Category Archives: Technical/Making

Shadow Shows and Workshops in Schools!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Earlier this year I visited Bramham and Shadwell primary schools in Leeds.

I was invited to inspire the kids who had been making their own puppets in class.

They were treated to a triple bill of short shadow puppet shows (“Jabberwocky!“, “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” and “The Interrupted Wedding“) followed by Q & A about the shows and the puppets and my life as a puppeteer.

Alice Bunraku style puppet

I also brought a variety of different puppet types for them to see and explain how they worked and what countries in the world they came from. As the children had been making glove puppets I mainly showed them some different kinds of glove puppets and we talked about the different hand positions you can use when operating glove/hand puppets and I also brought my Alice Bunraku style puppet to show them as it is probably the most interesting puppet I own. The kids always love seeing how the head goes on and off and has a wig made from my own hair.

The children were all very engaged and had lots of interesting questions. They seemed very inspired by the puppets and loved the music in the “Jabberwocky!” show.

All the teachers were very helpful and welcoming at both schools, so a big THANK-YOU to them.

Later in the year I visited Bishop Rawstorne C of E High School in Croston for their special Chinese cultural day. The Year 7s and 8s were celebrating many different aspects of Chinese culture and there were lots of different people running many different workshops including lion dancing, calligraphy, cookery etc. and I was employed to perform one of my shadow puppet shows and run a Chinese style shadow puppetry workshop.

As time was limited I opted to make simplified versions of traditional Chinese puppets by concentrating just on silhouette style puppets rather then translucent ones with colour.

I made a series of templates for the children to use based on the 12 animals in the Chinese Zodiac story and as there was very little/no time to actually rehearse with the puppets and the school were very keen to have the children perform a show I thought this story would be a good choice as they could parade their puppets from one side of the screen to the other to show the animals crossing the river and everyone who wanted to would get a chance to perform.

Below is the process of me making the prototype for the tiger puppet based on one from the V&A museum collection. The Victoria and Albert Museum have a very large puppet collection and the costume section is definitely worth a visit too, (CLICK HERE for my previous blog post on a visit to the V&A)

I did a lot of research on Chinese puppetry and puppets in preparation and discovered how much more there is to traditional Chinese puppetry than I realised. There is not just one Chinese shadow puppetry tradition but several different ones from different parts of China each with its own artistic style and construction methods. I also found out that Chinese Shadow Puppetry is on the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, (CLICK HERE to find out more).

I searched for pictures of traditional Chinese shadow puppets and recreated my own simplified versions and in the process discovered lots of interesting things about the way the puppets were jointed. I found a picture of a Chinese Lion puppet (I know it’s not a Zodiac animal, but I did extra lions and dragons so that there would be enough puppets for all the children) and when I recreated my own version was astounded at how well it moved and in particular the fact that you could get such a huge variety of movements using just one stick on the lion’s head and one on its tail. It made me realise that when you see a picture of a Chinese shadow puppet, you are only getting a small appreciation of what it is like compared to seeing it perform, because so much of what is brilliant about them comes from the jointing and the way they move.

The traditional puppets were made so that one puppeteer is able to operate several puppets at the same time, sometimes with more than one in each hand!

If you would like me to visit your school for a performance or a workshop CLICK HERE to get in touch. You can find out about the different types of workshops we offer on our website by clicking HERE.

We will be starting to design and sell templates for shadow puppets that you can print out for yourself at home. I was thinking of basing them around traditional fairy tales. If you have any suggestions of templates you would like to see, please reply to this post with your ideas 🙂

“You shall go to the Pantomime!” – “Oh, no you won’t”….”Oh, yes we will!”

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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In February this year I was preparing the kids for their first public performance in our local community pantomime (Bentham Theatre Group).

Last year’s pantomime was “Peter Pan” and Anthony and Miranda were then aged nearly 3 and 5 years old. They (and us) attended all of the rehearsals including the dress only for Tim and I to test positive for Covid just days before the performances.

Obviously, we all had to isolate as a family and the kids didn’t get to perform in the show.

I was determined that this year would be different and we went through the whole process again. This year’s Panto being “The Wizard of Oz”. The kids initially said they wanted to be in it but then were a little daunted when I first played the MGM film for them and found it quite frightening. Soon after, however, I was getting repeated requests to play the film from Miranda and Anthony enjoyed it too. Anthony tends to be wary of films when he doesn’t know what will happen but enjoys them on repeated viewings.

I told them that they could be Munchkins or Flying Monkeys and they were keen on the idea of being Munchkins so I had to make them some Munchkin hats (see below) which I was quite proud of. They are made of various things I had lying around the house:

I built them onto a hat and a headband that we already had as I was concerned that a thin elastic would bite into their necks and be uncomfortable and I wanted them to be able to be able to wear them for extended periods without taking them off all the time or refusing to wear them.

I had a dentist’s appointment in the week of the panto performances and having got a cold I thought I had better take a lateral flow test to double check it wasn’t Covid. Unfortunately the test was positive and not just a faint line but a vibrant dark red that appeared almost immediately.

I took myself off to the top of the house (where our bedroom is) and Tim tested himself and the kids and their tests were negative.

Tim and I were both determined that the kids wouldn’t miss out on their Panto performances 2 years running, so Tim looked after the kids, took them to the performances and provided me with food and drinks at intervals, (he was a proper hero and slept on our very tiny sofa as well). We were very careful (using copious amounts of sanitising spray and wipes) and the kids managed to do their Panto performances and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Meanwhile, I was stuck in my bedroom upstairs not having to look after the kids and able to watch copious amounts of T.V. on my laptop. So, not all bad.

I started to feel pretty yucky and got lots of sleep in soon after I went upstairs, but when I wasn’t sleeping and eating I watched some Anime films on Youtube, (I found a Studio Ghibli film I hadn’t seen before called “Angel’s Egg” which was VERY interesting). I really wanted to re-watch Howl’s Moving Castle again but discovered the only place I could get it was Netflix so I caved in and got myself a cheapo subscription.

Having binge watched a large number of Studio Ghibli films I suddenly remembered that Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio was on Netflix and decided to watch that.

I had already seen numerous trailers bigging up the stop motion on this film, saying that it took the medium to a higher level than ever seen before, using Del Toro’s vast experience in the direction of live action films and transferring camera techniques more usually reserved for live action to the stop motion medium:

I shall do a full review of this film and comparisons with Disney’s recent live-action/CGI re-make and Upfront Puppet Theatre’s live puppetry Pinocchio in my next blog post…..Watch this space…. đź‘€!