Wonderful Joe
Created and performed by Ronnie Burkett
October 5-23, 2024
Lawrence
Photo credit: Ian Jackson
About TO Live
TO Live is one of Canada’s largest multi-arts organizations, operating three iconic venues: Meridian Hall, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, and Meridian Arts Centre. In addition, TO Live presents a full range of performing arts, theatrical, and concert events at these venues in both downtown and uptown Toronto. With these two hubs of creativity and content creation, TO Live has a unique place and perspective to activate creative spaces by inspiring local and international artists, connecting audiences, stimulating new ideas, and elevating artistic potential, becoming a catalyst for creative expression that is reflective of Toronto’s diversity.
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TO Live would like to acknowledge Tkaronto (TKahr-on-dOnH), which is a Mohawk word meaning “the place in the water where the trees are standing.”
We live and work on the traditional territory of Haudenosaunee (HODE-en-ohshow-nee)-speaking nations, including the Wendat, Seneca, and Mohawk. Haudenosaunee-speaking nations have been here since time immemorial, and were more recently joined by the Mississaugas of the Credit.
This place has many Indigenous ports, including where the Humber and Rouge rivers meet other waterways such as Lake Ontario. Ancient longhouses, typical Haudenosaunee housing structures, have been found along both rivers and in the north of Toronto as well (near modern-day York University). This territory is covered by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) Confederacy and the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the lands and the relationships around the Great Lakes.
What this means is that by living and working here, we all have a responsibility to the environment and to each other, to treat each other and the environment with peace and respect. This means we have responsibilities to honour, renew, and consistently uphold the values and relationships outlined in the ancient agreements.
Today, Toronto is home to Indigenous peoples and settlers from around the world. Let us all come together in an atmosphere of respect and peace to do Good Work together with Good Minds. Let’s start building stronger and healthier relationships with each other, and the spaces which we inhabit in Tkaronto, Ontari:io (on-dahr-EE-yo), Kanata (Gan-AH-dah).
Let’s hold our minds together in kindness.
Nia:wen. Thank you.
©Dawn T Maracle
Welcome letter from TO Live
It is an honour for TO Live to work with Ronnie Burkett and present Wonderful Joe in the Jane Mallet Theatre in St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts.
A testament to Burkett’s artistic vision and dedication to his craft, Wonderful Joe ’s imaginative conception and creation are nothing short of extraordinary.
With a deep affection for the denizens on the fringes of respectable society, Wonderful Joe takes audiences on a journey—both hilarious and thoughtprovoking—offering a unique perspective on the tapestry of city life.
Burkett’s attention to detail and impeccable craftsmanship shine through in every aspect of Wonderful Joe, from the meticulously designed sets to the intricately crafted puppets.
As a young boy growing up in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Ronnie Burkett was flipping through a World Book Encyclopedia when the page fell open to puppets. It was a photo of the puppeteer Bil Baird, surrounded by his marionettes in a still from the film The Sound of Music.
Ronnie has famously said, “I read the article, and I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s what I’ll do,’” adding “it’s a great form for someone who feels that they’re a loner or a freak.”
In the five decades since he founded the Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, the Canadian puppetmaster has won international acclaim and revolutionized the artform. For his contributions to theatre, Burkett has been appointed to the Order of Canada; recognized with the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement; received the Siminovitch Prize as well as an Obie Award, off-Broadway’s highest honour; and multiple Dora Mavor Moore, Sterling, and Chalmers Awards.
Thank you for joining us and for being a vital part of the vibrant arts community in Toronto. Enjoy the show!
Clyde Wagner President & CEO TO Live
Backstage with...John Alcorn
John Alcorn is one of Canada’s premiere jazz vocalists who has delivered his distinctive renditions of jazz standards on the most prestigious bandstands and concert stages across the country. A longtime collaborator of Ronnie Burkett, Alcorn composed the music for Wonderful Joe. Read our interview with Alcorn to learn more about his career and the sounds of this production.
How did you become interested in music?
It was almost impossible to avoid. Music runs through my family for generations, especially on my mother’s side. Her father, my maternal grandfather, was a swing drummer back in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. My mom was one of four sisters, and they were all musicians and singers. My great-grandmother was a church organist, and so on. My mom was a classical singer, mezzo-soprano. I used to hear her sing on CBC radio with symphony orchestras when I was a kid. There were six kids in my family, and every one of us was forced to take piano lessons.
