Comedy Festival: Jeff Achtem is clowning around

Jeff Achtem turns house-hold junk into puppets.

Puppeteer Jeff Achtem's Comedy Festival show has worldwide appeal, writes Dionne Christian.

Think of Canada and shadow puppetry doesn't automatically come to mind. Which is a good thing as far as comedian and puppeteer Jeff Achtem is concerned.

Achtem, 37, grew up in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley in a town of about 8000 people and now travels the world, creating shadow puppets out of bits of rubbish and household objects. The puppets entertain audiences from New York to Edinburgh, Berlin to Melbourne with madcap adventure stories influenced by cartoons like Bugs Bunny and South Park and the newspaper strips Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side.

"It's harder to contemporise something when you've grown up steeped in tradition but I grew up in middle-class Canada, where there is no cultural tradition of shadow puppetry and all sorts of different cultural influences are absorbed. It means I can take a fresh approach," he says.

"When people think about shadow puppetry, they're most likely to think of the Indonesian tradition with intricate puppets - with one arm that moves - behind a screen but my shows are nothing like that. For starters, I make the puppets in front of the audience and there's a strong silent comedy element, which is not reliant on text."

Sticks Stones Broken Bones, the show Achtem is bringing to New Zealand for the Comedy Festival, features his alter ego, Mr Bunk, who recycles household junk to create flying chickens, race horses, ninjas and even brains.

The stories he tells are more like live cartoons, probably because he learned the art of succinct and funny story-telling from reading newspaper cartoon strips. He describes his shows as light on dialogue, reliant on visuals, which means they work more easily anywhere in the world and appeal to all ages.

Indeed one critic compared Sticks Stones Broken Bones to a Pixar film, saying people of all ages would get something out of the show. Achtem says that may be because he writes with his father in mind, a doctor who wanted to go out and see something original, entertaining and only slightly challenging.

"I don't make pop culture references because they date a show and they don't work internationally so there are no references to Star Wars or jokes about politics. I try to keep it universal, but certain things do have to be altered for some audiences. There's a scene where two puppets kiss and in one country - I'm not saying where - we had to make it very clear that the puppets were husband and wife."

Leaving university in 1998 with a science degree, Achtem decided he was more interested in film-making but he grew frustrated by the length of time it can take to green-light movie projects.

Perhaps influenced by the travelling shows his parents took him to as a child, Achtem turned to street theatre and clowning, training in Montreal, France, Holland, Indonesia, Germany and Belgium.

"Clowns need something to do on stage so some make music, others juggle. I was playing around with a few ideas, which involved shadow puppetry, so it grew from there."

What: Sticks Stones Broken Bones
Where & When: Herald Theatre, April 29 - May 3, 11am & 6.30pm