SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - For 25 years the Maritime Marionettes have performed thousands of shows across Canada and abroad, keeping their form of theatre alive.

Heather Bishop Taylor and Darryll Taylor, the duo who make up the Maritime Marionettes, will be performing at NACC tonight. - Ian Vaydik/NNSL photo

The duo, made up of married couple Darryll Taylor and Heather Bishop Taylor, are performing at the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre tonight.

"It's just such an amazing world." said Bishop Taylor.

The couple said travelling the country and performing marionette theatre is more important now than ever.

"Technology has gone in leaps and bounds and has left all these things in a cloud of dust, but actually people are very taken by these little figures," she said.

"We've hand made them so they have a certain energy to them like any work of art that attracts people and it may not be something they're consciously aware of it but when they're watching, it reaches them in a different way than our electronic media."

The couple will perform two classic folk tales, the Bremen Town Musicians and Rumpelstiltskin.

"They were both stories that my mother told me as a boy so they kind of stuck with me," said Darryll Taylor.

"That was the big thing and we like the Rumpelstiltskin story because there's so many things that happen. For the Bremen Town Musicians, we choose it because we know how much people like the animal marionettes."

The couple are involved in every aspect of the production, from making the marionettes to writing the soundtrack to lighting.

Darryll said pre-production for one story can take anywhere from two to six months.

"A lot of it is the amount of work we put in our productions and try and really make them enjoyable for the whole family and not just focus on the kids," he said.

For the couple, who are also performing in Fort Smith and Hay River later on in the week, this is their first visit to the Northwest Territories.

"We have been to a lot of remote places, we've been to the Yukon twice and we've been to Labrador a number of times," said Taylor.

"I like to say we don't go to a lot of big places but we go to a whole lot of small places and we really enjoy it."

The Maritime Marionettes will be performing at NACC tonight at 8 p.m. Tickets are available at the box office.

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