Category Archives: Glastonbury Festival

Rough Magic Theatre at Covent Garden May Fayre and Puppet Festival

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Here are some pictures we took while performing at the Covent Garden May Fayre and Puppet Festival on Sunday.

As you can see, we had excellent weather for shadow puppetry as it turned out to be a very sunny day, (that is all using sunlight with no artificial light at all). It is of course possible to do the show in less sunny weather and indeed night time events as I can use my battery powered strip light for that.

I decided to do our “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” show as it is slightly longer than “Jabberwocky!” and thought people would feel they were getting more value for money, I had also already performed “Jabberwocky!” in London and felt like it was worth trying out the other show this time. However, for busking purposes, I can’t help wondering now if the “Jabberwocky!” show would have been better, as with only 8 puppets, the turn around time for performing again would have been faster.

We saw some famous TV puppeteers including Phil Fletcher, Warwick Brownlow-Pike, Ronnie le Drew etc. but missed Harry Hill as we decided to stay with our pitch and didn’t realise that he was the “special event at 3pm.” We also met the incredibly talented ventriloquist/comedian Max Fulham in person for the first time. Max has appeared on TV in Crackerjack amongst other appearances and should definitely be given his own TV show (in my opinion).

Anthony and Miranda really enjoyed themselves and did the whole of the big parade with their Punch and Judy puppets. There was a bit of argument over who should have Mr. Punch, however, and I fear that I might be better off bringing the crocodile instead of Judy if there is a next time. Poor old Judy!

We also brought the Rough Magic flag with us for the parade which was originally made for Glastonbury Festival.

As well as seeing a few old friends we met some new ones. Paul Jackson (our next pitch neighbour) was very friendly and helpful and we also met Cath March of “Invisible Needs” who kindly put us all up at her flat for the weekend, many thanks to both of them.

We also managed to squeeze in a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see the puppets etc. on the Saturday, (see above).

Rough Magic Theatre “Lights Up the Streets” of Lancaster

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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I had a lovely time performing my two shadow puppet suitcase shows “Jabberwocky!” and “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” at the “Light Up the Streets” event in Lancaster on Friday.

I had created light up hat decorations, (using my new top hat that I bought from a stall at Glastonbury Festival) and a light up buttonhole decoration specially for this event.  It was a bit of a challenge working out how to illuminate my costume for the event.  I couldn’t use anything that would catch on the shoulder and waist straps of the suitcase when I take them on and off and I couldn’t use anything so bright that it would interfere with the lighting for the shadow play by creating multiple shadows.  I think the overall effect, (using a combination of battery operated fibre optics and miniature fairy lights) was very attractive and worked very well.  I did get a number of compliments on my hat 🙂

I did my performances in the area between Lancaster Castle and The Storey Institute.

When it rained (a lot) I retreated inside the Storey and did a few performances in there for the wet and bedraggled audiences who swarmed inside to escape the weather.

I think people appreciated that they weren’t missing out on the entertainment by coming indoors.

Altogether it was a fantastic and friendly atmosphere and the rain did not dampen people’s spirits.

A big thank-you once again to Tim Austin for taking photographs of the show and generally helping out.  And a big thank-you to George Harris and The Duke’s for the use of their lovely dressing room, (quite a treat for a street performer).  And thank-you to all my audiences for turning out in the wet.