Category Archives: Hansel & Gretel

Treasure Island, Hansel & Gretel and 4 generations of Toy Theatre Enthusiasts!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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At last I am going to tell you all about our trip to visit the lovely Ted & Enid Hawkins in Blackpool!

We were invited to visit Ted & Enid for “a bit of dinner” and to do our Toy Theatre show for each other, when we were at the Vischmarkt Papierentheater Festival in the Netherlands together.  We had missed each others shows due to our performances being at the same time due to the scheduling.  We were very pleased when we discovered that they lived just a short journey up the M6 from us in England, so keeping in touch would be fairly easy.

It was a great while later, however, when I was well into the making of the “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” show for Skipton Puppet Festival that Ted finally got in touch by email and made a more concrete invitation.  I was slightly fed up, that once again, events would not arrange themselves in a nice evenly spaced manner but instead would lie in wait behind bushes and then spring out at me all at once.  As Ted explained that he was due to have an eye operation and might not be able to see our show at all, should the operation not go well, we were very happy to oblige by going to visit Ted sooner rather than later.  Just to remove the suspense for you, Ted’s operation went very well and he can now see better with the eye that was operated on than the other!  He was considering the use of an eye patch to even things up and to indulge his piratical side a little, but thought it would be uncomfortable.

Considering the fact that Ted had done a show of “Treasure Island”, I perhaps shouldn’t have been surprised at the number of copies of the book on Ted & Enid’s shelves, (there were at least 4 different ones).  Ted explained, however that there was a personal connection for him with the story, because he shares the same name as the main character (Jim Hawkins).

Ted had very kindly laid out his considerable collection of toy theatres and scenery in his “den” upstairs so that Tim and I could have a nosy at them.  I think it wasn’t quite his entire stock, but there simply wasn’t room for any more to go out!

Ted had created, for many of his paper theatres, the most beautiful surrounds which were extremely detailed and artistically finished.  He obviously has a keen aesthetic sense as each one was finished using a style and materials appropriate to the style of the theatre.

You can see it best from the pictures, but the majority of the printed cardboard theatres include only the proscenium arch, the curtain, some of the “boxes” with the posh people in and the orchestra.  However, in the case of Buxton Opera House, (a building I’d recently visited for Buxton Puppet Festival), Ted had created the entire exterior of the building, which opened up to reveal the stage inside.

He had also ingeniously invented a gismo to fold the audience members in their seats flat when the building was being closed up and to pop them back up when it was opened.  Doubtless many of the toy theatre afficionados out there will already know that Ted won an award for this Buxton Opera House theatre design, and very well deserved too.

It appears that Toy Theatre enthusiasts like Ted are often to be seen nosing around in model and doll’s house shops for such things as miniature light fittings and wallpaper.  If you were to try to use normal wallpaper the patterns would of course be too large.  Ted’s excellent painting skills were put to good use in the way he suggested the reflections on the window panes on the exteri

Ted's award winning theatre!

Ted's award winning Buxton Opera House (Exterior)

or.  He used some kind of air-drying clay for the stone work and two halves of a hamster toy to create the domes on the two towers!  I do love creative recycling!

Inside Buxton Opera House

Interior of Buxton Opera House

I had been intrigued by Ted’s articles in the Puppet Master, (British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild Magazine) about his creative ways of getting toy theatre figures to move.  He had mentioned on a number of occasions to me the triumph he had in putting into action an innocent and simple stage instruction in the “Forest of Bondi” play.  The play directed that a dog should jump over a gate, once in one direction and then back in the other!  Quite a challenge for a little piece of cardboard!

So, I was very pleased to see the theatre that Ted had used for this, some of the figures, the sets and the ingenious dog.  There was also a set in which a lady leans out of an upper storey window, with a lighted lantern goes in again, and then comes out of the door at the bottom.  Easy for real actors with props, a technical challenge, to someone creating a toy theatre show.  Ted had actually used a doll’s house lantern that really lit up for this, which impressed me, I have to say.  We were also treated to the video of the performance of this show with the dog jumping later in the day.

