Category Archives: Rod Puppets

RMT’s “The Tempest” returns for Shakespeare’s Anniversary year

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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mess1We are delighted to announce that after an absence of 10 years Rough Magic Theatre is re-launching our ever popular production of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest“.  Please CLICK HERE for the main Rough Magic Theatre show page including the history and photo’s of the production.

This year (2016) is the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s death and so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring back Rough Magic Theatre’s first ever production.

Leo Nolan-Evans (a fantastic musician and performer) will be returning to play the leading role of Prospero.

goodpicleoLeo came up with the whole original concept for the production and is therefore responsible for my first puppet making exploits.  Since that first introduction, puppetry has gone on to be something of a personal obsession and I have made puppets and performed in a great many other productions since then.

img025“The Tempest” has gone through a good many versions over the years and I have no doubt that we will be tweaking it once again so that the performance is new, fresh and the best it can be whilst keeping all of the good old stuff too.

We are due to perform the show twice on Saturday the 23rd of July for Historical Hereford Day (for details CLICK HERE).  However the show will be available to book for June 2016 onwards.

The show comes in a shorter 30 minute version for outdoors and a longer hour version for indoor venues such as schools, theatres etc.  Teachers packs will be available for school bookings.  Please CLICK HERE to book the show for your venue/event.db_pic3

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! 🙂