{"id":33687,"date":"2023-10-12T20:57:05","date_gmt":"2023-10-13T00:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=33687"},"modified":"2023-10-12T20:57:07","modified_gmt":"2023-10-13T00:57:07","slug":"the-family-crow-is-pun-tastic-murder-mystery-and-theatre-aurora-homecoming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/the-family-crow-is-pun-tastic-murder-mystery-and-theatre-aurora-homecoming\/","title":{"rendered":"The Family Crow is pun-tastic murder mystery and Theatre Aurora homecoming"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Byron Laviolette has always had a love for theatre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a youngster, he \u201ccut his teeth\u201d as a member of Theatre Aurora\u2019s youth program in the 1990s and went on to direct his first full-length show on its stage as well. His career has continued to go from strength to strength with the Morro and Jasp company and, next weekend, he will experience something of a one-night-only homecoming with The Family Crow: A Murder Mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The show, created by Adam Francis Proulx and directed by long-time collaborator Laviolette, is described as \u201can hour-long theatrical comedy, puppet murder mystery\u201d where \u201ca mysterious murder has occurred amidst the Family Crow and now Horatio P. Corvus (Sorter Outer of Murders) is on the scene to crack the case.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a teaser ending with the words, \u201cEat your heart out, Agatha Crowstie,\u201d it\u2019s not at all surprising that Laviolette describes the show as a \u201cpun-tastic\u201d evening of fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAdam has a deep love of puns and cleverness,\u201d he says. \u201cHe wrote down a whole list of crow puns and then wrote a show around it, funnily enough. He\u2019s also a big fan of true crime podcasts and things like that, so he has been really taken by the idea of a murder mystery and to transform it into a puppet show.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A puppet show, indeed \u2013 but this is definitely not Sesame Street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laviolette says that his own experience with puppets didn\u2019t extend beyond that particular thoroughfare of children\u2019s TV staples or their cousins on the Muppet Show, and hadn\u2019t previously envisioned working with puppets himself. But, as he had worked with clowns and drag artists, would helping a puppeteer bring their vision to life be that different? He didn\u2019t think so, and dove into the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was similar to some ways, but it is much more craft-focused,\u201d he says. \u201cThe characters go back in the box at the end of the day and I have really come to appreciate and enjoy working with the mechanisms, and everything from \u2013 you have to worry about the puppet\u2019s eyeline to something called \u2018sympathetic movement,\u2019 which is why so many puppets have feathers or some sort of fur on them [so there is still some sense of motion] after the puppet has come to rest. In all the work that I do, I love that the audience goes into the experience knowing it is fake and, in the end, they are totally wrapped up in the make-believe, and that is a really big joy for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn some ways it is trickier off the top because there is a mechanism, an artifice there, but I think as the show goes on, as a puppet experience goes on, it gives the audience a kind of permission to pretend and a kind of permission that gives you permission to imagine. That permission, especially for adults, is very rare these days: be real, be realistic is sort of the slogan we\u2019re supposed to live by and I think these experiences show the adult audiences rediscover a sense of wonder, a sense of joy, a sense of imagination they don\u2019t really get other places.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proulx, he adds, stresses that he \u201cmakes theatre with puppets rather than puppets with theatre\u201d and while this might be, in many respects, an out-of-the-box presentation, is a true theatrical production in the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople really love it. They get into the spirit of it, they always offer us their own crow puns at the end. The show is lousy with crow puns, sometimes even reviews, too. For the mystery itself, there are also groans and the occasional boo at the very bad puns and those are some of my favourite moments. There are some real groaners, but it is also about the murder mystery. There are people who tell us they got it (solved the case) at this point, at that point, or they had no idea and they were completely surprised. Adam is a fan of true crime and me, as a fan of the structure of the murder mystery, it is very satisfying for us to see when people clue into who the murder is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAdam really likes to leave the audience feeling smarter and more empowered than when they entered and I think this show does that totally. It really casts the audience in the role of co-investigator. There is no fourth wall per se, it is not an audience interaction-driven show but the audience is recognized and appreciated and I can promise that people have never seen anything like it!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Family Crow will take over the Theatre Aurora stage on Saturday, October 21, at 8 p.m. For tickets and further information, visit theatreaurora.com or call 905-727-3669.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Byron Laviolette has always had a love for theatre. As a youngster, he \u201ccut his teeth\u201d as a member of Theatre Aurora\u2019s youth program in the 1990s and went on to direct his first full-length show on its stage as well. His career has continued to go from strength to strength with the Morro and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":33688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/2023-10-12-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8Ll","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-16 08:53:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}