How did you turn that into a career?
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Professionally, it never crossed my mind. It was just something we always did. I was in theatre first. But one day when I was 18 or 19, a friend was obsessed with the idea that he had to put a band together back in Nova Scotia, and said, “John, I had this dream. It was this band, and you were in it and playing electric keyboard and it was amazing.” And I was like, “What? What are you talking about?” I was still playing piano, but I wasn’t any kind of rock player. But I bought into his dream, and we drove off and I bought an electric piano, and that’s how it started, and it’s been off and on ever since.
What inspired the music in WonderfulJoe?
Ronnie and I have been working together for about 25 years now, and every project is a whole new song and dance. But with this one, I got an idea for something I’d never done before. I said, “What if I created a score that was based on the human voice?” At that early stage, I was even thinking it might be just voices; I’d write this arrangement and bring in a choir.
That didn’t end up happening, but that was the beginning. I had also written a score for Ronnie’s Billy Twinkle 10 years ago, and part of that was in a very specific style. People don’t know them anymore, but there was a vocal group that was quite popular back in the 60s and 70s called the Swingle Singers, and they would do jazzy versions of classical music in six-part harmony. Ronnie loved it and wanted it back for Wonderful Joe.
Tell us more about the score. For other shows I usually write music and lyrics, and it’s one song after the other, the numbers for the characters. Wonderful Joe is exactly the opposite. It’s all underscore and transitional music. There is one song in the entire play, but it’s a super important song. It’s sung by Mother Nature and it’s at a very crucial juncture of the story. And my thought was, “This song has to be perfect and super impactful.”
So I started with that song and it took me 10 days. I wrote the lyrics first, because I wanted to make sure I got the story right. Once Ronnie approved the lyrics, I started playing around with the music and thought, Mother Nature’s singing in a gay piano bar. There’s got to be a piano. And I allowed myself to add a string quartet, two violins, a viola, and a cello, but that’s all. And Ronnie sings it live in the show.
I put myself in the mindset of the 1930s and 40s, and thought, “What would Judy Garland sing? What would Edith Piaf sing?” I started in that mode, and then Ronnie reminded me how much he loves the Weimar period in Germany. So I took this existing song and superimposed that Weimar thing on top of it, and it just took off.
We then identified that there were four or five main musical themes that had to run throughout the show. So I went back to that key song and lifted little melodic bits out of there, and basically the entire score came from that one song.
About Wonderful Joe
Fresh off wildly successful runs in California and Edmonton, Ronnie Burkett brings Wonderful Joe home to Toronto with his signature stunning puppetry, laugh-out-loud humour, and masterful performance. Recently honoured with a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, Burkett’s latest work is a love letter to imagination, hope, and the art of filling broken hearts with gold.
The story follows down-on-his-luck Joe, an elderly gay man, who together with his tight-knit queer community face eviction amid the gentrification of their working-class neighbourhood. On the brink of losing his home, Joe heads into the world for one last grand adventure.
The world seems broken, but Joe sees magic in the mundane, beauty amidst brutality, and life in the lost and lonely. He encounters a cast of characters, including Mother Nature, Santa Claus, Jesus, and the Tooth Fairy. He witnesses a troupe of homeless players in a cardboard theatre and shows a disenfranchised teen how to jump over the moon in a playground rocketship.
Featuring a glorious score and soundscape by John Alcorn, Wonderful Joe is a touching story about building community and finding the light in the darkness. Like life, it is messy, beautiful, heartbreaking, hilarious—and an inspiring show that is not to be missed.
Photo credit: Ian Jackson
Artist biographies
Ronnie Burkett has been captivated by puppetry since the age of seven, when he opened the World Book Encyclopedia to “puppets.” He began touring his puppet shows around Alberta at the age of 14 and has been on the road ever since.
Recognized as one of Canada’s foremost theatre artists, Ronnie Burkett has been credited with creating some of the world’s most elaborate and provocative puppetry. Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes was formed in 1986 and has stimulated an unprecedented adult audience for puppet theatre, continuously playing to great critical and public acclaim on Canada’s major stages, and as a guest company on many international tours.
