Snuff Puppets is an Australian puppet theatre company that was founded in 1992.
Originating in Canberra as part of Splinters Theatre of Spectacle, Snuff Puppets moved to a dusty warehouse in the industrial working class suburb of Footscray in Melbourne, and are now based in the historic Footscray Drill Hall. Snuff Puppets founding members were Pauline Cady and Simon Terrill and the current Artistic Director, Andy Freer.
The company tour nationally and internationally with both indoor and outdoor shows. Snuff Puppets combine the elements of puppetry, live music, visual and physical theatre. The company refers to its 'roaming acts' as 'interventions' as Snuff Puppets specialize in creating mayhem in the streets, playing with traffic and shoppers.
Subjects that are considered taboo are tackled, with 'a vulgar, irreverent, gratuitously violent and a comic sensibility'. Realtime Magazine wrote that Snuff Puppets have a 'commitment to pushing bad taste to its extreme'.
Snuff Puppet elements: ‘a blackly dangerous humour, an incisive political satire, shamelessly handmade visual aesthetic; populist, free, joyous conflagration of art, audience and artist.’
The company has an interest in direct action on political issues. Over the years this had included appearances in dozens of political rallies and support for alternative energy, world peace, third world debt relief, gay rights and asylum seekers.
Snuff Puppets have toured over 20 countries, including; New Zealand, China, Korea, India, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, England, France, Holland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Brazil and Chile.
Local communities have worked with Snuff Puppets with dozens of large scale workshops undertaken in Australia, Denmark, England, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Singapore, Thailand and at the World Social Forum in Brazil.
The troupe won the 'Spirit of the Fringe' award from Melbourne Fringe and the 'Adelaide Fringe 2006 Circus / Physical Theatre Award'.
The Australian Federal and Victorian State Governments support Snuff Puppets with annual Arts Funding.
Read more about Snuff Puppets: Works in Rep
Famous quotes containing the word snuff:
“However low and poor the taking Snuff argues a Man to be in his own Stock of Thought, or Means to employ his Brains and his Fingers, yet there is a poorer Creature in the World than He, and this is a Borrower of Snuff; a Fellow that keeps no Box of his own, but is always asking others for a Pinch.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)