Category Archives: Shakespeare

Halloween Merch Fun!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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On Saturday we visited Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield and while we were there we tried out some of the products from the Rough Magic Theatre merch Shop. Miranda is showing off how you can combine our kids premium t-shirts with other costume items for a fun Halloween outfit. Don’t forget we now have the “Happy Halloween” design too. There’s 20% off everything for the next 4 days so why not stock up now?

We also tried out the water bottle and thermal mug for our picnic, and I can confirm that the mug keeps hot drinks hot for a long time. It isn’t obvious in the pictures in the shop, but both of these items are actually made out of metal and are really good quality. The lid on the thermal mug allows you to open and close the hole that you drink through as well!

“Beware the Jabberwock my son!” Kids Premium t-shirt in Dark Pink & Red

“Beware the Jabberwock my son!” Water bottle with straw in Silver

“Beware the Jabberwock my son!” Thermal mug with handle

Spreadshirt Gift Box
Gift card with stickers to dress up the figure on the front
Personalised “Tempest” tote bag with a quotation by Caliban from the original Shakespearian text.

As a birthday present for my brother Peter who originally played both Caliban and Ferdinand in Rough Magic Theatre’s first production “The Tempest” I personalised this black “Tempest” tote bag with a quotation by Caliban from the original Shakespearian text. You can personalise the products in my Spreadshirt shop by pressing the pencil icon. You can add your own text in different fonts, sizes, colours and positions. You could put someone’s name on or add any other message/text that you like. This personalisation option is available on all of the different products in the shop.

If it is a gift for someone you can choose an option for the product to be gift-wrapped. It then comes in a cardboard box like with this colourful geometric design. If you ask for a gift card the middle photo shows what the card looks like (it comes with these cool “dress up the person” stickers). You can include a message of your choice inside the card too!

I have also updated our “Halloween Events” page so please take a look 🙂 we are available for bookings for shows and workshops. CLICK HERE to contact me.

RMT celebrate Shakespeare’s 400th Anniversary in style at Historical Hereford Day – Castle Green

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Hello again my lovely readers.  Have once again been rather busy with one thing and another and thus have not had a chance to do a blog post for you.

Doubtless you will remember that we were due to perform our first ever Rough Magic Theatre show at Historical Hereford Day at a lovely park called Castle Green on the 23rd of July.  We decided to relaunch the show in honour of the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s death this year after an extended gap where Alice in Wonderland took over as our main 2 hander touring show.

After some extensive rehearsing we got the show back in ship shape and it was a real treat to give the show an airing again.

For the Historical Hereford Day we performed our shorter version of the show which we use for street/outdoor performances (30 minutes instead of the full hour long version for indoor performances).

If I have been to Hereford in the past I do not remember and I have to say that it was great to have an excuse to visit such a beautiful area of the country and Castle Green itself was a lovely setting.  We had of course given thought as to what we might do should the weather be wet but luckily plan B was not necessary as it was a perfect sunny and clear day.

There were lots of other Elizabethan/Shakespeare themed attractions on the day including music, dancing an Elizabethan jester and (oddly enough) Kate Bliss the antiques expert off the telly!

I decided I would not be awed by Kate Bliss merely because she is on the television.  When I happened to be passing walked straight past without making a fuss, (though I did get a good sidelong glance at her and discovered that she looked surprisingly like a normal person and did not have a glowing aura of celebrity or anything like that ;)).

I told my co-performer Leo Nolan-Evans about the presence of a minor celebrity but did not get a satisfying reaction as Leo does not have a television.

Anyway….Our two performances of “The Tempest” went very well with a large audience for the first and a more modest but appreciative crowd for our second performance.

We were told by more than one member of the audience how much they’d enjoyed it and what a great introduction to Shakespeare for kids the show is.

During the second showing there was a man who was taking a recording of the show on a camcorder and not only did he record the whole thing but was polite enough to come and ask our permission to use the footage on his Youtube channel!  How often are people good enough to bother doing that?  This was great news because it meant that I was able to get a copy of the footage too which was very interesting for us as this is the first time we have seen video footage of the street theatre version of the show.  So many thanks to Timothy for the footage!  The sound and picture quality are not great but it gives a general idea (please visit the show page on our main website to see our video trailer with footage of the indoor version of the show by clicking HERE):

 

 

If you would like to book the indoor or outdoor version of this show or to book any of our other shows or workshops please CLICK HERE to contact us  🙂