It’ll leave you speechless

Having a parent who travels for work is a challenge for any child, but whenever Shizuka Kai’s father left on a voyage to capture elusive footage of white wolves and kodiaks, there was an element of danger that didn’t exist for other children.

“I would say I kind of grew up with my dad telling us that he actually might not come home,” says Kai, a Vancouver-based puppet maker and theatre artist. “A moment I vaguely remember as a kid was when he sat us down and explained the life-insurance process because (he) might actually get attacked and eaten by a bear, and that’s the reality of this project (he was) doing.”

That reality is put through a puppeteer’s lens in Otosan, the closing production of the 2025-2026 season at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People.

Based on Kai’s experiences growing up as the child of a dogged wildlife videographer, combined with memories from a joint trip to Alaska in Kai’s early 20s, Otosan — on to May 17 — is told in a wordless tabletop puppet show featuring lifelike renderings of father, daughter, grizzly bear and snowy owl.

Those puppets — crafted out of Worbla thermoplastic and built through a combination of manual construction and 3D printing — are used to reflect complex father-daughter relationships, with the characters’ non-verbal communication highlighting the sometimes awkward tension that crops up when parents and their children collaborate on creative projects.

In Otosan, the stoic father prefers to operate on his own terms, but little Shizu — who might reasonably have some separation anxiety over her father’s wild career — has other plans: she stows herself away in his suitcase before he embarks on another of his fantastic journeys.

The production — developed by Kai, Jess Amy Shead and Randi Edmundson of Little Onion Puppet Company — is universal in its themes, but highly specific in terms of its inspiration, Kai says.

“I think a lot of Asian cultures resonate with this kind of ‘Asian dad.’ They don’t talk a lot. They grunt. They don’t use many words.”

That personality trait ended up inspiring the show’s approach to dialogue, which emphasizes body language and some audio assistance to tell its story: co-creator Shead is a certified American Sign Language interpreter, which helped the production team steer its approach toward a strong visual sensibility.

That made sense not only for keeping audiences of all hearing capacities engaged, but also when considering Otosan’s blended use of Tetsuaki Kai’s actual wildlife videography, which is projected on a cardboard film-reel canvas throughout the production’s 45-minute runtime.

Though Otosan is the first puppet-centric production of MTYP’s season, the show gives Winnipeg audiences and puppet enthusiasts another opportunity to see the form’s dynamic applications after other local companies (Royal MTC’s Wonderful Joe and Life of Pi, Théâtre Cercle Molière’s Cet été qui chantait) gave the artform the spotlight earlier in the season.

Otosan has its première in MTYP’s Richardson Studio Theatre on Friday night, while the organization’s Musical Theatre Company kicks off a weekend-long stand of The Pirates of Penzance on its mainstage (Tickets: $16 at mtyp.ca). The adaptation of the Gilbert and Sullivan classic was written by Winnipeg duo Mycze Cutler and Cora Matheson, putting the next generation of Manitoban musical theatre stars in the spotlight.

winnipegfreepress.com/benwaldman

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