Sunday, October 18, 2026 · No. 5 · WychBourne Village
The Front Page
Small chests. Great grievances.
Save Saturday, December 19 for our First Annual All Puppet Festivus.
Has your puppet been complaining about something all year? The draught in the carrying case? An operator who never lets them finish a sentence? This is their chance to get it off their little chest.
We’re inviting puppets—and the people who bring them to life—from across Vancouver Island to join the First Threads cast for an afternoon of grievances, improbable prowess and good company.
The traditional Airing of Grievances will be followed by Feats of Strength. The barbells will be there. Whether anyone’s arms will be long enough is another matter.
Come celebrate the glorious business of being a puppet: a little outspoken, occasionally misunderstood and always ready to make a room laugh. The invitation is serious; the afternoon will be in good humour.
December 19, 1–4 p.m. · Silver Threads Centre / JDF 55+ Activity Centre, Room 201 · 1767 Island Highway. Enter from Ocean Boulevard. Puppeteers, save the date and pass it along to your Island friends. Let the Troupe Guide know you’re interested; more gathering details will follow.
November 14: come to JDF
Our next Saturday gathering has a new home. Join us for Troupe practice, 10 a.m.–1 p.m., followed by Meet the Puppets, 1–3 p.m., in Room 202 at JDF’s 55+ Activity Centre, 1767 Island Highway. Use the Ocean Boulevard entrance. Bring a friend for the afternoon introduction, or spend the morning helping a scene find its feet. See the details and reserve your place.
Around the Village
Tavi has the blues. We have the beginnings of a scene.
Yesterday’s practice was a good one. We worked on blocking—where the puppets appear, move and turn—and began one of our six-character skits. Getting several characters into a conversation takes a surprising amount of thought about elbows.
For the live work, puppet karaoke took the spotlight, with Tavi singing the blues. Visit Practice to watch the troupe at work; sign in for the longer behind-the-scenes recordings.
Could you be our Master Bard?
We still need the person who enjoys helping a story reach its audience: filming the puppets, finding the shot and giving an exchange room to land. Our Master Bard/Engineer also holds the audience conversation when a skit pauses. Connections to people in film, video or related programmes at UVic or Camosun would be very welcome. Introduce us to someone who might enjoy the work.
Your Two Cents
How does the morning after feel?
The first of our two elections is behind us. Across B.C., yesterday’s local vote has changed familiar lineups and brought new mayors to town halls. Vancouver’s preliminary results, for example, put Pete Fry in the mayor’s chair and show a substantially changed council; the city says official results are due October 21.
What about your town? Are you encouraged, disappointed, relieved—or waiting to see what happens? How do your results sit with you, and what would you like your council to do first? Pull up a chair at Freyja’s Café. Give your neighbours room to see things differently.
The Tau Medicine Garden
Figwort: an unshowy plant with a long memory
Not every garden visitor arrives in a cloud of fragrance. Knotted figwort has small, dusky flowers, a knobbly root and a place in the older herbals quite out of proportion to its modest appearance.
In A Modern Herbal (1931), Maud Grieve records its use for skin complaints, swellings and wounds. The herb was gathered in June and July, then dried. She describes a decoction—plant material simmered in water—used externally as a fomentation, meaning a cloth soaked in the liquid and laid against the affected area. Fresh leaves were also bruised for a local application or made into ointment.
Grieve’s account also preserves some of the names people gave it: Throatwort, Carpenter’s Square and Kernelwort. Alongside the preparations, these little pieces of language tell us how closely plants once belonged to the daily life of a household.
This record of traditional plant use is offered for learning and historical interest, rather than as medical advice.
A Moment of Practice
The beginning before we begin
Before we pick up a puppet, there is already something to do. We take a Wet One and clean our hands. It is a small kindness to a companion who cannot wash their own face, and a useful moment to leave the morning’s hurry behind.
How we begin matters to what follows. We can rush through that little task with our minds elsewhere, or let it become our arrival: here is the room, here are the people beside us, here is the character we are about to meet.
That is the thread connecting our studio preparation with Kenyoku Hō, Reiki’s “dry bathing.” Its brushing gestures make a deliberate beginning, setting aside what we have brought with us so we can attend to what comes next. Purification before entering a Shinto shrine gives another expression to this care: washing prepares the person as well as the hands.
