Kris Fleerackers is a puppeteer, puppet builder, performer and director. He grew up in Flanders, Belgium, a quirky little country with strong traditions of art, comics, pageantry and puppets and now lives among bears, raccoons and eagles on traditional Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) territory in British Columbia, Canada.

Kris has worked as a theatre director, actor, dramaturg, writer and educator; he has performed with Bread and Puppet Theatre, The Postmodern Camerata and several European theatre companies, and has collaborated with Vancouver’s Public Dreams Society. He has also taught theatre workshops, built and animated puppets for community events, and created puppets, props, sets and costumes for the stage as well as for television, including gangster matryoshkas, an Ice Age cave wall and prehistoric slippers…

After studying literature and theatre at the University of Antwerp, Kris obtained an MA in Performance Studies at New York University under the tutelage of Richard Schechner; the program included seminars and workshops with such groundbreaking artists as Jerzy Grotowsky, Augusto Boal, Eugenio Barba, Julian Beck and Judith Malina, Laurie Anderson, Mary Beth Edelson, Donna Hennes and Spalding Gray. More recently, he took puppetry intensives with Peter Balkwill of The Old Trout Puppet Workshop and at Toronto’s Humber College, where he also took masterclasses in object theatre and puppet construction. In addition, he has received training in mask work, clowning and shadow theatre, writing and story editing, as well as early music, sword-fighting, and dance.

After pursuing a daytime career as an editor, video journalist and producer of Canadian public television for many years, he has now returned full-time to live performance and puppetry. He sings, and plays baroque alto recorder, Flemish bagpipes and a wee bit of cello.

 

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