Slagcracker (in development)

Drosselmeyer, a travelling storyteller arrives in a snowstorm, carrying with him a strange box of puppets and a stranger story about young Marie. This child, grieving the tragic loss of her father in a mining accident, is pulled through the floorboards into a fabulous and grotesque land made of sweets. There, she meets a broken toy, a tin nutcracker with slagpit eyes, resembling her father, and she joins him in a struggle against the three-headed Mouse King, whose tyrannical rule has slowly poisoned the land. Slagcracker is a story about meeting grief with festivity.

Slagcracker is an immersive live theatre experience, combining storytelling, puppetry, and music. Inspired by the E.T.A Hoffman novella "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King," Slagcracker is a subversion of traditional interpretations and arrangements, telling a raucous and twisted winter tale of North Ontario.

A workshop for Slagcracker was held in March 2023. This development has been supported by a Northern Arts grant from the Ontario Arts Council.

The original shortened version of this play was commissioned by the Sudbury Symphony Orchestra, and was performed as “The Nutcracker of the North” in December 2021, by puppeteers Jenny Hazelton and France Huot, with Cristina Massotti and Melissa Shaak on violin, Geoff McCausland on viola, and Dobrochna Zubek on principal cello.

CREATIVE TEAM
Jenny Hazelton, Matthew Heiti, France Huot, Geoff McCausland, Barry Miles