Category Archives: Literature Festivals

A Whole lot of puppet stuff!!! Pt.1of 2 – Lancashire Encounter & Skipton Puppet Festival

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Hello everyone – I have been quiet for ages for the pleasant reason that I have been super busy.  I’ve been so super busy that I can’t tell you about everything in one go so tune in next week for more puppetty adventures!

First of all “Fred Fettler’s “Pony 3000” – The Transport of the Future” show trotted off to Preston on the 26th & 27th of September for a “Lancashire Encounter”!  “Lancashire Encounter” is a festival that is new this year and hopefully could turn into an annual event to fill in the space between the Preston Guild Celebration years.

We had a fantastic time encouraging the locals and visitors to try our fabulous pedal powered vehicle from the future.  What made the event even nicer was that the organisers had thoughtfully put the puppetry people next to each other so our next door neighbour was Mark Whitaker from Horse + Bamboo with his wonderful Chinese glove puppet show “Festival”.  We had seen Mark perform this fabulous show at Skipton Puppet Festival previously.

CLICK HERE to see photo’s from the “Lancashire Encounter” Facebook page.

 

And speaking of Skipton Puppet Festival – This was on the following week (2nd-4th October) and Mark was doing “Festival” again when we visited Skipton to check out all the shows.

Having seen him perform it about 20 million times the week before we decided to concentrate on enjoying the other shows that were on offer at Skipton.  You can see some of the things we enjoyed in the photo’s above.

We also took the opportunity to go and see Indigo Moon perform their “Jungle Book” show which was absolutely fabulous and used a lot of clever, modern shadow puppetry techniques.  I was particularly interested to watch the techniques Anna Ingleby uses because she is a solo puppeteer in their shows.  Haviel Perdana does all the sound and lighting etc. but only Anna does the puppeteering.  It is tempting to think that less can be done in a show if one has less puppeteers but Anna certainly does not leave the audience short-changed in their performances.  There was enough going on to keep an audience of both young and old enthralled for a whole hour and everyone was invited to see the puppets and scenery afterwards and ask questions too.

We also visited Indigo Moon’s “Minster Monster” shadow puppet installation which was very interesting and used “monsters” from Beverley Minster as inspiration.  What was especially impressive was that the display was still in good working condition despite being left for people to play with unsupervised for extended periods of time!

I was also particularly pleased to have the opportunity to see “Kabaret de Poche” having seen their website including videos of the show and a fun origami mouth instruction video!

My next post shall tell you all about our trip to Lincolnshire to perform our “Alice in Wonderland” show at Wolds Words Festival, our visit to London to teach shadow puppetry to 1st year puppetry students at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and a visit to a primary school in Middlesbrough to make hand and string puppets!

In the meantime if you are needing some last minute Christmas entertainment please CLICK HERE to check out our Christmas Shows! 🙂

Carnival Bentham 2015! & the 150th Anniversary of “Alice in Wonderland”

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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DSC00874I finally got around to hanging Gerald Townson’s prize winning photo of Tim Austin and myself (with Rough Magic Theatre’s Mad Hatter’s Tea Party walkabout show and my “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” Shadow Puppet Suitcase Show at “Carnival Bentham by Bike” last year) on the wall above my desk.  A big thank-you to him for giving us this lovely framed certificate and for taking the photo in the first place.

In case you’re wondering, Tim is in the black & white top hat and I am in the Black and Yellow one.  To see the picture on the Craven Herald & Pioneer website CLICK HERE.

Carnival Bentham will be happening again this year on Saturday May 30th and the theme will be birds (and ducks in particular to compliment We Are Bentham‘s duck race event).

Rough Magic Theatre have been involved with this event every year since it started as My Last CARnival (an accompaniment to the My Last Car theatre show by 509 arts).  In its 2nd year it became CARnival Bentham and last year became CARnival Bentham by bike to link in with the Yorkshire based Tour de France and to celebrate the launch of Bentham as a “Passing Place” on the “Way of the Roses” cycle route.  Bentham officially “opened” a sculpture of a giant pair of bloomers (to commemorate the fact that Bentham’s silk mill created the silk for Queen Victoria’s bloomers).  So bloomers were one theme for the event and fish became another as part of the carnival “story” involving a white and red queen, (lancashire and yorkshire) who tried to catch all the fish in the river wenning.  If you want to hear the full story let me know.  Click HERE to see my previous blog posts where we created “Fred Fettler’s “Pony 3000″ – The Transport of the Future” show for My Last CARnival and click HERE to see the video and show page.

To see a picture of our “fishy” mad hatter’s tea party in the Westmorland Gazette CLICK HERE For pictures from the Carnival Bentham by bike facebook page taken by Peter Rollinson CLICK HERE.

Tim’s Mad Hatter’s Tea Party with added fishing game to fit with theme

 

“Edward Lear’s Nonsense” show (with added bloomers to fit with the theme)

I have recently discovered that this year is the 150th Anniversary of “Alice in Wonderland” so this would be a perfect time to book our full length indoor “Alice in Wonderland” show, (CLICK HERE for info. and video).  Alternatively we have our Mad Hatter’s Tea Party walkabout show with either 1 or 2 performers, (you get Alice & the Mad Hatter too).  Another choice to fit with a Lewis Carroll theme would be our “Jabberwocky!” Shadow Suitcase walkabout show, (CLICK HERE for more info. and video) and not forgetting our giant parade puppet Jabberwocky which you can see on the banner at the top this blog’s home page.

We can also do accompanying “Alice in Wonderland” workshops/talks/question and answer sessions that look at the history of the book and Lewis Carroll.

I have also been nominated for the 5 day Puppetry Heroes challenge started by Ronnie Burkett on Facebook and I have done my first entry today.  Click HERE to go to the Facebook page