A Short History of
Red Smarteez Marionettes

While studying painting at the Alberta College of Art, Brenda Whiteman built her first marionette as an experiment in interactive figurative art. After graduating, she travelled to Prague, Czech Republic, where she found whole colleges and theatres devoted solely to puppetry. Brenda's lasting impression was that puppets could relate to a wider audience than her paintings in a gallery ever could. Returning to Alberta, she began building puppet characters to perform for audiences at schools and festivals but soon would acquire an edge when working with others.

Red Smarteez (named as the antithesis of our stilt-walking friends in Calgary, Green Fools) became collaborative, as Brenda needed other individuals to stage bigger shows. Some early experiments were at performance cabarets in Calgary in the mid 1990s where the use of irony, parody and improvisation became characteristic of her style. Brenda's partner, Peter Stinson, joined as a performer, which led to Red Smarteez' first theatrical show, The Inglewood Affair, in 1999. Peter's multi-disciplinary background expanded their work into media arts and the creation of several films and videos. The first, One Last Trick, derived from Peter’s taxi driving days and came about from a challenge by a colleague in the film world. Eventually, they would progress to make a 16mm film, tangly wood, a story about the influence of childhood memories on an artist's life. This led to The Kay Stories, a series of personal films about Brenda's older sister, Kay. With this work, it was apparent that personal films using puppets can provide some comic relief and catharsis for the challenges we all face in life.

Peter and Brenda moved to Saskatoon in 2007 to find an affordable home and, while the output has slowed, their creative energy went into renovating the house, working on the garden and creating a few films. In recent years, Brenda's short and long-term memory have been affected by a cognitive disorder related to Multiple Sclerosis (she was diagnosed about 20 years ago). She remains somewhat physically able but still has a vision for her work and has said "I'm still an artist and my health should not prevent me from being one!"

Red Smarteez are artists of settler origin and grateful to now be creating work on Treaty 6 territory and the homeland of the Métis.