Noreen Young WHAT Puppet Builder, Puppeteer and Teacher WHERE Home Studio on Rae Rd., Ramsay Ward, near Almonte 256-3031, nyp@sympatico.ca SHOWS 10th Anniversary Noreen Young Bursary Dinner, September 18th, Almonte WHY "Puppets are an amazing vehicle for communication."   See samples of Noreen's work	Previous Artist Trading Cards

Noreen Young - Woman of 1,000 Faces
By Sally Hansen

Lon Chaney became known as "The Man of a Thousand Faces" due to his ability to portray an endless variety of characters throughout his acting career. Due to her ability to create an endless cast of captivating puppet characters, Noreen Young was inducted into the Order of Canada in 1995 for her achievements in Children's Television.

This is just one of a long list of honours garnered as a result of her love of and talent for puppetry. In addition to two Gemini Awards Nominations, Noreen has received the UNIMA USA Citation of Excellence, an ACTRA award for Best Children's Program, the Children's Broadcast Institute Achievement Award, an International TV Movie Award, awards from the N.Y. Film Festival and the Chicago Film Festival, and many more. Those who know her well believe that perhaps her indomitable spirit, her sense of humour, her capacity for hard work and risk, her warmth and charm, and her caring and generous nature all contribute to her successes.

Puppet Panache
Noreen's genius is her extraordinary ability to create puppets with really mobile and expressive faces that stand up to intense scrutiny. She tells me her preferred medium is television and/or video "because it is so intimate." When I find myself talking to her puppets as I pose them for some photos, I realize what she means. The closer you get, the more you want to get to know her enchanting fantasy creatures, and this is before she brings them to life with her superb skills as a puppeteer.

When she uses her art to imitate life, her puppet renditions of prominent political and public personalities are startling in their resemblance to their warm-blooded originals. Window-shoppers along Almonte's Mill St. comment frequently on her uncanny ability to capture the personality of her shopkeeper subjects as well as their appearance. Proprietors are known to boast that they are always in the shop once their Noreen Young puppet is on display.

Persistent Puppeteer
As a kid growing up in Ottawa South, Noreen loved to put on shows in the basement or garage, conscripting her two younger brothers, Stephen and John Brathwaite. Several decades later, all three Brathwaite siblings are utilizing their exceptional artistic and entrepreneurial talents in their chosen fields, and Stephen still joins Noreen in performing the occasional puppet show.

As a young student at the Ontario College of Art, Noreen realized that the life of a painter would be too lonesome a pursuit for her. She has always been fascinated by the way puppets could establish a special rapport with an audience and provide an entertainer or teacher with an amazing vehicle for communication. "Puppets invite an audience to suspend their disbelief and take in information minus the baggage of the personality of the presenter. It's a wonderful way to present information to kids, even to adults, wrapped up in fun and story," she explains.

Noreen started doing TV work in Ottawa in the late '60s, working as a puppet builder and puppeteer for Hi Diddle Day for ten years. She calls it her "University of the Air." "We were allowed to make mistakes and we learned on the job. I could also do a lot of the work at home while I was raising my two sons." After honing her skills as a puppet builder and puppeteer, Noreen eventually adopted the roles of designer, writer, and ultimately producer when she formed Noreen Young Productions Inc. in 1979.

During her career, she has been involved in over 100 separate television productions. Perhaps her best-known show is the Under the Umbrella Tree series (1986-1993) for pre-schoolers. It aired on CBC, YTV, Canal Famille, and the Disney Channel. Noreen approached CBC with the concept, headed the project, built about 100 puppets over the run of the show, was script editor, and produced 260 15-minute segments and 15 half-hour specials.

As an independent producer, Young has created puppets and produced instructional material geared to adults and children for clients like Canada's Department of Health and Welfare, Cornell University, the Ontario Provincial Police, and a wide variety of business clients. She has created mascots, built twin Baby Mice puppets for Sound Venture Productions' Toy Castle, and designed, built and operated a 16-foot-high dancing man for CBC's Canada Day Production on Parliament Hill. She has performed the regular puppet character "Dodie" and others on Canadian Sesame Park for CBC. There appear to be no limits to her abilities to design, build and operate puppets.

Gifts that Keep on Giving
Although Noreen and her late husband moved to a lovely rural setting near Almonte in 1983 "because it was so beautiful," it wasn't until she was widowed in 1995 that the community reached out to Noreen and Noreen wholeheartedly embraced community. It is an enduring embrace. When Young was inducted into the Order of Canada that same year, the Almonte and Area Artists Association honoured her with a dinner. With the money raised from that event, she decided to "help make things happen" for others in her community. Over the past ten years the Noreen Young Bursary Fund has given $112,500 to 93 young people from Mississippi Mills and Carleton Place who are pursuing post-secondary studies in the Arts.

Another gift is her talent for sharing her artistic abilities through teaching. As a teacher of different puppet-building techniques, Noreen conducts workshops for adults and children in her studio and at the Mississippi Mills Summer School of the Arts. Her eyes sparkle as she tells me, "I love to teach. I love to create a very casual, laid-back, no-pressure environment that encourages each student to be uniquely creative. I had six students in my last class, and every puppet was interesting and each student was pleased."

She has just completed a 90-minute video titled "Making Lifelike Puppets with Noreen Young" that will be featured in Lee Valley's 2004 Christmas Catalogue. The video covers all the steps needed to make a puppet with a rubber-sculpted head, and it offers tips on puppet manipulation and staging. After Noreen does an impromptu puppet show for me with two of her favourite characters, I add her new video to the top of my list of things I want for Christmas. Even if I don't try to build a puppet myself, I will enjoy seeing how she builds and operates these fascinating personalities.

Puppet Sightings
Hopefully you've been lucky enough to snag a ticket for this year's fundraiser, the Noreen Young Bursary Dinner & Gala, on September 18th (it's been sold out since July), where Noreen will perform. If not, take a stroll down Mill St. in Almonte and when you spot one of her puppets in a shop window, go inside and ask to meet his or her human counterpart. You'll be amazed. We've got some great photos, and you can learn more about how to commission a personalized puppet at www.noreenyoungproductions.com. Her phone number and email address are at the top of this page. And don't forget to check out her new video when you get your Lee Valley Christmas Catalogue.