As well as Over the Moon Puppet Theatre, Sophie and Kiley have worked on a medley of other creative projects in Canada and the United Kingdom in a variety of roles.

 If you are interested in knowing more about any of these past projects, potential revivals, or future collaborations, send us an e-mail.

Puppetry with Kiley and Milly (Embrace Arts)

As part of Kiley’s 2024 summer employment with Embrace Arts Foundation, she devised an hour-long puppetry program for 30+ community members with diverse abilities and their personal support workers. In Beacon Hill Park, participants went on a scavenger hunt for different pieces of a giant puppet face that they pieced together on the ground! Participants got to meet some of the other friendly faces of OTM including Milly, Milton, Roger the squirrel, Big Orange, and Giraffe. Then everyone got to create their very own puppet bag puppet to take home with them!

Game:Play

Game:Play is a play about games that premiered at the Belfry’s BMO Studio in December 2023. Kiley designed the shadow puppets and visual projections for this hour-long devised production. Using an overhead projector, cut out shapes, theatre gels, repurposed craft materials, and foraged natural materials, the actors manipulated the materials and interacted with their shadows to create joyous and eerie theatrical moments.

Creative team:

Director + Facilitator: Ciarán Volke / Sound Designer: Ryan Kniel / Lighting Designer: Syrah Khan / Costume Designer: Una Rekić / Visual Effects Designer: Kiley Verbowski / Stage Manager: Megs Schneider / Puppet Designer: Kiley Verbowski + Sophie Underwood / Technician: Miriam Dumitra / Ensemble Cast: Ciarán Volke + Una Rekić + Kaylee Cavanagh + Ryan Kniel

Attending the Prague Quadrennial 2023!

In 2023 OTM was lucky enough to go on an international field trip to the Prague Quadrennial! Kiley and Sophie had a magnificent time taking in this renowned theatre design festival. The photo to the right is where Kiley and Sophie spent many fun hours one afternoon playing with the Performance Space Exhibition from Shattering Boundaries, a theatre company from Serbia and Croatia – definitely a highlight of the festival.

Going All the Way

Kiley and Sophie were commissioned to write and assist in developing this 55-minute adult-oriented puppet show along with Hannah Mariko Bell and Dr. Leah Tidey between 2021 and 2023. Going All the Way is about best friends Avery and Beatrice, who have spent their whole university career creating off-the-wall performances, but their final project is outside of everyone’s comfort zone: teaching sex-ed to middle schoolers through puppetry. The show takes a turn for the bizarre when years of resentment and confusion bubble up, leaving the two of them hashing out their issues with sex, love, trust, and identity in front of an increasingly restless audience.

The development of this production involved a staged reading in 2022, puppet construction with internationally-renowned puppet talent Tim Gosley, and a Victoria premiere. It was remounted in Victoria in 2023 at the SKAM Satellite Studio before performing at the Calgary Fringe Festival.

Creative team for the 2023 production:

Playwrights: Kiley Verbowski + Sophie Underwood / Creation and Direction: Hannah Mariko Bell / Developed by: Kiley Verbowski + Sophie Underwood + Hannah Mariko Bell + Dr. Leah Tidey / Sexual Health Consultation: Dr. Leah Tidey / Set Designer: Logan Swain / Costume Designer: Lynnéa Chan / Lighting and Sound Design: Miriam Dumitra / Puppet Design Consultation: Tim Gosley / Puppet + Prop Construction: Christian Tervo / Puppet Construction Assistants: Sasha Lazin + Faith Robinson / Production Manager: Ariel Pretty / Stage Manager: Frankie Mulder / Actors: Ty Wesley + Loreto Espinoza

Photographer: Janine Rzplenski

Me Missing You

Me Missing You is a five-minute shadow puppet show created by Kiley and performed as part of Impulse Theatre’s Peek Fest 14 in May 2023. The show is about the grief and dreams of a long-distance friendship presented with an overhead projector.

What’s Cooking

What’s Cooking is Kiley and Sophie’s second homemade puppet film of 2020! This short film about a struggling domestic couple with lively kitchen appliances was presented online as part of Impulse Theatre’s Peek Fest 9.

