Tenderhooks Trip-it to Toronto
The Paprika Festival’s Tenderhooks crew has quite the commute. Planes, trains, automobiles, helicopters, spaceships and Greyhounds (the racing kind) are all needed to get this bunch from their home in Ottawa to the Paprika clubhouse in Toronto. The once a month road trip doesn’t seem to slow down Hannah, Connor and Alysa. It fuels their excitement. This party of three is on a mission for artistic and creative fulfillment. From the Paprika Training days, the Toronto theatre scene and many trips to Value Village this sorority of thespians are getting their fill.
Their journey started far from home when they brought a production with their school to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. This experience opened up a whole new world that was otherwise unavailable to them in Ottawa. They caught that bug that’s only cured by completely immersing your self in theatre and culture. This is what brought them to The Paprika Festival.
Hannah, Connor and Alysa have taken what they had learned in Edinburgh and brought it to Tenderhooks. “We were beyond inspired … we took everything we knew about creation and we used that as inspiration to create a new piece.” That piece is Tenderhooks, a movement-based collective creation about the “Hidden absurdities under the everyday life. There is a whole other world in the back of your head that no one really sees. We go in there, magnify it, highlight it and make it theatrical.” Their show is made up of three clowns that work as ring leaders who guide the audience through the story.
One big adversity the whole festival is facing is the teacher’s strike. Many productions have lost rehearsal spaces and other resources their school had to offer. With this strike all other extra curricular activities are also cancelled. High school theatre requires a lot of extra hours from the faculty and that just not possible this year. So just like many students across the province Hannah, Connor and Alysa have had to make due. “That’s one of the reasons why this show has been so important to us, it has been our theatre fix’’. Without productions to work on at school they have had to find another way to stay active. “We are learning to rely upon our selves”.
Sometimes blessings are disguised. Without the strike these three would not have had the time for the Paprika Festival. I believe this festival offers something special that most youth don’t find at school. Hannah, Connor and Alysa believe it too, “I think this is the first time we can come together and do something we are really interested in and are passionate about and really do what we want with it. “ Learning how to do it on your own goes farther then anything else. They are showing a passion for their production and everyone is excited to perform. So check out Tenderhooks which is just one of many exciting productions at this year’s Paprika Festival.