So give the preparation its moment. As the last bits of this morning’s doughnut leave your fingers, let your attention settle on the work ahead. The wipe has a practical job; the ritual helps us become ready. By the time the puppet comes out, we have begun to be present.
Study Time
One socket. Six opinions.
“Let each table hear the other only in pieces, so the argument is built from half-sentences.”
That direction comes from “One Power Strip,” the six-character café skit on pages 22–23 of Common Thread Skits, Season 26–27. A windstorm has left Freyja’s running on a small generator. Phones need charging, a repair time keeps slipping, and Kai’s neighbour has a more urgent need that is difficult to explain.
The exchange runs until Jules calls a pause. The Bard/Engineer invites the audience to choose a next step; the puppets then replay part of the scene with that suggestion. It closes with an agreed action. Nobody becomes the villain, and the audience gets to see what changes when people ask about needs before arguing over turns.
Get your skitbook at the next Studio Hours or Troupe Workshop. Come along, pick up a copy and meet the characters waiting inside.
Excerpt: Tau Wellness Cooperative, Common Thread Skits (2026), p. 23; CC BY-NC-SA. Overview condensed for the Weekly.
The Weekly Mind Twister
Three labels, all wrong
Three closed prop boxes are labelled HATS, SCARVES and MIXED. Each label is wrong. You may draw one item, without looking, from just one box. Which box lets you work out all three contents?
Unpack the answer
Draw from MIXED. Because that label is wrong, it contains only the kind you draw. If you pull a hat, that box holds hats; SCARVES must then be the mixed box, leaving scarves in HATS. Reverse the reasoning if you draw a scarf.
Hiring Hall Report
Where the puppets might take us
We are applying for support to take our work into more communities. Here are some possibilities on the horizon:
- December 2026: a local community tour, with support requested from Peninsula Co-op. We do not yet have a decision date.
- September 2027: an eight-stop Western Canada tour. Tau’s Canada Council application is awaiting a decision, expected around March.
- 2027–29: OCHI’s Justice application proposes two Western circuits, one in each of the first two years, followed by four provincial tours in 2029. We are waiting to hear when decisions will come.
Some applications would help support the same journey. As funding takes shape, we will bring you dates, places and ways to take part.
Securing funding is an uphill battle. None of these tours is funded yet. We cannot promise the work; we can keep making the case for it, and keep trying.
Support Our Troupe’s Work
More places to find a little play
Our troupe members are active in arts projects across the region. Here are some of the things they bring to our attention—please support them, and help these invitations find their people.
Clowning for the Health of It
Jimmy shares this two-day Victoria workshop with Fif Fernandes and Hamish Boyd on November 7–8: therapeutic clowning, humour and human connection, with no experience required. The advertised special is $222.22 until October 21, then $333.33. Full details and registration.
Have a show, workshop or other arts invitation to share? Send a poster and a public promotion link for a future edition.
From the Troupe Guide
There is a place for you here
I came away from yesterday’s practice glad we had made the time. There is such pleasure in hearing a puppet find a voice, or watching a scene begin to work because the people in it are getting to know one another.
Some of you have expressed concern about the commitment a Company Troupe asks of you. I understand: people have full lives, and a regular place in a performing company is a substantial undertaking. That is why we have Community Puppeteers.
Come to a workshop or practice when you can, even if that is only occasionally. Your presence helps everyone. Another person can give a character someone to answer, help us try a larger scene or bring an idea none of us had thought of. That is an important part of what Community Puppeteers contribute to our shared work.
Getting First Threads ready for its Community Debut remains our first job. We are looking for eight people who can commit to the company, with three or four returning regularly enough to get us moving. Around that small, steady group, there is room for all the people who can join us from time to time.
And then there is the sheer fun of it. For a while, you can give your attention to a different voice, an unlikely conversation and the business of making a puppet sing the blues. Doing something outside your usual routine can change how you feel. Sometimes a little play is just the change an afternoon needs.
Need something different? Come and try a studio session, or join us at the next workshop. I would love to see you, whenever you can make it.