Category Archives: Masquepony – Camping Street Arts Festival

“Feast of St. George” – Jabberwocky goes down a treat with London Crowds

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Well here are photo’s from Saturday as promised.  There are also a few press photographers who picked us up as well:

http://www.demotiximages.com/photo/1976155/feast-st-george-trafalgar-square-london

http://static1.demotix.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/a_crop_medium_aspect/1900-4/photos/1366500640-st-georges-day-celebrations-in-trafalgar-square_1977584.jpg

We had a ridiculous 2 am wake-up call to get us to Lancaster in time for the Megabus which, to our relief, actually arrived.  It is quite hard to believe that any buses really set off at 3.21am in the morning but, sure enough, it was true.  We then got as much shut eye on the journey as possible and arrived in London with plenty of time to get to Trafalgar square.

I had anticipated sunny weather and brought my sun-cream along but what I didn’t think to do was to put it on my hands, which got quite badly burnt without my realising it till later in the day.  The strong sun did make for very clear shadows though and it was not too windy either.

I was a little apprehensive about how my new costume would behave and about performing in such a high profile place.  But I needn’t have worried, the costume went down a treat and did not misbehave in any way.  I actually had people wanting their photo taken with me before I even did any performing.  There were also large numbers of press photographers zooming towards me whenever I came out from the changing area after a break.

As to the location, I soon realised that it was not really scary at all and was exactly the same as performing in any other place or event I’ve been involved with elsewhere.  The set-up was actually like a bigger version of the “Masquepony” camping street arts festival I did in Cartmel last year.  They had a lot of wooden tables set up for picnicking or to eat something from one of the many food stalls.  These were intended to represent a spread of great British food of different types.  So I tried to entertain people as they were eating but moved off to other parts of the site when the heavily amplified bands were playing on the bandstand.

Whenever I performed the show, lots of people would crowd round to see what was happening and everyone seemed to like it.  A lot of people seemed astounded and to have never seen anything like it before.  When I pressed one man further, asking if he’d really never seen shadow puppets before, he said that he had seen them in films and on T.V. but not in real life.  I suppose one reason may be that street theatre exposes people to art forms that they wouldn’t necessarily seek out on purpose for themselves.

As always in London, there were a broad range of Nationalities and ethnicities, all of whom seemed to enjoy my show.  One thing I kept wondering about was how many locals were there, how many people were visitors coming in specially for the festival and how many tourists from abroad.  I think there must have been a mix, but as it is a regular London event I think probably the majority would have been local.

As always there were a couple of “Jabberwocky” fans who recognised the poem but I think a few others assumed it was the tale of St. George and the Dragon.  One person asked if they would have had people doing shows like mine in medieval times.  I explained that they probably wouldn’t have had shadow puppets in this country at that period, though strolling entertainers and ballad singers would be common.

Tim, my husband, was of course a marvellous help as always.  I could have managed to do it by myself at a push but it was great not to have to carry everything myself through the underground system.  And he, of course, took the lovely photographs above.  Needless to say, we had a lazy day on Sunday as we did not get back home till about 3am.  I think we’ll be recuperating a few days more.

Overall it was a lovely day and the organisers were a very friendly bunch and made us feel very welcome.  They also told us how much they’d enjoyed our performances which is always nice to hear.

Suitcase Theatre to Pram Theatre?

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Christmas Entertainment for "Santa's Late Night Shopping Evening", outside the "Coach House", High Bentham

Christmas Entertainment for “Santa’s Late Night Shopping Evening”, outside the “Coach House”, High Bentham

The Shadow Suitcase Theatre that I created way back in 2004/2005 proved extremely popular, pretty much, from the word go.  It is unusual and quirky and has the advantage of enabling the performer (me) to go and find an audience rather than the other way round.

The one-man-band aspect of singing and stamping, with jingle bells attached to my leg, also seemed to be very popular with audiences too.

The first show I created for it, “Jabberwocky!”, also proved to be a happy choice as it is a great favourite for a lot of people.  One of the obvious advantages of the poem/story is that it’s fairly short and, as such, would not clutter up the interior of the suitcase with more puppets than could be managed at once.

After a while, it became obvious that I needed a new show to go in the theatre so that I’d have something fresh to offer to festivals who might want to invite me back.  I created this second show, “Edward Lear’s Nonsense”, shortly after starting this blog, so you can see the details of my thought processes for creating this show if you search in my earlier posts.

My good blog readers kindly helped me to indentify that another musical poem would be preferable to a spoken version because less people have singing in their puppet shows.

There were far more characters, & therefore puppets, in “The NewVestments” (the Edward Lear poem of choice for the show) and I was still stuck with a suitcase of exactly the same size to store the puppets in.  Luckily, I came up with the idea of fitting the puppets between a concertina of card to help keep them in order whilst performing.

I had come up with a number of ideas for this show that wouldn’t have worked with this suitcase theatre because the suitcase was too deep (or my arms too short).  Thus, I have had in the back of my mind the idea of creating an all new, all singing, all dancing, super-duper suitcase shadow theatre using a more conventionally shaped suitcase, with a “landscape” or “wide screen TV” style shadow screen.

A number of audience members have also, over the years, told me that they would have liked to watch something slightly longer as they were enjoying it so much.  I always saw that as a plus because it is better for an audience to want more than to be bored.  Last year, I had comments from the “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” audiences saying they would have liked to see the puppets on the screen for longer or that they would have liked them to be bigger so that they could take in all of the detail.  I think the children had no problems as they can take things in very quickly and have good eyes for small detail (it tended to be adults that would make these remarks).

As I said earlier, if I made the puppets and the screen larger so that the audience could see them better I would immediately encounter a practical problem with how to store big puppets in a small space, (a space that I have to carry strapped to my body – so weight is also an issue).  If the theatre is made large enough to store large puppets then it would no longer be possible to use it in the way my current theatre is, (strapped on like an ice-cream vendors tray).

This led me to thinking; I’d not have to worry about carrying all the weight around if I were to swap to something like a trolley on wheels or some kind of pram-base.  I could store my mini P.A. system in the shopping tray in the bottom.  I could also try to work out something  more rain-proof than my current set-up.  If it was actually an old style pram, they come with rain hoods already on them – I could perhaps use the original fittings to shower-proof my shows.  The interior of a pram would also contain more room to store bigger puppets.

Thinking of ideal case scenarios as I was perusing vintage prams on Ebay, I noticed that a lot of them had a removable carry cot with handles.  What would stop me from having not only a new, slightly larger, shower proof shadow theatre, but also a portable toy theatre that could be attached or slotted into the pram base as well?

So this is my latest project idea: to create a new portable shadow/toy theatre using a pram base that will enable me to make the puppets slightly larger and, theoretically, to make the shows slightly longer if I want to.  It will also mean that it will be slightly less hard work for me (wheeling something rather than carrying something strapped to my body).

I do have a pram base already as they are so useful in street theatre for large processional puppets, lanterns and percussion rigs etc.  I will have a look at that first to see what potential it has.  Also, on March the 16th in Bentham, there will be the B.E.S.T.(Bentham Environmentally Sustainable Town) annual “Give & Take Day” which is extremely popular and a good way of reducing waste going to landfill. I shall be keeping an eagle eye out there for unwanted prams too.

Currently, I am just investigating possibilities.  I am, as yet, unclear whether I want the theatre to actually look like a vintage pram or whether it’s just the practicalities of the pram that will be useful and not its appearance.  If any of my lovely readers have any ideas about good places to look for unwanted prams (bearing in mind our High Bentham location) or ideas for adapting prams into theatres that they’d like to share, please leave a comment.