Category Archives: Literature Festivals

Fairy tale Shadow Puppets Take Shape

Posted on by Collette Knowles
2

Here’s the progress so far on the new “Fairytales of Wit, Wisdom and Witchcraft” show.

I have been making all these shadow puppets out of repurposed cereal and pizza boxes. Firstly to show what is possible to achieve with free materials accessible to most people (including kids) and secondly to be more environmentally friendly.

I also intend to produce templates for simple versions of these puppets that people will be able to buy (further down the line). Please let me know if you would be interested in these.  You can subscribe to the newsletter to get all of my updates from the blog via email and be sure not to miss anything.

Frog Prince story puppets: Princess able to catch and play with a ball…
Upset/disgusted princess face variation…
Frog with princess
Both princess puppets (princess 2 has an inverted hand to pick up frog)
The princess’s father the king…
Young handsome prince (de-frogged)…
Goldilocks puppets:
Prototypes for a front facing puppet with changing expressions.
Creating a third puppet with articulated legs

Goldilocks: Mouth transformation test

If you would like to book the show for your school, library or studio theatre space or find out more, please check out the show page on our website (including trailer) by clicking HERE.

We are pencilling in tour dates from June 2025 onwards and don’t forget, we also do shadow puppet making workshops.

Also, if you would like to ask any questions or leave any comments, please do and I’ll be happy to answer.

“My dear Watson, I can see from the tiny pieces of cardboard on your shirt cuff and the metal oxide staining on your left index finger and thumb that you are working on a new show……”

Posted on by Collette Knowles
Reply

Before Christmas we started on putting together some puppets for a show trailer for a new Christmas show (for touring libraries, stately homes etc.). We hope to get the trailer finished very soon so we can advertise in time for Christmas 2024 (watch this space).

As to what it is about, I think I will invite you all to give your own educated guesses😉.

I also took it as an opportunity to have a bit of an experiment with the new Indonesian wayang kulit (shadow puppet) chisels. I am thinking that I am not likely to abandon using scalpel blades altogether but probably use a combination of chisels and scalpel. The chisels are certainly useful for creating certain types of cuts and shapes, (probably not faster though – but I had been warned). I have also yet to sort out suitable maintenance/sharpening tools for the chisels when I need them though I have been doing research on the best method and suppliers.

Do leave a comment or a question if you’d like to know more 😊.