Category Archives: Shadow Puppets

Sherlock Holmes and The Speckled Shadow Puppets!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Hello to all my lovely readers!

As promised here is a revelation of the SECRET puppet project that I was working on in October and November 2013.

I was asked to make a set of shadow puppets for Theatre Mill’s production of “Sherlock Holmes and the Speckled Band”.  This was staged in the fabulous National Trust property “The Treasurer’s House” in York.

That is me bottom left tutoring the new puppeteers back stage.

That is me bottom left tutoring the new puppeteers back stage.

Theatre Mill had decided to include a Gypsy Tale as part of the story and this was what the puppets would be used for.  This was not in the original Conan Doyle story but was added in to expand and complement the story.  This was a sensible decision in my opinion as the original story is actually very short.

I thought that Greek style shadow puppets would fit with the style of the production best.  So it was very interesting for me to try and produce puppets that were in a different style to my usual one.  I also suggested red as the colour for the screen as this would contribute to the supernatural atmosphere they were trying to create.  The original idea was that the screen would double as a shawl of one of the gypsies too so I thought it was a good colour for that as well.

I was not allowed to publicise this earlier as the Director and Producer were very keen to keep the shadow puppet show as a surprise for the audience.

I was lucky enough to find a review of the show that mentions the shadow puppet show specifically:

“My favourites, I have to say, were the colourful and ragamuffin bunch of gypsies that frequently piled onto the stage in a whirl of colour and sound. They were fun to watch, wonderful to listen to, and their puppetry show was so stunning that I would happily pay money just to see that bit again.” – Mari Elliott, Full Circle Arts

Click HERE to read the full review

Please feel free to ask me questions about the making of the show. 🙂 You can also contact me if you would like shadow puppets making for your own productions.

Dragons come to Wigan! – Shadow Puppets In Schools & a secret theatre project

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Hi everyone.  Apologies if anyone had got the impression that I’ve dropped off the map for the last 3 weeks.

My excuse is the usual one – I’ve been really busy!

I’ve had a couple of shadow puppet workshops in schools.  The first one was a little performance of “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” by me as well as a little lecture demo. about different kinds of puppets.  This was followed by the kids making their own shadow puppets using Prokofiev’s “Peter & the Wolf” as a theme.

chinese dragon shadow puppet
This one was made by me as an example

The second was with Nursery & Reception classes at a school in Wigan where they were having a “Geography Week” and their group was looking at Asia & China and therefore wanted to do shadow puppets.  So they had a performance from me of “Jabberwocky!” as well as looking at different places in the world shadow puppets come from.  Then we made some Chinese dragon puppets to a design that I’m rather proud of and we did a bit of a dragon dance round the room with the puppets and some music.  The kids were very sweet and gave me many compliments on my show and seemed to enjoy their puppets and the dragon procession a lot.

In between these Tim did Rough Magic Theatre’s Mad Hatter’s Tea Party walkabout for an Art & Literature festival in Stretford, Manchester which I went along to as well.

I have also been doing a secret shadow puppetry project with another theatre company.  I’ve been asked to keep it under wraps as they want it to be a big surprise for the audience but I will be able to tell you all about it soon.

I’m also doing a Christmas Event in Lancaster coming up soon – which I will put up on the “Where You Can See Me” page as soon as I’ve got more details for you.