Another lovely “Doll’s House like” theatre was this model of the Blackfriars Theatre home of “The King’s Men”, (of whom Shakespeare was of course one).

Ted with The Blackfriars Theatre, Home of "The King's Men"

Ted had inherited this from someone else, when it was in a sad state of repair, and has been renovated and improved by Ted, who replaced all of the balsa wood timbers with something rather more substantial.  Like the B.O.H. It is hinged.  So you can either view the stage through the theatre over the audiences heads, or you can swing that to one side and view the stage only.  I am not clear whether it is necessary to open it up if you wish to perform a play with it or not.

The other theatre that I most admired was this chinese style one based on the Pantomime Peacock Theatre built in 1874 in the Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen.  Ted created using the two dimensional image at the top for a guide.  Once again, Ted has made it into more of a beautiful object than it could have been, using his own creativity and skill.  It is also clear that Ted has had hours of pleasure out of making these.  Ted told me that the last ten years, that he has been involved with the toy theatre have been among the most enjoyable in his life.

Since there is so much to say about this visit, and this is already a long post, I will leave you with a tantalising “To be continued…….”

The Real Pantomime Peacock Theatre, Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen

(Ted actually visited this theatre in 2003 and was given a backstage tour and shown how the mechanical peacock fan tail works)

……and rest!! The rush is over, here’s what’s been happening!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Rough Magic Theatre's Collette Knowles entertains the crowds.

What a load of Nonsense!

Good news, my dear blog readers.  Rumours of my demise have been premature.

You may remember that I said I was going to visit Ted & Enid Hawkins and see their “Treasure Island” Toy Theatre show, which we missed at the Vischmarkt Festival because we were always performing at the same time.  We have in fact had that visit, and have also done our “Hansel & Gretel” show for them.  But I’m not going to talk about that now, because I want to take my time writing about that and to check with Ted that he approves of what I’m writing about him.

What I am going to talk about is Skipton Puppet Festival.  I was performing my new Shadow Puppet Suitcase show on Saturday the 24th of September and was also lucky enough to be given free tickets to any ticketed shows that I wanted to see.

On the Friday I went to the Puppeteers UK agm, which was very pleasant.  I encountered a number of familiar faces and some new ones too!

Then in the evening I saw a show by a Devon based company, Angel Heart Theatre.  Who did a show called “Jack and The Devil’s purse.  This was done with one puppeteer, (James Richardson) and one live musician, (Griselda Sanderson).  The music was excellent and the puppets were very attractive.  The puppeteer managed to operate multiple (mainly Bunraku style) puppets and act a character himself as well.  One of the ways this was accomplished was through the use of a nifty piece of kit I couldn’t quite see that fixed the puppets in standing or sitting positions without being physically supported by the puppeteer.  Another nice touch was the creation of the “set” from various trunks, packing crates and bits of old rubbish, in which the different characters of the story were entirely and cunningly hidden in plain sight until they were needed.

The next day was my own performance day.  I had ended up with 21 puppets in total.  That was nearly twice as many as I had in my other Shadow Suitcase Show “Jabberwocky!”.  I had been very concerned from the beginning about how on earth I was going to do a story with so many more characters in it without losing them or getting them tangled up inside the suitcase.

Luckily, I came up with an ingenious solution that enabled me to put my hands on the exact puppets I wanted easily, and in the right order.  It worked so well, in fact, that I believe it was actually easier to find and remove the puppets I needed in this show than in the previous one.

What can this solution be? I hear you ask, surely it must be something that cost a fortune!  It was actually a very long strip of card folded into a concertina shape to create compartments into which the puppets could be inserted sideways on.

Something else I was very pleased about, was the new “Speakeazee” PA system.  I had purchased this specially for the suitcase shows and it worked excellently.  I used the headset mic. which gave me freedom of movement, and the very tiny battery operated PA was on a little trolley so I could pull it while wearing the suitcase.  It was also loud enough to attract larger crowds than when I have performed without it, and I didn’t strain my voice.  This was particularly good as I had caught a cold the previous week.

