Goldfish by Terrapin
ABOUT THE SHOW
A solo puppeteer is performing a fable for children. We imagine a flourishing society that does away with time, ignoring night and day, leading to a great flood. Suddenly, in the theatre, a team of disaster recovery workers burst in to transform it into an evacuation centre. Among these competing narratives we begin to ask, what role should humanity, and the theatre, play in times of increasing disaster?
Through constantly shifting imagery, we experience stunning shifts of scale in this performance from the miniature to the gigantic, with the story moving between the abstract and the literal. Familiar items come alive to tell the tale: a blue tarpaulin becomes a surging ocean; pallets of tinned food become battlements; bags of rice become sandbags to hold back a flood.
Goldfish is a ground-breaking collaboration between celebrated Tasmanian puppetry company Terrapin and Japan’s Aichi Prefectural Art Theater, with performers from Australia and Japan. This work is ideal for children aged 8+ and their families.
ABOUT THE COMPANY
Based in Hobart, Terrapin’s purpose is to make lives better, shift realities and create connection. For over 40 years the company has been creating rich, unique experiences for intergenerational audiences performing in schools, aged care, theatres, festivals, galleries and public spaces. Terrapin creates contemporary puppetry experiences for audiences of all ages, touring Tasmania, nationally and internationally. It creates work for theatres and interactive installations for public space.
The company’s work has been presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival, the Vancouver International Children’s Festival, De Betovering (the Netherlands), A.S.K Shanghai, Aichi Arts Centre (Japan), the Taipei Children’s Art Festival, the Lincoln Center (New York), the Kennedy Center, the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Festival among many others.
Terrapin is committed to developing and producing dynamic new Tasmanian work, providing a platform for emerging and established local artists and a medium for touring their work nationally and internationally
Creative Credits
Writer: Dan Giovannoni
Co-Directors: Kouhei Narumi (Dainanagekijo) / 鳴海康平（第七劇場）& Sam Routledge
Designer: Ayami Sasaki (FAIFAI) / 佐々木文美（快快）
Shadow Puppet Designer and Maker: Greta Jean
Composer: Dylan Sheridan
Lighting Designer: Richard Vabre
Associate Designer: Yumemi Hiraki
Cast: Rino Daidoji, Mayu Iwasaki, Marcus McKenzie
Residence Coordination and Cooperation in Japan: Aichi Prefectural Art Theater
Residence Coordination in Japan: Chiryu Public Theater
Stage Manager: Mads Hillam
Production Coordinator: Liv Vermey
Artist Biographies
Sam Routledge
Sam has been creating work for intergenerational audiences in schools, theatres and public spaces for over 25 years. A skilled collaborator across sectors and cultures, his work has played in over 11 countries in diverse places from The Atrium City Hall in The Hague to The John F. Kennedy Center for The Performing Arts to Smithton Primary School in the North West of Tasmania.
He has a Bachelor of Arts – Communication (Theatre/Media) from Charles Sturt University and Post-Graduate Diploma in Puppetry from the Victorian College of the Arts.
Dan Giovannoni
Dan’s plays for families, young people and adults have been produced across Australia and internationally at festivals, in theatres, school halls, parks, tents and even a barn outside of Hobart. His plays include Feathers, The Great Un-Wondering of Wilbur Whittaker, SLAP. BANG. KISS., HOUSE, Mad as a Cute Snake and Cut Snake (with Amelia Chandos Evans), Air Race, Bambert’s Book of Lost Stories, Jurassica, and two adaptations of Christos Tsiolkas’ writing, Merciless Gods and Loaded. He has won three Green Room Association awards, a Helpmann Award, an AWGIE, and twice been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. He has worked with companies including MTC, Barking Gecko, Malthouse, Arena, Terrapin and Red Stitch. His first picture book, HOUSE (named after his play of the same name) is available now through Fremantle Press. Dan lives on Wurundjeri country in Melbourne with his husband and daughter.
Narumi Kouhei
Born in 1979, Hokkaido, Japan. Residence in Mie Pref.
Artistic Director of Théâtre de Belleville, at Tsu, Mie préfecture since 2014. And Director, Scenographer of “Dainanagekijo, Theatre Company since 1999.
