by CHRIS BARRY

Name: Chris Godziuk

Age: 27

Occupation: Master of puppets

Bio: This artsy yet mercifully unpretentious Mile-End resident was weaned in Grand Prairie, Alberta, and first arrived in Montreal a few years back to study contemporary dance at Concordia. Only venturing into the time-honoured medium of puppetry in 2000, after his friend Sheldon urged him to return to Alberta and launch a theatre company called Peanut Butter Productions with an eye to wowing them all at the San Francisco Fringe Festival that same year, Chris says the troupe “mostly did puppet shows around Edmonton—at schools, coffee shops, folk festivals, people’s basements, on the street, everywhere. Basically, we’re guerrilla-style puppeteers.” Having graduated from Concordia with flying colours this spring, Chris and PBP are now poised for a major comeback in the fast-paced world of international puppetry, with Chris and Sheldon actively creating new marionettes and a series of exciting new puppet shows they’ll be unleashing upon Montreal later this year. “There’ll always be a demand for quality marionette shows.”

Where you’ll be able to witness one of Chris’s quality marionette shows: “You can find us on the street, usually on the corner of Ste-Catherine and McGill College, outside of Indigo, right beside that Mexican guy who paints all those outer space themes. We’ll also be doing children’s birthday parties and eventually taking it into theatres.”

Can anybody possibly not love a puppet show? Apparently. “A lot of people walk by me saying, ‘Oh my God, I hate puppets,’ cringing when they see them and walking really fast to get away from them. I’ll come across at least five or six people who feel this way every time I’m out.”

Has he ever considered freaking out his downstairs neighbours by dangling one of his puppets outside their bedroom window and making it masturbate? “Uh, no.”

Are there larger issues addressed in his work, or is it pretty much a “Peter-Puppet- meets-a-scary-goose-on-the-way-to-school-but- soon-learns-the-scary-goose-isn’t-so-much-scary-as-misunderstood” kind of thing? “No, we touch on contemporary issues. We do these weird, artsy-strange, touching on other dimensions, like, really fantastical themes. But it’s also a great medium for getting big issues across, which is what it’s been used for historically. Presenting stories in this medium can get pretty deep. Like, you’re manipulating these little people, so already there’s this huge metaphor. And of course, there’s an underlying political message.”

Might that political message be that the Holocaust never happened? “Uh, no. We’re more of that whole left-wing, break-free-from-the-system type of thing.”

How he’s supporting himself until he starts raking in the mega-bucks through better puppetry: By working part-time in the kitchen at upscale downtown restaurant Cavelli’s. “It’s crazy some of the things I learn in the kitchen that I later apply to making puppets.”

Might spitting on them be one of those things? Apparently not.

Musical preferences: Richie Hawtin, Pheek.

Last book read: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being Vegetarian, by Suzanne Havala.

Words of wisdom: “When nothing is certain, anything is possible.”

Comments? dimwit@hdot.net