Ronnie has received many awards in Canadian theatre as a playwright, actor, and designer for his work with Theatre of Marionettes, including the 2009 Siminovitch Prize in Theatre; The Herbert Whittaker Drama Bench Award for outstanding contribution to Canadian theatre; a Village Voice OBIE Award in New York for off-Broadway theatre; the GLAAD Award for outstanding theatre, Broadway/off-Broadway; and four citations of excellence in the art of puppetry from the American Center of the Union Internationale de la Marionnette. In 2019, he was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada. In June, Ronnie received the Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award from the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards.
Ronnie’s highly acclaimed and wildly popular improvised marionette vaudeville cabaret The Daisy Theatre has played a decade of sold-out touring seasons including in Los Angeles, New York, Vancouver, Toronto, Sydney, and Auckland, and follows the international successes Penny Plain, Billy Twinkle, 10 Days on Earth, Provenance, and the “Memory Dress Trilogy” of Tinka’s New Dress, Street of Blood, and Happy. Little Dickens (The Daisy Theatre version of A Christmas Carol ) premiered in 2017. In June 2019, Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes premiered a new audienceinteractive production, Forget Me Not. In 2022 The Loony Bin premiered, Ronnie’s first solo salon handpuppet show since he was a teenager. In 2023, The Daisy Theatre cast took on Shakespeare in Little Willy for a seven-city tour.
John Alcorn is one of Canada’s premiere jazz vocalists, delivering his distinctive renditions of jazz standards on the most prestigious bandstands and concert stages across Canada. His list of citations and acknowledgements in music and theatre includes both Jazz Report (male vocalist of the year) and Dora (outstanding music) awards.
His latest recording, Flying Without Wings (2016), features an all-star Canadian trio—Reg Schwager (guitar), Mark Eisenman (piano), and Steve Wallace (bass)—along with New York great, Warren Vaché (cornet).
Previous releases include Quiet Night, his first CD of jazz standards, in 2003. It garnered virtually unanimous praise from critics and fans, and introduced John to an international audience, receiving radio airplay in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, England, Germany, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, India, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Republic of Belarus, Russia, Scotland, Spain, and Wales—as well as Canada and the U.S.A.
As composer, lyricist, musical director, and arranger, Alcorn has made significant contributions to many theatrical productions. The Daisy Theatre, currently touring internationally, for which he composed and recorded the full score (“John Alcorn’s sometimes spare, sometimes lush sound design, is gorgeous” —straight. com), is one of several collaborations with renowned theatre artist Ronnie Burkett.
With over 30 years in the entertainment industry, Crystal Salverda has been blessed to work both across the country and internationally stage-managing some wonderful productions. She has had the pleasure of working with Ronnie for the past 11 years. She has also worked with companies such as Blyth Festival, Kidoons Network, Calgary Stampede, Necessary Angel, Soulpepper Theatre, Canadian Stage, and Harold Green Jewish Theatre, just to name a few. Other work experience includes operations for Field of Dreams and Little League Classic (BaAM Productions), sales manager (Westsun), and concert stage manager (Marquis Entertainment).
Credits and creative team
Created and performed by
Ronnie Burkett
Music composition and lyrics
John Alcorn
Lighting design
Kevin Humphrey
Production manager/artistic associate
Terri Gillis
Stage manager/technical director
Crystal Salverda
Associate producer
John Lambert
Marionette and costume design
Ronnie Burkett
Costumes
Kim Crossley
Puppet studio
Alexander Mantia, Aidan Sparks, Angela
Talbot, Dina Meschkuleit, Martin Herbert,
Andy Hayward, Shanna Miller, Justin Mezzapelli, and Brigitte Sampogna
Shoes
Camellia Koo
Marionette controls
Greg Ballora (after Luman Coad)
Marionette stringing
Marcus Jamin
Majordomo
Robbie Buttinski
Scenic construction
Shop Dogs, Montreal
Scenic painting
Daniel Barkley
Model and drafting
Aidan Sparks
Music production, arrangements, vocals,
keyboards, and digital programming
John Alcorn
Featured vocals
Coco Love Alcorn
Mixing and mastering
Jeff Wolpert, Desert Fish Studios
Wonderful Joe was co-commissioned by Stanford Live (Stanford, California, U.S.A.), UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance or CAP UCLA (Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.) and TO Live (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), with developmental support from Theatre Network (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) in association with Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes.
Ronnie Burkett received development support for Wonderful Joe from the Canada Council for the Arts Explore and Create Program.
Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes is exclusively represented by John Lambert & Assoc., Montreal, Canada.
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Photo credit: Ian Jackson
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