Tim did a splendid job of recording the performances both in video and photo form.  I had been very keen to get a video of this, because up until this point I had not had any footage of my Shadow Puppet Suitcase.  I had good audiences, and both adults and children enjoyed joining in with their own animal noise sound effects.  You can see some of their comments on the new “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” showpage on our main website.

I had time to see the “Mario” show, Punch & Judy and the majority of “Festival” by Mark Whitaker as well as some little shows by the London School of Puppetry students.

Rue Barree’s “Mario” was a fantastic street puppet show, though some of the humour was rather adult in flavour.  It was a brilliant combination of confident energetic performance, fantastic comedic skills, brilliant puppetry and juggling skill as well.

The two performers worked seamlessly together, with one providing voice, right arm and right leg and the other providing head/neck manipulation, left arm and left leg.  As I cannot juggle at all, I was extremely impressed that two people were able to make “Mario” juggle in this incredible way.

It was also wonderful to see Professor Geoff. Felix’s Punch & Judy show.  It contained all the things one likes to see, a clown, a ghost, a policeman, a crocodile, some sausages and of course Punch, Judy and the baby.  It was of course hilarious, naughty and dangerous with brilliantly co-ordinated slap-stick and manipulation.  And the little kids all enjoyed the joining in, (and the big kids).

Mark Whitaker’s “Festival”, was a mini chinese festival enacted by chinese glove puppets.  This was a treat for me, as I have not seen a performance of this type before.  It was particularly interesting to note the differences between this and the Punch & Judy show.  I was pleased to see that this show also contained a good helping of humour.  The way Mark was able to animate different parts of the chinese lion’s face was particularly amusing.

Without a doubt my favourite show that I watched was Urashima Taro by Rouge 28.  I was very keen to see this because I have been fascinated by the Japanese Bunraku for some time, as well as having a great curiosity about the Kamishibai form of story telling.

This would be of great interest to the Toy Theatre afficionados out there, as the example I saw in this show, was a great deal like a traditional japanese toy theatre show.  Usefully, the small Mamishibai frame was projected live onto a large screen behind, as I was right at the back of the audience.  There were coloured 2-d figures which were manipulated from above with wires in a manner very similar to the way we manipulate some of our figures in “Hansel & Gretel”.

The figures were also pored over in a ritualistic and “voodoo” style way by the witch character, who was a bunraku style puppet.  Aya Nakamura who was the only performer that we saw, (there may have been others backstage) had her face painted white in the same manner as the faces of the life size puppets she was manipulating, which of course created a greater similarity between the two.  She managed to manipulate a puppet as one character and perform herself as another, at the same time in a way that was utterly convincing dramatically.

The shadow play used the shadows of the Bunraku style puppets, Aya and occasionally shadow puppets.  I think given the timing of elements of the show, some of the “shadow play” was probably a pre-recorded projection, unfortunately I did not manage to get to talk to them afterwards to ask.  Also, extremely bravely, Aya appeared to strip naked behind the shadow screen as part of the performance.  I stress, this was very tasteful and an essential part of the story.  Though having said that, I think this aspect of the performance provoked, (and was designed to provoke) very real and strong emotions in the audience.  Though the section at the end where the central character who is a puppet was stripped of his clothes, leaving only head, arms and a net robe where his body should be, was probably the most moving part of the performance.  This was because Aya succeeded in giving life to the characters she was animating in a real spiritual way, as opposed to just a technically skilful way.

The whole effect of all the different techniques employed was genuinely good storytelling and great theatre.  I can’t say that I fully understood everything that happened, but I like a bit of mystery and something to think about afterwards when I go to the theatre.

I shall tell you all about the brand new puppet parade and the marvellous organisation of the festival in my next blog post!  Below is the video of “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” that we made.