Judd Palmer
General Manager
Judd Palmer is the general manager of Puente Theatre. Besides trying to keep a handle on the accounting and helping out with general company logistics, Judd has occasionally taken the stage in Puente productions like "Fado: the Saddest Music in the World", "Lágrimas Crueles/Cruel Tears", and "Lieutenant Nun", or co-written Puente shows with Mercedes like "The Umbrella" and "Gruff", although he’s perhaps best known as the surtitle operator for "El Jinete". He’s also one of the founding co-artistic directors of the Old Trout Puppet Workshop, a company that creates puppet theatre for adults and sometimes children and tours it around the world. Over the past two decades with the Old Trouts, Judd has helped direct, design, write and/or perform quite a few shows, including "Ghost Opera", "The Erotic Anguish of Don Juan", "Ignorance", and "Famous Puppet Death Scenes" (which has been seen by over 40,000 people in 37 cities worldwide). He also designed the set, costumes, and puppets for Vancouver Opera’s "Hansel & Gretel" and "Twelfth Nigh"t at Theatre Calgary and the National Arts Centre, wrote, directed, and narrated the award-winning Old Trout Christmas special "From Naughty to Nice" (produced by the National Film Board), and, on his own, has also written and illustrated six children’s books (three of which have been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award). In his misspent youth he was the slide banjo player in the stomp & holler trance blues band The Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir, and got a degree in philosophy at the University of Toronto, Trinity College. He moved to Victoria in 2009 from Calgary, where he’s from.
Photo credit: Mercedes Bátiz-Benét
"As a settler artist in Victoria, British Columbia, I acknowledge the privilege I have to be able to live, work, and create on the unceded Coast Salish Territory of the Lekwungen and WSÁNEĆ nations, and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to do so. I acknowledge the privileges I have as a cis-gendered, heterosexual, able-bodied caucasian male in Canada who received an elite education.
My ancestors are from Europe, more specifically, Ireland, England, France, and Greece. Although most of them came to this place as refugees, the wars they were escaping happened a long time ago, and they were able to take advantage of unjust racial hierarchies to pass onto me significant wealth and opportunities. I am the inheritor of much that I did not earn.
As the general manager of Puente Theatre, I am privileged to have power in our community, resources, and a pulpit from which to speak. I strive to be worthy of the privileges I have been given, and to give what I can to the cause of equality, inclusion, and diversity, in hopes of being a small part of making a better world.”
Judd Palmer