Once Upon a Teacup at Theatre on the Square

Once Upon a Teacup is a 70-minute one-woman show written and performed by Jessica Haines and directed by James Cunningham. The work combines physical, visual, and shadow theatre to follow Violet, a young girl growing up in Africa, through the landscape of childhood imagination and into the pressures of the modern world. The script, written entirely in rhyming couplets, weaves together light, shadow, object puppetry, movement, and a sparse collection of props. The show explores themes of imagination, mental health, and the experience of growing up, and grew out of Haines' studies in shadow theatre under Norbert Gotz and the Theatre der Schatten in Bamberg, Germany.