Category Archives: Adult Puppetry

Shadow Suitcase Theatre at Beverley Puppet Festival

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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I had a fantastic time at Beverley Puppet Festival on Sunday.  We only found out about Skipton Puppet Festival Biennial sister festival last year when I met Anna & Haviel from Indigo Moon.  They and the Beverley Arts Trust organise the festival and it was great to be there for the first time.

Beverley is a beautiful place with beautiful old buildings like the Friary, (where the majority of the performances took place) and the minster.  And, most importantly given the recent trend of storms and torrential rain, it was clear and the sun shone brightly throughout the day.

I had been booked to perform both the new “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” suitcase show and the old favourite “Jabberwocky!” as well.  Both seemed to go down very well.

Later on in the afternoon my later sets were spent wandering out of the friary gardens towards the town where there were captive audiences sat outside pubs and restaurants. I do always ask people if they would like to see it first rather than having forced entertainment.

But we also encountered what I presume was a family group in the garden of one of the houses next door to the friary.  On enquiring whether they would like to see the show we discovered that it was the 93rd birthday of one gentleman in the group.  I did him a special birthday performance of “Jabberwocky!” over the low garden wall of the house.  They all enjoyed this so much that they took the birthday “boy” out to look at the rest of the puppet festival afterwards.

I was lucky to have my husband Tim Austin as steward and “roady” for the whole day. He was a star, helping me carry things, making cups of tea and switching my mini PA on and off for me.  It is possible for me to do these things on my own if necessary but it would have been a lot more tiring, especially with the two hour and a half’s drive there and back as well.

We managed to catch one or two of the other shows while we were there including Malcolm Knight’s Punch & Judy, Lady Lucinda by Noisy Oyster and in the evening the fabulous show by Sofie Krog (of Denmark/Spain), “The House”.  This was a comedy horror for adults and teenagers using glove puppets with an extremely sophisticated rotating set like a giant doll’s house.  The puppets looked fantastic and they were operated with fantastic skill but most importantly it was hugely entertaining and funny.  Anna Ingleby had seen them at the Charleville-Meziers festival and gone to the trouble of organising a mini-tour for them in this country so that it would be worth their while to come and do their show in Beverley for us.

A big well done to Anna and Peter Rolinson and all of the other people whose hard work helped make the festival a success especially the lady who made the lovely sandwiches.

Buxton Puppet Festival approaches with rapidity, we will be there on Tuesday the 24th.  You can book for our shadow puppet workshop and Alice in Wonderland performances on the Where You Can See Me page which has links through to the Buxton Opera House site.

“Plucked” by Invisible Thread

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Tim and I were lucky enough to get tickets to see Invisible Thread’s “Plucked” on Saturday 15th of October at Huddersfield University.  Invisible Thread is the artistic vision of Liz Walker formerly of “Faulty Optic” who were well known for distinctly disturbing, surreal and adult puppetry.   We had been invited to a work in progress showing at “Slung Low”‘s “The Hub” in Leeds, a while ago and they were keen to get follow-up feedback from people who had seen the early showings.

 

I have had a deep respect and admiration for Faulty Optic, ever since I saw their “Snuff House Dust Louse” show at the Green Room in Manchester.  It was with my A-level Theatre Studies Group, and the majority of my class-mates were mystified as to what was supposed to be going on in the sections that involved non-verbal storytelling.  I, on the other hand, was enchanted by how the narrative, music and lighting combined to make some green pterodactyl like bird puppets (that would be unusual but inoffensive in another context) into terrifying figures of evil that evoked a physical nerve tingling horror in me at that moment in the show.  The other thing I liked about it, aside from its distincly un-Disneylike appearance and oddity, was that the terrifying and sad parts of the show were turned around into an uplifting, joyous climax.

“Plucked” was similar and different to “SnuffHouse..”.  It contained lovely Heath Robinsonesque sets and I loved the music once again.  An egg-slicer is used to great effect in the scary bits, creating dischordant jangling sounds that send shivers down your spine.  The delightful half-comic half-alarming wolf character emerged to whirlizter style fairground music on an electric guitar heavy on the re-verb. This was once again a huge contributor to the drama of the scene, not merely an appropriate accompaniment.

 

A technique that I had not seen them use before was shadow projection using live drawing in some kind of black paint.  I found this very interesting as a shadow puppet practitioner.  It created a very raw and dark effect which was good for the story, but the drawings were less clear than a traditional shadow show would have been.  They also used a pre-recorded animation using drawings in the same style later on, so it was like a continuation rather than appearing as a separate technique.

 

“Plucked” is definitely not for the squeamish, faint hearted and certainly not for children.  I think the people who will enjoy this most are those who have been clamouring for stories about real women and non-stereotype roles for more mature females.  Although the female protagonist is a bird-like puppet, there is no doubt that it is what it says on the tin, “A true fairytale”.  It is a story about the real struggles of real women and their physical and emotional journeys through life.  If this sounds dull it definitely isn’t the way Invisible Thread do it.

 

I am not a fan of violence, horror and gore for its own sake, but I do like it as part of a story with a happy ending (which I am happy to say this does).  Personally I think it is immensely entertaining on many levels, containing sadness, joy, crudity, violence and love.  It is as wide ranging in emotional scope as a Shakespeare play and is considerably better executed (and shorter) than many performances of the bard’s works.

 

The story turns a personal journey into an epic adventure with many struggles, dangers and a big helping of weirdness.  I would definitely recommend any adults who are fans of excellent theatre and are not scared or weirded-out too easily to see this show.  There are showings around the country up till the end of January next year on their gig list.  Why not see if there’s one in your area?

 

For those of you who are wondering where the second half of the post about our visit to the lovely Hawkins family in Blackpool is.  I shall be returning to that topic in my very next post and you shall find out all about the rest of our toy theatre antics.  Watch this space!