Received « Grants for Overseas Study of Young Artists » by POLA ART FOUNDATION, in France 2012-2013.
Born in 1979, Hokkaido, Japan. Diploma from Waseda University, First Literature Department. Degree in Theatre and Images. NARUMI creates works showing dramatic effects as the experienced sight, re-structuring views of the world described in the text with solitude and exhausted humanity. Performance has received high appraisal in Japan and abroad for the representation which is composed of multilayer effects with not to depend on only language. Works have been performed at 24 cities in Japan and 9 cities abroad (France, Germany, South Korea and Taiwan).
In addition to basic production equipment made of wood, the stage set is created using steel, acrylic, and other materials and construction materials. In a stage space based on white, the set is combined with ready-made products to form a senography that has a strong sense of reality, yet is minimalistic and abstract. The stage set, including lighting design, will also be emphasized.
Rino Daidoji
Born in Tokyo in 1982, Rino Daidoji is the founding member of theater company FAIFAI, while also participating in domestic and international productions as an actress/performer. In 2014, she started performing solo and performed “Socialstrip” in Tokyo, Yokohama, Beijing, Hong Kong and Bangkok. Since 2015, she has moved to Cesena in northern Italy and is now based in Japan and Italy.
In her performance works, narratives are often presented with connections to her daily life and those of people around her as contemporary fantasies. Her major works include “This is a Great Great Autumn” (Yokohama, 2016) and “La mattina e un po ’di piccole notti” (Cesena, Italy, 2019; Yokohama, Cervia, Italy, 2020). From April 2021, she founded Daidoji’s Super Experimental Club and her first video work, the diary films “La mia quarantena / My isolation period”, followed by “Quando d’estate mi dimentico dell’inverno/When in summer I forget about the winter” was screened in Tokyo, Kyoto, Cesena and Hong Kong.
Mayu Iwasaki
Hailing from Tokyo, Japan, Mayu Iwasaki is an award-winning actor, puppeteer, theatre creator, and cultural consultant fluent in both Japanese and English, and currently based in Sydney. In 2019, she made her Sydney Theatre Company debut in Anchuli Felicia King’s White Pearl and toured nationally with the production in 2021. A graduate of David Mamet’s Atlantic Theatre Conservatory, she has also trained extensively with the SITI Company in New York. Since 2020, she has served as an inaugural creative associate at Monkey Baa Theatre Company, where she wrote the original puppet show Little Bozu and Kon Kon. In 2023, she founded Omusubi Productions, with its inaugural production The Face of Jizo earning four nominations at the Sydney Theatre Awards, including Best Production. “Omusubi” refers to a Japanese soul food symbolising unity, a theme she aims to weave through her artistic works.
Her credits include Salt Along The Tongue (SXSW), Top Knot Detective (SBS), White Pearl (STC & National Theatre of Parramatta), The Face of Jizo (Redline Productions & Omusubi Productions), Little Bozu and Kon Kon (Monkey Baa Theatre Company), Storyland (Merrigong), Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice (NIDA), The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other (NIDA), Erth’s Dinosaur Zoo (ERTH Visual & Physical Inc., Japan and Doha), Fallen (Mozawa, Chicago), Love and Information (Atlantic Theatre Company, NYC), and the one-woman show Morgan O-Yuki: The Geisha of the Gilded Age (Shakespeare & Co., Massachusetts, USA)
Marcus McKenzie
Marcus is an artist based in Melbourne, Australia. His work uses the relationship between audience and performer as a site for bizarre encounters, often incorporating schisms in language, meme-adjacent media and questionable dancing. His works take place in theatres, old supermarkets, churches, galleries, sweaty nightclubs and the basements of public institutions. Collaborations of note: MONA, Rising, The Substation, Soft Centre, Arts Centre Melbourne, Miscellania, Aphids, Gertrude Contemporary, Blindside, Liveworks. As a freelance performer he’s worked for Malthouse Theatre, Belvoir, Terrapin, Kaldor Public Art Projects, Science Gallery Melbourne, NGV, Steirischerherbst, Dark Mofo & Mona Foma.
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