Brad Brackenridge: Vertep
Vertep is sold out! Thanks to all who reserved tickets.
July 28 – August 1, 2021
August 4 – August 8, 2021
Artspace (378 Aylmer St N, Peterborough) please use entrance on the right side of building, up stairs
Run time: 6 minutes
*This is an indoor event*
Free admission, donations are welcome at the door.
Vertep is a puppet-based multimedia performance work. An intimate experience, it is performed privately for audiences, one member at a time.
Brad worked with many collaborators for this performance including two Opera singers, a costume designer, a carpenter and a multi-media artist. Inspired by his mother’s passing a number years ago, Brad describes the work as a “meditation on life, death and beyond”.
Brad Brackenridge is an artist living in the Peterborough/ Nogojiwanong area. He has been a performer and designer in theatre and film for almost 30 years. He founded The Nervous System in 2013, a puppet-based theatre company which has created and produced Komachi on the Shrine (with composer Kathleen Adamson, 2018); Festivus Rattus Rattus 2035 (Precarious Festival 2017); Life Comes to Resemble Unimaginative Literature: Or, the Moment of my Death (The Bernie Martin Festival 2016); VERTEP (Emergency 2015); Murmuratio (Erring 2014); Terror and Erebus (Artsweek 2013; remounted in the Otonabee in 2014 and as a solo show at The Theatre on King 2015); and Luminato: The Encampment, a large-scale public participatory art installation.
Brad has also created puppets for diverse theatrical companies including: Shaw Festival, 4th Line (“And there is a marauding buffalo (a puppet manned by three people) that is one of the single most hilarious things I’ve ever seen on the stage.” (Paula Citron, Globe and Mail), Spiel Players, Artsweek, Precarious Festival.
Brad has studied with Old Trout Puppet Company, Puppetmongers Powell and Bernd Ogrodnik, taking courses in marionettes, the construction and manipulation of jointed puppets, and wood carving.
Brad had mentored two emerging artists in puppetry: Naomi Duvall and Samuelle Weatherdon. His most recent work in progress was developed under the mentorship of Julia Aplin as part of Public Energy’s Alternating Currents program: Sputnik’s Shadow, a moving and hilarious exploration of the first man in space, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, and the space race.
Brad is the recipient of the 2018 Peterborough Arts Award for Outstanding Mid-Career Artist. Presently, Brad is honored to be the Artist in Residence at Artspace for 2021.
