Category Archives: Schools Workshops

Monsters in Redcar, Woven Grass and Mrs. Santa

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Horse + Bamboo’s Angus Mcphee

You have probably noticed that I have gone a bit quiet for a few weeks, but that is not because there’s been nothing going on.

We had a lovely time performing at the “That’s the Way to Do It” puppet festival at Kirkleatham Museum in Redcar.  Our giant Jabberwocky monster enjoyed getting out of the Rough Magic Theatre shed and menacing people.

Unfortunately as is often the case, both Tim and myself were performing at the same time so we could not take any decent photo’s.  There are however a couple of quite good shots in a slideshow at the bottom of the page in this local newspaper,  (click here to look).

We did struggle a little with the glass roof in the performance space for “Alice” which both let in a bit too much light for the best viewing of the shadow puppets and also leaked water onto us when there was a sudden downpour.  But I am told that they are looking to replace the roof next year and they are looking forward to it being a much improved performance space as a result.

On Sunday, as you’ve probably guessed from the picture, we went to see one of the extremely few performances in England of Horse + Bamboo’s Angus Mcphee – Weaver of Grass.  There is a link to Bob Frith’s blog about the show on my blogroll.

I have been a very big fan of Horse + Bamboo’s work for many years.  I first I saw them perform “Harvest of Ghosts” at Streets Ahead in Manchester some years back.  I liked that show because it combined powerful imagery, atmospheric music and a deeply affecting moral message.  I had also been impressed with the dark humour and the way the story was expressed so clearly with such minimal use of words.  Indeed, spoken words were entirely absent but there was some use of written signs to express meaning.

Angus Mcphee had a very different atmosphere to that particular production though it had some of the same hallmarks.  It was a biography of a real man, Angus Mcphee, a crofter.  It covered his childhood in a very joyful, energetic and funny way.  It made good use of a variety of different types of puppet as well as masks, including glove puppets, some lovely horses and a cow with an udder made from a red rubber glove.

They used something which I think is a relatively recent innovation for them, which was shadow puppet film.  It was beautifully done and achieved effects that would have been impossible to do live, but I think they lacked the life and immediacy of live shadow puppetry.

They dealt with the darker areas of Angus’s history very well too and I was particularly impressed by the way they portrayed Angus’s treatment in the mental institution.

I ended the play being intensely interested in the real Angus Mcphee and although his story was sad I was not swept away emotionally.  This was partly because, as a puppeteer and theatre practitioner, I was busy dissecting the techniques they were using and working out how things were done.  The other part though, was that I think the show achieved perfect Brechtian alienation through the use of masks, puppets, puppeteers and singers on view, non-realistic scenery, projections etc.  I don’t know if this was the same for everyone who watched the piece, but I felt entertained and instructed but not swept away by emotional empathy, (Brecht would be proud).

I am also back working with the infamous Leo Nolan, (Rough Magic Theatre’s former artistic director).  After a break doing other things he is returning in the charming guise of the hilariously inept Ralph the Elf.  Together with Mrs. Santa, (yours truly) they decide to put up a Christmas tree, just as they do every year.  What could possibly go wrong?  Stuffed to the brim with slapstick, this is a cheery little show for younger children.  You can see more information on this, and other shows and workshops for Christmas on the new Christmas Events page, (CLICK HERE).

Don’t forget we have a page with shows and workshops for Halloween events too, (CLICK HERE).

Toy Theatre Film Finished and Mechanical Horse Takes Leaps and Bounds!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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At long last our film of our Hansel and Gretel Toy Theatre show is finished, and the trailer is now online!  See below:

I hope that this will give people a better idea of what the show is like.  So if you like what you see, please get in touch!  There are more details about the show on the Rough Magic Theatre show page, (please click here).  There are details about the making of the show and our performances at Vischmarkt Papierentheater Festival 2011 and for Ted Hawkins and family in the U.K. in earlier posts on this blog too.

We have made leaps and bounds with our mechanical horse for Pioneer Projects: “My Last CARnival” event in High Bentham on June 2nd.  There are going to be all sorts of other events and activities going on in the week preceding this and there wil be a flotilla of boats down main street as well as a picnic tea on the Jubilee day on Monday the 4th, so it would be well worth a visit to the area if you can.  There are more details about everything that is happening on the My Last Car and Pioneer Projects websites.

We had been in a slightly sticky spot with regard to what to make the control rods for the horse’s legs out of.  Eddie Knowles, who is is working on the project with me, had thought originally of using the pieces of dismantled washing line that you may have seen in earlier photo’s.

It had occurred to me that although the mock-up of the movement may have worked when we used wire for the controls, these metal rods would be considerably heavier, and I worried that this would be too much for the plastic piping we had been using for the pivots.

Luckily David Clough, of Pioneer Projects, had an idea we might find some lighter aluminium tubes in a store room above a local bank.  He brought down a selection of tubes of different sizes and types, among which were some steel tubes that were considerably smaller than a lot of the aluminium ones we’d been looking at and therefore worth considering.  I was still concerned that they would be too heavy, and wondered if we’d be better sticking to the bamboo cane mock-up controls that we had been working on to get the lengths right.

That is when I made the made the break-through of wondering if the steel tubing was in fact the same size as the plastic tubing.  This turned out to be the case and meant that we could use it for the pivots as well and eliminate the problem altogether.  It looks very attractive, too, being chrome plated!  In case you were wondering, the tubing started life as a set of shelves.

I also sorted out the head nodding mechanism, which works a treat.  It will be a manual mechanism separate to the pedalling for the legs.  It’s going to end up being a bit like a combined rowing machine and exercise bike for Tim Austin, my husband and fellow performer, who will have the job of operating the horse on the day.  We also fixed the height of the seat for Tim so that his feet should actually reach the pedals now!

In addition, you can see I’ve been working on a paint job to match the trappings on the model cart horse we borrowed from our local pub, “The Horse & Farrier”.

Today we’ve been working on the “carriage” seat for members of the public to sit on.  Tim thought it should have wheels so that it looks as if it could move if it wanted to so we’re pressing the wheels we removed from one of our scrap bikes earlier back into service!  It has happened several times that we have removed something from a bike and set it aside and it has turned out to be useful attached somewhere else on the machine, so we are hardly wasting anything.  The grill part that people will sit on used to be a grill in my old van, so the machine has both bike and car components now.  We are very pleased with how it is going and feel that the Mad Max influence is definitely showing through.

Here’s more pictures of the work in progress:

There is only my M.C. automaton costume and the seat to finish now.  I have succeeded in securing some waterproof battery-powered LED fairy lights for the costume and also a pair of white trousers that will match the horse and will contrast with my black tail coat.

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We took our Alice in Wonderland show on an outing to Willow Tree Primary School in Salford last week.  The children asked us questions and were shown some of the puppets close up afterwards.  This was in preparation for a puppet making project that one of the classes would be doing afterwards.  I think it was our largest ever audience for that show, there being 240 children not counting the staff.  I had breathed a sigh of relief a few days earlier when I found that, as I suspected, the new van was in fact more than big enough to fit the show inside.  No O.H.P.s travelling on Tim’s knee from now on!