Puppetry is a skill that has evolved from a desire to extend and explore, to play, to dance and to interact with others and puppetry has taken me on a number of exciting journey’s.
I have made large-scale parade puppets with communities in Australia and New Zealand, had the honour of manipulating lanterns that move and dance and toured internationally with roving characters.
I have run workshops creating newspaper puppets in Japan, plastic drink bottle birds in New Zealand and kitchen utensil puppets from New South Wales, across the Nullabour to Perth.
I am a member of the Polyglot team at Polyglot Theatre. In 2010 I went to Minima Sanruki to perform at a tsunami relief market and ran a puppet workshop with a group of school children. This was an amazing and powerful experience . For more detail click on the above link.
In 2008 I joined a collaboration between Krinkl Theater and LighnUp that created an illuminated puppet show based on Leunig’s cartoons.
“…before a duck” then joined the Puppet Caravan that travelled from Lismore NSW across the Nullabour to Perth in time for the UNIMA International Puppetry Festival and Conference.
9 puppeteers, 3 cars and over 5,000 kms. We performed in small rural towns along the way and created 100’s of puppets with children for the Million Puppets Project for the UNIMA Festival.
As apart of the Puppet Caravan Kathy McCormick created The Queen. A sultry shadow body and puppet show based on a poem by Christine Strealn. The Queen was performed in the cabaret evenings on the caravan and at the Lounge at UNIMA Festival.
Stefanie Robinson 
Very evocative stuff. I wish I had made the effort to get to the UNIMA conference, but Perth is a foreign country for a Ballina boy.
Congratulations on the excellent 2012 Lismore Lantern Parade. It was just covered very well on the local Prime TV news. Though they didn’t mention the market stalls or the music, all of which were great. I even got a free glowing yoyo from the folks helping people to get ready for the analog TV shutdown, and I bought a “Sea Shepherd” beanie to keep my head warm. A great night.
Was “The Queen” written by Christine Strelan, rather than Christine Strealn? Searching for “Strealn” got me only one hit, on the whole interweb thingy.
strelan…. she’s a poet from the Lismore area…Nimbin i think…..