Category Archives: Shadow Puppets

It’s Good to Blog!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
2

Hello Puppetlady fans!  My apologies for abandoning you for such a lengthy period.

I decided that most people would be too busy enjoying themselves, (or working if you’re a puppetry professional!) to be reading blogs over the Christmas period, so I didn’t bother!  It would have been nice of me to leave a place-holding Christmas note to let you know when I’d be back and to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, so I’ll do it now instead.

“Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year to all my faithful readers!”

Here are some festive Apes eating biscuits, adapted from a shadow puppet in my “Edward Lear’s Nonsense!” walkabout show.  I am looking for Street Festivals and the like to perform this show in the Summer period, so let me know if you’re interested and follow this link to find out more.

"4 Apes seized his girdle, which vanished like smoke!"

My plan for the year is to do workshops in schools in the Spring, (please contact me now if you’re interested).  This will be using the Hansel & Gretel Toy Theatre show and will be an introduction to a toy theatre project with the school.  Toy Theatre is a great medium to teach History, Literacy, Music, Art, Design Technology, etc.  I understand that primary schools study the Victorians, so if you’re looking for an exciting project idea, look no further!

If you a primary or secondary school, and have your own ideas for a puppet project to fit in with what you’re doing, please contact me and I’ll see what I can do for you!  I already have a tailor made workshop for Year 1 pupils coming up at The Bay Primary School in Bridlington, which is to fit in with their “Lost in the Toy Museum” story project.  So, if you are reading this book at your primary school too, I could come and do this workshop with you as well!

In the Autumn we shall be touring our “Alice in Wonderland” show round the country.  I have already approached all of the National Rural Touring groups and shall be contacting Theatres etc. in the next few weeks.  If you’re wondering if this show will be right for your venue or event, please take a look at the Alice show page here.  There is a great video and a PDF Press Release with the technical specifications attached.

Other things coming up are a rather exciting, free event called “Culture and Tourism: Realising the Value” which is for artists, venues and anything to do with art or tourism in North Yorkshire.  This is going to be at Fountains Abbey and is a free event.  All the big hitters from the Arts Council and high ups from the National Trust will be there so it promises to be very exciting.

The particular reason I’m finding it exciting is that I have been meaning to contact the National Trust about doing performances at their properties for years and just haven’t got round to it!  It is on the 5th of March and I shall tell you all about it afterwards.  Watch this space!

If any of you read my first post “A Technaphobic Blog“, you’ll see I’ve come a long way since then.  My tendency in the past was to get on with making puppets on my own and not to tell anyone anything about what I was doing until it was complete and perfect.  Even meeting people in person I would feel extremely embarrassed about telling people about my work, and this was very stupid of me as most people are extremely interested.

In the past year, I have really pulled all the stops out and been brave about talking to people and meeting people and in Blogging, Tweeting and doing stuff on Linked In and Facebook.  I am pleased to say it really has made a big difference.  For those who know about these things, I have over 100 followers on Twitter now and I only started in about April.

My initial opinion was that blogging and tweeting disconnects you from reality and real people, but actually it has been the opposite for me.  I have done more stuff in real life too, but connecting with other people via the internet can give you more of a sense of community with people like yourself.

I already live in a small community in Bentham where everyone you meet will say “Hello” to you, and it is rare to not meet someone you know when you go to the shop.  But as they said at the first PuppeteersUK AGM I attended in November 2010, in our profession you do not work side by side with your colleagues every day and you can end up feeling quite isolated.  Having joined PUK, Brunima and the British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild, attending a Street Arts Networking Event and the Decibel Showcase in Manchester and also doing the online networking as well, I feel more connected to everyone else who is in the same business as me and also feel that people who want to have a puppet show or workshop can now find me a lot easier too.

If you have something puppet related you would like me to blog about, or would like to discuss any of the above post; please leave me a comment below and I will happily respond 🙂

Indigo Moon – Puppetry Masterclass

Posted on by Collette Knowles
1

Yesterday I visited Zion Arts Centre in Manchester to participate in a Masterclass on shadow theatre by Indigo Moon.

You will notice that I say Shadow “Theatre” rather than shadow puppetry.  Although puppets did form part of what we looked at, it was by no means limited to just that.

I consider myself a gifted and knowledgeable shadow puppet maker and performer, and was unsure whether I would learn a lot.  However, the knowledge that I have of shadow puppets is largely out of books or through personal trial and error.  In addition, we at Rough Magic Theatre are generally masters of the lo-tech tech.  This tech is no less magical for being simple, but simple it is.

Indigo Moon are a wonderful two person team.  Haviel does all the music and technical stuff with the lighting, and Anna does the puppetry and performance.

