Victoria native Tim Gosley might be more familiar as Basil the polar bear. As a puppeteer, he spent four years on the original Fraggle Rock and nine seasons on Canadian Sesame Street. He’s done everything from shooting music videos to parading a giant tree stump through the streets. He even won a Gemini.
As a boy, Tim helped his father Jerry Gosley perform the long-running Smile Show.
“I grew up behind the stage,” Tim recalls. “When he was dressed as Queen Victoria, he was in a throne that my brother and I built. We had him raised up in what is called ‘the gods’ [the highest part of the theatre], and my brother and I would lower him down onto the stage to the tune of ‘Rule Brittania’. So that was my daily reality and my summer job for quite a number of years, and I think it set a precedent for not becoming an accountant.”
As a young man, Tim studied acting in Alberta. But he felt too shy to be an actor and soon developed an interest in puppetry.
“When you’re shy, you kind of like having your own little world.”
The gig on Fraggle Rock gave him a crash course in professional puppetry. “It was like a MA in terms of technique. Their technique is really fabulous.”
Later he trained a performer who works on the second Fraggle Rock. “I feel like the work is continuing and being passed down.”
After Fraggle, he ended up in a tiny Quebec town.
“Trying to kill my career as best I could,” he laughs. He married and raised a family, working on TV shows in Montreal.
He loved the Muppets.
“It’s very bright and out there, but there’s this other part of my need, which is kind of dark and shadowy.”
Compelled by his creative nature, Tim explored other aspects of puppetry. He found fulfillment in just trying things. “I would do these odd experiments in shadow puppetry and live video puppets, to meet my heart.”
In the 1980s, contemporary dance captured his interest too, although not as a dancer himself. He combined different arts and technologies to create puppet shows with his own signature vibe.
He now lives in a house with a 50-seat theatre inside it. A few decades ago, he returned home from Quebec to be closer to his mother. As fate would have it, this house with the theatre was for sale about a kilometre away from his mother’s place.
Tim’s career has taken him down many paths. In 2020, he received an artist-in-residence fellowship at the University of Victoria. He created a project called The Heart Coffer, which explored the concept of “the universal heart.”
He also organized the Puppets for Peace Festival in Victoria. This event included a parade of giant puppets, sock puppet workshops, and First Nations dance performances. Rather than an activist event, Tim wanted to focus on “just existing and being peaceful.”
Tim even performed at the elderly beat poet Michael McClure’s birthday party: “He was up in Victoria for his 86th birthday. We did one of his mini-plays called The Meatball with puppets for him in this theatre. And it was really silly. But it was really great and he was sort of sitting there on his throne, and all us guys were turning into kids. Those sorts of things really are special for me.”
These days, Tim shows no sign of slowing down. He’s gearing up for a potential TV show, preparing a live video performance with Spanish poetry and classical guitar, and writing an “embellished memoir.”
Meanwhile, he offers puppet-building workshops: one on Muppets and a more unique one on his own original techniques, which he calls “Visual Musician” translating musical elements into visuals using objects and light to produce moving shadows.
music inspired shadow puppetry using common objects. Photo: Tim Gosley
To demonstrate the visual, he pulls out a flashlight, an ordinary glass, and a 3D printout of Paul McCartney. “You work it kind of like a camera. So you can do pans and basically do camera work [with the light].”
His gear is simple, things like vases and small mirror balls bought at the dollar store. He uses an old document projector for layering. The effects are stunning.
Tim believes puppetry can speak to different kinds of people, whether as participants or as audience.
“There’s just so many directions you can go with it. You can sit and sew in a corner. You can get up and wiggle a giant jellyfish in a protest march.”
The physicality of puppets contrasts with the highly digitized world we live in.
“Right now, because there’s so much AI and artificial stuff going on, one of the appeals of puppetry is that it’s very analogue and hands-on, and people are relieved. You can see people physically breathing better because they can see that this puppet is being worked by a human.” Ultimately, Tim says, “It’s just a lot of fun to play with.”
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