Puffin
“★★★★ A shiveringly powerful play for our time, for adults and strong-minded children everywhere.”
“★★★★ Utterly charming, Puffin is a creative piece which carries an activist message about our own actions against climate control. As much for the older kids in the audience as it is for the little ones, the play is a wake-up call to action – though a gentle one all the same. It encourages a tighter discussion with our peers on nature and change.”
Puffin is a beautiful and poignant new work of music theatre exploring friendship, environmental destruction and the need for change. Loosely based on Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, “strikingly bold” Scotland based theatre collective Snap-Elastic have reimagined the absurdist classic for a younger, contemporary audience, using clown, live music and physical movement.
Puffin follows friends Klump and Tarkin as they make their annual visit to see the puffins come in to nest for the summer months – but shouldn’t they be here already…? Fuelled by anxiety, loyalty and a sense of adventure, Klump and Tarkin sail into the unknown in pursuit of puffins and happiness.
Puffin is at once an anarchic and raucous, quiet and contemplative piece of theatre. It gently pokes at the hierarchy humankind has attributed to the natural world. It questions what will happen when circumstances change beyond our control, and offers a warm hug to those who suffer from anxiety at this prospect. It is also a call to arms, a battle cry, and an invitation to join the rebellion. Puffin is a celebration of friendship, change, and of nature itself.
Puffin was originally made as an Independent Arts Projects production in association with Platform. It was developed in 2018 and toured Scotland in the autumn of that year with support from Catherine Wheels, Imaginate, Educational Institute Scotland and Creative Scotland.
Creative Team:
Directed and created by Eszter Marsalko
Created and performed by Alice Mary Cooper and Claire E Willoughby
Sound by Daniel Padden
Design by Mamoru Iriguchi
Lighting by Laura Hawkins
Movement by Michael Sherin
Dramaturgy by Ian Cameron
Masks by Callum MacAskill
Images by Brian Hartley