Rotten Apples

In 2020, when Sophie and Kiley were not able to share live theatre, they pivoted to film and created short films! Rotten Apples was featured in an online Halloween puppet festival called The Twisted Imaginations of Creepy Hallow.

Ernie and Bethy

Ernie and Bethy, written by our puppeteer Sophie Underwood, is an hour-long play using both puppeteers and actors that was produced by the Student Alternative Theatre Company in their 2018 season. Ernie Sawmiester is spending his community service hours working with overachieving Bethy for the “Giving Angels Wings” society, an organization that delivers children’s puppet shows to local hospital wards every year. However, this is not a puppet show for kids, and feautures foul-mouthed, smoking puppets who decide it’s time to overthrow the Human Regime that has seized their establishment. Led by revolutionary Leo (played by our puppeteer Kiley Verbowski), the four puppets attempt to take control of the play, as Ernie and Bethy desperately try to create some child-friendly content – but not before dealing with a puppet revolution, a struggle to create “real art,” and a healthy dose of existentialism.

This production won the 2017-2018 Pick of SATCo award, and was remounted at the Victoria Fringe Festival in 2018 starring Amy-Lee Radigan, Rachel Myers, Sheldon Graham, and Emma Rabinsky.

Creative team for the original production:

Playwright: Sophie Underwood  /  Director: Molly McDowell-Powlowski  /  Stage Manager: Leah Anthony  /  Designers: Amanda Broyles, Eva Hocking, Elizabeth Martin, Logan Swain  /  Puppet Construction: Sasha Lazin and Christian Tervo  /   Actors: Aidan Dunsmuir, Emma Newton, Vanessa Wood, Kiley Verbowski  /  Photographer: SJ Valiquette

Hilda and Beatrice

Hilda and Beatrice is a 20 minute shadow puppet and movement performance written, designed, and directed by our puppeteer Sophie Underwood. This project was created as a final project in her fourth year Directing course at the University of Victoria, where she studied Theatre (Directing) and Writing (Playwriting and Fiction). This whimsical play starts with two young sisters alone in their room at bedtime, unable to fall asleep, and transitions into the wonderful world of StoryLand, where characters Hilda and Beatrice leave their boring lives behind, hitchhike, meet monsters, and end up taking a hot air balloon to space!

Actors pictured: Rachel Myers and Lucy Sharples

Travelling Puppet Show!

Sophie and Kiley met working for the IslandLink Library Federation’s Travelling Puppet Show in 2017! Together they wrote 14 original short puppet plays for three age groups: 4-6, 7-9, and All Ages. They based several of their plays on fun nursery rhymes, and also wrote original content! The Travelling Puppet Show performed in almost all branches of the Greater Victoria Public Library, as well as libraries and markets in Powell River, Alert Bay, and Saltspring Island. Sophie and Kiley delivered original puppet plays to over 1,000 people over the summer. They also created a variety of different camps for all ages – from 3 day preschool camps feauturing interactive intergalactic puppet adventures and storytime and crafts, to 3 day school age camps that taught children about story structure, character, and puppetry and culminated in original plays for the children’s parents with their own handmade puppets, to tween writing camps that taught 10-12 year olds about all kinds of writing, to tween improv camps filled with fun games and skits! Sophie and Kiley were responsible for creating schedules with over 14 libraries, and making sure the TPS experience and camps went smoothly for children of all ages! They also created a large range of crafts to do with children – some favourites were paper bag puppets, sock puppets, shadow puppets, and finger puppets. The Travelling Puppet Show was an amazing experience, and Sophie and Kiley are passionate about bringing all the skills they learned through this wonderful job to their own business.

Comedy Events!

Comedy Vertigo was a semi-regular stand up comedy event at the University of Victoria, organized by Kiley Verbowski, president of the UVic Lampoon (2018-19). Sophie and Kiley performed an all-ages puppet show about a medieval talent show for 60+ adult audience members! Kiley occasionally gets on stage without puppets on hand in an attempt to make Victoria audiences laugh.