Puppeteer Jenny Ellis, of Little Wings Puppets, will be at Tuggeranong Arts Centre this weekend to stage a shadow play puppet show, The Owl’s Apprentice, and a workshop for children.

In 2011, Ellis was mentored by master shadow puppeteer Richard Bradshaw as part of the national Jump Mentoring program. She was also awarded a major fellowship by the Mike Walsh Foundation to research contemporary puppetry in Europe in 2012 and in 2013 she received the Australian Children’s Theatre Foundation commission to create Spike.

Briefly, in the solo show, which uses a combination of shadow puppetry, hand puppetry and storytelling, a young owl named Poot Poot has been sent to Owl School to learn to become wise. But he doesn’t know how to fly, he misses his family, he just wants to go home, then his teacher, Mr Tawny, sends him to get a book from a library in a far-off city.

On his way he meets a wombat, a Lyrebird, a Kookaburra, an echidna and a platypus who show him it’s okay to be different.

Ellis plays multiple characters at once in the play, co-written with Anne Brooksbank.

In her shadow puppetry workshop,  Playing with Light, Ellis gives children aged 4-12 the skills to make their own shadow puppet and bring it to life in a puppet show.

The Owl’s Apprentice, followed by the Playing with Light workshop, Tuggeranong Arts Centre, August 23. All materials provided. Children six years and under must be accompanied by an adult.