As street performer Alexander Winfield emerged from a burlap sack to set up for an afternoon performance on the trendy Queen Street West strip a tiny puppet head fell onto the sidewalk.
"He's a bit beat-up, so he needs to be repaired," the puppeteer explained.
It's hard to miss Winfield belting out improvised banter and songs as he provides the voices for two characters in his funny and bizarre street side puppet show on Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons on the north side of Queen West between
Beverley and Soho Streets.
"Once you find a spot that works for you, you tend to stay there for the season," he said.
Necessity is the mother of invention, according to the old axiom, and that's definitely the case with Winfield, who said dead-end jobs inspired him to put his skills to use on the street, despite having few funds.
"I came upon this idea, first, a couple of years ago when I had enough of trying to make do with very poor part-time jobs. I thought, I can perform, I like puppets, I have some puppets, let's do this on the street and see what it makes me and it did me alright," he told
CityNews.ca Friday.
"That was two years ago [and] this is my first summer doing it full time."
Winfield's show may be simple, but it's impossible to ignore as you stroll down the busy sidewalk. The actor sits inside a cloth sack, takes suggestions from passersby and then creates and performs songs around those ideas using two puppets - one a strange and hairy human-looking character and the other a Wrinkles toy dog.
"You get lots of highs and lows. Sometimes you have a fabulous day and people love what you're doing, and are very supportive and you get a lot of kids who just love what you're doing, it's fabulous," Winfield explained.
"Sometimes you get some other unpleasant people who, for one reason or another, just want to cause you a bit of a hassle. And I've had to persuasively, shall we say, ask some people to leave every now and again.
"Generally, it's okay though. Toronto is a pretty nice city for this kind of a thing."
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Winfield took a suggestion from us when we stopped by to speak with him Friday afternoon. Our proposed song idea? The gentrification of Queen Street West and/or West Queen Street West.
Here's a taste of what Winfield came up with:
Well Queen Street was a marvelous creation,
but now it is subject to gentrification.
The prices they simply go on up,
all the hippies, I'm afraid they're out of luck."
To check out the whole song click on the video link above.
shawne.mckeown@citytv.com
- Like puppets? Check out my story on Toronto's premier puppet theatre company
The Puppetmongers.