I think one of the most useful things for me was the different techniques they produced using halogen lamps, though Anna was keen to stress that the things we were shown could be done without the use of halogen lamps.  For example, removing the reflectors from a torch could produce similar effects.  Haviel was also keen to advocate the use of angle poise lamps which are useful for moving about or being fixed in a particular position.

They used an extra bright lamp to avoid their effects being spoilt in school halls without total blackout. However, they also stressed the fact that they had a super-duper rather expensive screen which was designed to stop the light source shining in the eyes of the audience and could be projected onto from either side.  So while they were keen to say the things we were shown could be done using simpler equipment, I am far from sure that every technique we were shown would work as well in all circumstances.

I do feel that one of the joys of shadow theatre is that it can be created by anyone and that you do not need to have expensive equipment.  All you need is a light source, an object to cast the shadow, and a screen of some sort to cast the shadow onto.  You do of course need an audience to look at the shadows, but that goes without saying.  Anna was keen to make this clear as well and the different techniques we looked at were all looking at the variations you could make to each of these elements to create interesting and special effects.

We looked at coloured gels to produce coloured shadows, multiple light sources to create multiple shadows of each object.  This is particularly interesting if the light sources are at different angles.  We were shown a couple of “magic” tricks to morph one person into another person and to join up the top and bottom halves of two different people.  This was done by using two angled lights and sneaky use of “barn doors” to mask off different areas of light.

We were also shown a clever technique which made two 3-D still figures appear to move and dance with each other, by moving the light rather than the people.  This finally solved for me a conundrum that I had been wrestling with about a particular shadow puppetry technique using a 3-D object that I saw a long time ago in “The Girl Who Cut Flowers” by Horse + Bamboo.  I had been assuming that they had been moving a 3-D object in front of light source, but I suspect they were actually inserting the light inside the object.  The effect for the audience is quite magical and also totally bewildering.  This is because the shadow that you see creates an effect totally at odds with what is happening behind the screen.  When doing conventional shadow puppetry, for the most part, the shadow that the audience sees, largely resembles the puppet that is being manipulated on the other side.

Then, you can do things with the screen to change the shadows.  We used pieces of white card to “catch” images from a projector, experimented with rumpled, rippling and 3-D screens, creating almost a tent out of a large silk screen and crawling inside it with puppets, multiple light sources, coloured lights and body shadows too.  In other words, we were a whole load of grown people having a play session.  Anyone who laughs at this idea needs to get more in touch with their creative side, as playing is one of the best ways of developing new ideas.  The majority of great inventions start with a happy accident.

Funnily enough, we did not talk much about puppet making techniques at all.  This was probably just as well, as if we had, it would probably have been covering old ground for me.  Having said that, I did see some interesting control mechanisms that Anna uses on the puppets in Aladdin.  She has metal welding rods to support the puppet from behind, with nylon fishing line to control various moving parts on each puppet, which she controls with metal rings that she can slip her fingers through.  This means that she can articulate specific parts on each puppet using only one hand.  In order to achieve this level of articulation, however, they have had to reinforce the puppet bodies with thin acrylic sheet as well as laminating the card cut out pieces.

It all made me wish that I had the chance to see the show in action, and indeed, I would recommend people of all ages to get to the Zion Arts Centre tonight and see their Aladdin show.  However, if you were to try, you would find that they have sold out, so try and catch them elsewhere on their run.  Click here to see their full gig list.

Anna also had an admirable collection of traditonal Javanese puppets, which are made from cured hide, rather than cardboard and punched with very intricate cut out detailing.  She also gave us a brief insight into her experiences of Indonesian shadow puppetry.  A lot of this was not new to me, but unlike myself, Anna has had the enviable experience of having lived in Indonesia and experienced the tradition first hand.  A point she made about it, which I thought was very telling, is that because it is a live tradition rather than something that exists only in museums; it is constantly changing and renewing itself.  Also, although the stories are very ancient and involve Hindu mythology and characters.  The “clown” characters in particular are used as a vehicle to talk about up to the minute events in a similar way to “Spitting Image”.  Of course the Dhalang or Puppet Master can get away with saying things that are quite politically dangerous, because it is the puppet who says them, not him.

Tangent time – Who reckons we should bring back Spitting Image?  I think we really need some ugly rubber puppets on prime time TV to say the things that the media is not saying.  The press seems to be either supposedly impartial or decidedly right wing at the moment.  Some amusing sketches to show what evil prats the Tories are would be just what we need right about now.  There is no budget for really good programming on ITV and the BBC are intending to give us more repeats than ever before.  I understand that the BBC trust are doing public surveys to find out what direction we want them to go in, so please everyone go and tell them that you want more innovative new programming, not just safe bets, repeats, reality shows and quizzes.