Burkett was born and raised in Lethbridge, Alberta, a town of 25,000 where people who were different paid a price. "I was told I was a fag before I even knew what that was about," says Burkett. "It started early. It was a dirty thing people were hostile about. Then you figure out what it is and that you actually are that, and it just becomes harder. [But] puppetry really helped me because I knew I was getting out."
Ronnie Burkett has been captivated by puppetry since the age of seven, when he opened the World Book Encyclopedia to "puppets". He spent most of his childhood in Medicine Hat. He attended Vincent Massey, Medicine Hat High School and Medicine Hat College. He spent may an hour pouring over puppet books in the library, performing in local plays and musicals, even earning money by taking his own puppet show on the road as a young teen.
In 1976, Ronnie joined "The Bil Baried Marionettes" in New York City. Returning to Canada in 1980, he embarked on a television career and toured worldwide with his one-man melodrama, The Plight of Polly Pureheart. For his work on the 1977 PBS television special Cinderabbit, Ronnie received several awards, including a Specials Regional Emmy. He as been active in television as well as educational and commercial film and video nationally and internationally ever since, as a writer designer, and performer.
In 1986, Ronnie formed Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes and began touring with the brilliant one-man marionette show for which he has become known. While he collaborates with other theatre artists and uses a full stage crew, Ronnie himself is the only performer. He operates two to four marionettes at a time. He uses as may as 40 puppets to create ten or more characters per show, and frequently calls on his remarkable improvisational skills. Ronnie builds marionettes for his own productions as well as for television.
One of his best-known productions is Tinka's New Dress. Based on the illegal "Daisy" plays of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, this political satire premiered in Winnipeg in 1994. It received rave reviews in the Toronto and Ottawa the following year, and was featured at Germany's Meiningen Theatre Week in 1996. Tinka's New Dress received six Dora Mayor Moore Award nominations from the Toronto Theatre Alliance, winning for Best Set Design and Best Costume Design and marking the first time a puppeteer has been nominated for the Best Actor Award.
Ronnie pours his spirit into his art. This gay master puppeteer is no shrinking violet. Ronnie has been called the "bad boy" of the puppet world. His characters know how to camp with the best drag queen on Church Street. Ronnie has succeeded by daring to be different. In his career as a theatre artist, he has achieved renown for his one-man marionette productions and has almost single-handedly reinstated the puppet as a legitimate form of theatre for adults.
All his shows have in common gay characters, something Burkett thinks was new when he first introduced some in 1986, the year he founded his own company. "To be honest with you, I'd never seen anyone put a character who was gay in a text-based puppet show," says Burkett. "I'm not saying it hasn't been done, but I never saw it. Chances are, it wasn't done." He pauses, thinking. "It just seemed natural. They don't always have to be happy characters or successful characters because I do know that there's a pretty emotionally stable big homo [pulling the strings] right above them."
