Play is the thing

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This article was published 08/12/2023 (885 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jacob Williams, an award-winning puppeteer from Melbourne, Australia, will not be in Winnipeg for the Bluey’s Big Play stage show happening next week.

But he has stayed in touch through social media and offers up a rather poignant detail when it comes to the tour, which just completed its extensive U.S. run.

“I saw them post on Instagram recently that the bus made it over the border and they’re excited to experience Canadian winter,” Williams says in a Zoom interview.

They should get a warm welcome, literally and otherwise, given the huge global popularity of the Brisbane-set animated series Bluey, which started broadcasting on Australian TV in 2018. (It’s available in Canada on Disney+.)

Williams is the puppetry director of Bluey’s Big Play, which brings three-dimensional life to the Heeler family — energetic six-year-old puppy Bluey, her sister Bingo, and her parents Bandit and Chilli — through the use of massive puppets, each family member controlled by two performers.

The puppets are made as light as possible, but each performance can be a “really fun cross-fit” session for the performers, Williams says with a laugh.

Luckily for the puppeteers, the show runs for a kid- and performer-friendly 50 minutes with no intermission.

Each performer wears lime green coveralls and eight performers are onstage whenever the Heeler family appears together.

You might think so many brightly clad puppeteers onstage at one time would be distracting; not so, according to Williams.

“As children, we learn by playing… so a child will come to a puppet show and just see adults playing and go into the play. And as adults, we see the puppeteers, but over a five-minute process, we tap into our play and go into the show as well.

“It’s like, ‘There were eight people on that stage? I thought it was only four dogs!’”

Bluey’s Big Play brings the bright colours and cosiness of the Heeler’s Brisbane home to the stage in a brand new story that focuses, like the series, on the importance of imaginative play and supportive family structure. The play is like an episode of the show but, as Bluey herself likes to say, “for real life.”

Williams worked closely with Bluey show creator Joe Brumm and show composer Joff Bush to develop the show right as the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020.

As the world went into lockdown, Williams had to cast a wide net for the show’s performers, including dancers and theatre actors.

“Part of the process of rehearsal was teaching the form to newer artists who had never come to puppetry before,” Williams says.

In the last four years of the show being performed, Williams has trained 50 new artists in puppetry: “Bluey has really (revived) an art form,” he says.

Does he have any advice for any future puppeteers who will see Bluey’s Big Play next week?

“This is probably easier said than done but: just do it,” Williams says. “Make a puppet. I began my career in Tasmania … and I ended up on Broadway.”

Bluey has become a worldwide phenomenon, though its impact in North America has only bloomed recently. Living in New York when asked to return to Australia to work on Big Play, Williams was not knowledgeable about the property, but once he heard about the little blue dog, he began to see her everywhere.

Williams’ own children are teenagers but are big fans of the show, something the puppeteer attributes to the relatability of its characters.

“Parents sort of watch Bluey without their kids … we get adults coming to the show with their kids and are super-engaged and loving the characters. When Bandit walks out, all the dads cheer. When Chilli walks out, all the mums cheer.”

Leslie Frobisher, a local Bluey fan and mother of twin girls, can relate. She loves the show for its honesty and the way adults and children can learn something from its messages of community, family and play. In fact, they find it so relatable, Leslie’s twin girls like to think Bluey is based on their family.

“They at one point asked if there were cameras in our house,” Frobisher says.