortunate, so we are a bit complacent about what is going on around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Above all, Gosley insists that Puppets for Peace is for everyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want it to be partisan, we don\u2019t want it to be a protest,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s very embracing for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
When it comes to promoting education in the creation of peace, Gosley says that puppetry\u0143or any art form, for that matter\u0143is a natural conduit for the facilitation of a peaceful world.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if you are participating in the arts, you\u2019re generally participating in a peaceful activity,\u201d he says. \u201cEven when it gets sort of rough, it turns into a celebration, or a thoughtful exploration of certain patterns of things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Puppets for Peace
\nFriday, September 11 to Sunday, September 13
\npuppetsforpeace.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Timothy Gosley is best known around town right now for being the director for this year\u2019s Puppets for Peace festival weekend, but there\u2019s something that not everyone knows about the man: he was once a puppeteer for the beloved children\u2019s show Sesame Street. \u201cI have been a puppeteer since about 1980,\u201d he says. \u201cOne of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-september-9-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10946,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10944\/revisions\/10946"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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