Category Archives: Punch & Judy

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We also brought the Rough Magic flag with us for the parade which was originally made for Glastonbury Festival.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

Fun at Skipton Puppet Festival

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Since going to Upfront for Jack and the Beanstalk; I also took them to Skipton Puppetry Festival as well. Miranda and Anthony were both very taken with the Punch & Judy show by Clive Chandler. They kept talking about Mr. Punch and asking where he is and what was he doing? I decided to get them a set of soft children’s Punch & Judy puppets which they have been having great fun with ever since. They have Punch, Judy, a Policeman and a Crocodile in the set and they have not fought over them, as I feared they might, but have played very nicely with them and they get up to all sorts of things. Sadly, the crocodile does not have a mouth that opens and the sausages are attached to Mr. Punch’s hand but they manage to do a lot with them despite the physical limitations, (imagination is a wonderful thing).

  • Clive keeps the crowd entertained before the start of the main show…

They also saw Noisy Oyster again performing their shows “Dangerous Dave”(which Anthony did find a bit traumatic) and the “Da Silva Circus” which was, (of course) excellent and we were very kindly given a behind the scenes tour by Nik Palmer and Sarah Rowland-Barker. They remembered me from my performance at Beverley Puppet Festival (which was lovely considering that’s quite a few years back now). It was also lovely to see Liz Lempen (and her equally talented sister) again though as we were all masked up at the time we didn’t see quite as much of each other as usual!

There is more puppetry at Skipton this weekend so do check it out: “A November Day” by Thingumajig Theatre at 8pm and “Woodland Tales with Grandad” by Pickled Image at 11am and 2pm.