Nina Keogh - The Keogh Studio
Nina Keogh is a third generation professional puppetbuilder and puppeteer. She has extensive theatrical background with her family's theatre and has performed at the NAC, Roy Thomson Hall, Hamilton Place and the Charlottetown Festival Theatre.
Her television apprenticeship was at age 11 on the CBC's Friendly Giant with her puppeteer parents. After graduating from Central Tech's art department where she studied photography, illustration and sculpting, she hosted a number of television series for both CBC and TVOntario.
The puppetbuilding business became a full-time job and since 1968 she has built and performed for hundreds of television shows, commercials, feature films, and corporate, industrial and educational videos. People she has worked with include Jim Henson, Hanna Barbera, Peter Ustinov, Touchstone Pictures and she has sung with Oscar Peterson.
She has puppeteered and voiced numerous characters for children's television and also lectured at Ryerson U., Niagara Theatre College and given workshops at both the CBC and with her performers' union ACtrA. She has been a director with the Association of Canadian Television and Radio Artists, The Alliance for Children and Television, and a former director with Spirit of the Hills.
Since moving to the Northumberland area she paints and exhibits and is on the faculty at Haliburton School of the Arts where she has taught puppetbuilding and puppeteering for television. Her work for the Spirit of the Hills has included being a director and producing FEET (for which she made foam rubber props etc)... and artwork for posters, programs, tickets and signs for Spirit events.
She is involved with the Warkworth-based Youth Arts Mentorship Program - giving a mask and movement workshop to young people 14 to 21. She has also been invited to be an artist in residence at a major university in 2007/8.
She lives with her psychologist husband and has a son who currently works at TSN and is lead singer and guitarist for the band The Secret Weapons (who won the Best Rock Band award in 2006 at the Toronto Independent Music Awards).
Matt
by Nina Keogh
Her 83 year old puppet character- therapist and ecstatic dancer Dr. Beryl Freud has become well known for her one-woman shows where she tries to educate in an amusing fashion, enlighten and entertain her audiences. She has performed for 5000 doctors at a medical conference, the Probus Clubs, The Spirit of the Hills, The VON and at Haliburton School of the Arts. She is also available for 'roasts at private parties but will not jump out of any damned cake as she has a wheat allergy and is claustrophobic ! Her 'dance card' continues to fill up with gigs :0)
Find out more at http://www.geocities.com/keoghstudio/. Paintings: acrylics and oil pastels; Photographic greeting cards; Workshops: drawing, sculpting, and puppetbuilding. Email: puppet@sympatico.ca Telephone: 905-396-6462
Nina being interviewed on CBC by Andy Barrie