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About Collette Knowles

I am artistic director of Rough Magic Theatre, and I have been performing and making puppets since 1999. I have a Drama and Arts Education degree from the great Bretton Hall College, (Yay!). I started the great loves/obsessions of my life in about 1997, (Celebratory Arts, Street Theatre and last but definitely not least Puppetry). I am also an actor, artist, musician and all the other different roles necessary in the field of puppet theatre.

Look out London,….Here I come!!!

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If you have been wondering if I’ve fallen down a deep well for the last few weeks, due to the lack of fresh news on my blog, then you’d be wrong.

What I have in fact been doing, (amongst other things) is making the costumes you see in the photos above.  These are for the “Feast of St. George” GLA Festival.  I shall be doing my “Jabberwocky!” shadow puppet suitcase show in Trafalgar Square on Saturday the 20th of April between 1 and 6pm.  Click HERE for news article.

I will wear the St. George themed costume for this event but the medieval dress costume can be used for performing the “Jabberwocky!” show at any other medieval themed events.  We can also use it for one of the new children’s party ideas we are working on.

This is the first performance I am doing through the street arts agency Continental Drifts and also my first performance in London.  It will be interesting to see how (if at all) the London audiences differ from audiences elsewhere in the country.  I was very amused, when I was in London once, that a local was puzzled by my Northern accent and asked if I was from Scandinavia!

The “Jabberwocky!” show is, of course, perfect for St. George’s Day because it involves the slaying of a big nasty monster by a brave hero with a sword.  The singing that I do in the show also has the feeling of a medieval folk ballad about it.

The journey is going to be suitably epic as we will be departing from Lancaster by Megabus at 3.20am and arriving back at 2.05am the next day.  It is not as bad as it sounds, because we should be able to have a snooze on the bus.  A gallant knight, (in the form of my husband, Tim) is coming too and will hopefully be able to take some photos during the day.  Wish us luck on our arduous quest!  I shall report back on how it went in my next blog post.

I have also finally got confirmation of what shows we will be doing at Mintfest this year in Kendal.  We are very pleased to be presenting our fabulous “Fred Fettler’s “Pony 3000” – The Transport of the Future!” show.  This was originally commissioned and performed in High Bentham as part of “My Last CARnival” last year.  We will be doing the show on the 31st of August and the 1st of September 2013 there will be more details as and when they become available on the “Where You Can See Me” page.

We shall also be doing a new show for Child Safety Week at the end of June.  We have been doing a lot of negotiations with a publisher to see if we can secure permission to do a show based on a famous modern children’s book and we hope to be able to tell you more about that very soon.

New Look Rough Magic Theatre Website Takes Shape

As you may or may not know I have been spending rather a lot of time lately redesigning our main website (www.roughmagictheatre.co.uk).

The idea is to make information easier to find, and to group information into pages for particular groups of people, (such as schools or theatres).  I have included a picture below of what the new home page is looking like so far:

 

New Front Page

Please let me know what you think.  I am particularly interested in whether people like the colours.  Does it seem friendly and easy to read?  What impression does it give you about us as a business?  Would you want to read more and to look at the other pages?

I am also interested in whether you prefer this look to the current look of our website, (CLICK HERE FOR CURRENT ROUGH MAGIC THEATRE SITE).

Please reply to this post to leave your comments about the New Look of the website.  I really appreciate your help 🙂