I have been following the Beverley Puppet Festival puppet making workshop videos with great interest and thought that the Vampire Rod Puppet by Merlin Puppet Theatre looked like a quick and easy way to make a version of a type of puppet I already use and make.
I usually use the paper strip and PVA glue method over a plasticine modelled head for puppet heads we use for Rough Magic Theatre shows. For puppet making workshops with Primary Schools, when there is not much time, I have used a dry glue stick and tissue paper over the top of a plastic milk bottle head. This method from Merlin Puppet Theatre seemed like a halfway house between the two techniques (masking tape over the top of a plastic bottle and sanded down). Although it is quick I found it did not produce as smooth a finish as I had hoped it might. However the fact that my bottle shape was not as smooth and simple as the one they used may have had something to do with it. I also like the very simple hand and hand control making technique. I’m looking forward to seeing how well it moves when I’ve finished it.
A 2 pint milk bottle with a handle seemed the best size and shape for head and hat together as I did not have a round soap bottle, though I could have made a yoghurt pot hat like they did.
I used the top of the yoghurt pot to change the square shape of the bottle to a round shape.
The top of the hat is made with masking tape.
I start to cover the face and hat area with tape.
I decided to fill in the hole created by the bottle handle to form the nose shape.
I form the hat brim from masking tape.
I trimmed the hat brim with scissors and sanded the surface of the masking tape down.
I start to paint the face and hat. I will have to try and be neat with the joining edge as theses were formed of two separate pieces in the original. I used acrylic paint.
I do not need to add a cardboard nose – instead I paint shading and detail to accentuate or disguise the shape that is already there.
The bottle already suggests eyebrow and eye sockets so I work with what is already there.
I will add a 3-D ball shaped eye to the socket after as this gives a better 3-D effect than a flat painted eye shape.
I made the hands as suggested in the video and painted the kebab sticks black so they are less obvious.
Gold foil wrappers covered with red cellophane make a glowing/sparkly red eye which is suitably sinister.
I used strong multipurpose glue for these. I also gave the ball shape a flat slanting top to echo the eyebrow shape giving a sinister frowny look.
I add black card hair and turn head upside-down to dry. I used PVA for this.
I found an old aluminium sweeping brush handle which was a good diameter for the head rod.
I measured it against the head and cut it to size with a hack saw. I used the plastic handle end to cover the rough cut end.
I stuffed some old foam rubber pieces, left over from other puppet projects, into the top of the top hat (through the bottle neck) to secure the end of the rod.
I stuffed more foam rubber in round the inside of the bottle neck to secure the other end of the rod. I used some strong multipurpose glue as well.
While the glue was drying I painted some shadows onto the hands to make them look more 3-D.
Next I covered the join between the bottle neck and rod with masking tape and sanded it with the sand paper in the same way as the rest of the head.
I then painted in a mouth.
I painted the chin and neck to match the rest of the head.
I will add the teeth when the paint is dry.
I added some red to the finger nails which I blotted off with paper as it seemed too bright.
I coated the hat with PVA to give a shiny finish and painted some streaks on the hair to better simulate strands and locks of hair.
I also add some PVA “hair” strands to the eyebrows.
It is obviously not finished yet, I will post more pictures of the rest of the puppet making process next week. In the meanwhile congratulations to Beverley Puppet Festival, Arts Council England and all of the artists involved for making such a success of converting the festival to an online format. I am looking forward to trying out some of the techniques from the other videos when I have time too 🙂
I wrote the blog post below before all the business with Covid-19 and social distancing kicked off and unfortunately it is not currently possible to visit the Harlequin puppet theatre for a show. However Chris has been busy and has compiled a series of online puppet videos which you can view by clicking HERE
We have a good friend who lives in Porthmadog, North Wales, who we have visited and stayed with on a number of occasions and each time the route has taken us through Colwyn Bay. I kept thinking to myself that we should visit the Harlequin Puppet Theatre at some point and then didn’t get round to it.
So when we visited my friend at October half-term time in 2018, we discovered the theatre did have a show on (the theatre has its showings at school holiday times). So we booked some tickets and took my friend with us as well.
I was surprised that she had not heard of the Harlequin Puppet Theatre before but perhaps it is less well known to non-puppetry enthusiasts.
I had looked up the theatre previously on Trip Advisor and found many glowing reviews from the parents and grandparents of young children and so I had a good idea of what to expect.
The Harlequin is, very much, a one man operation. Chris Somerville works the box office, acts as usher, M.C., marionette puppeteer and magician as well as selling the interval refreshments.
Indeed, for everything that is included (and compared to other tourist attractions for entertaining families on offer) the whole thing is extremely reasonably priced.
It a small audience when we visited, as the main Welsh school holidays had not started yet. But as part of the small but select audience, Chris was entertaining some of his fellow puppeteer friends (including Geoff Felix whom I had met previously at various puppetry events such as Skipton Puppet Festival).
I was pleasantly surprised to see how good the auditorium was looking, given what I had heard about the previous arson attack on the theatre. You could see that the fire door had been replaced with a modern plain door which I presume is a temporary fix until Chris can afford something more in keeping with the period of the original theatre interior. It also appeared a small section of the ceiling had been replaced with a temporary fix as well.
The show consisted of a fairytale “The Gooseberry Mandarin” written originally in 1928 by Grace Dorcas Ruthenburg as a one act play and originally adapted for the puppet stage by Eric Bramall.
It says on the website that Chris has created this as a new production in 1999, but I am guessing it uses the original voice artists, soundtrack and puppets created by Eric Bramall “back in the day” and perhaps Chris adapted the show to be performed with a single puppeteer, (you can see from the video below that in its heyday the Harlequin productions used more than one puppeteer at a time) in 1999. It had a sense while we were watching it of stepping back in time to a previous era.
Our young son Anthony (who was about 18 months old when we visited) was kept entertained through this simple, charming (and fairly short) story after which there was an interval where we enjoyed some ice-creams.
The next section was Chris as Mr. Bimbamboozle doing magic tricks with the assistance of a young lady from the audience. Chris is extremely good at interacting with the children and the fact that his repertoire and format does not change means that he is extremely well practiced and experienced at what he does and this shows. He had great stage patter and all the comedy magic tricks were expertly done.
After this came a marionette cabaret using short string marionettes with Chris visible up front operating the puppets. This is obviously a real treat for the children (and the adults) who may be used to CGI tricks where you cannot see how it is done and is not physically present in the room. I have found in our shows audiences entranced by very simple techniques in our show “The Tempest“. On one occasion a man could not understand how the shadow puppets were operated when no-one was inside the booth to do it. It didn’t occur to him that the puppets were not actually moving at that point!
Again the marionette puppeteering skills were incredibly good. A Shirley Bassey pastiche puppet was very amusing (“Burly Chassis”) though a little dated perhaps. On the other hand – a classic performer like Shirley is a good choice for a puppet with a long run as modern performers come and go and the current flavour of the month in pop music does not last as long as a puppet does!
The format of the entertainment, using multiple short performances with an interval as well, plus the extremely good interaction with the audience as Master of Ceremonies meant that our 18 month old son Anthony stayed enthralled in his seat throughout. Anthony was quiet during the performances and did not seek to escape and walk around the room. This was great, as we had to take Anthony out when we attended Upfront’s “Pied Piper of Hamelin” with him. This was no fault of Upfront’s production, it was just designed for an older audience and indeed, Anthony was younger when he saw it.
So to conclude, I would heartily recommend anyone (especially puppetry enthusiasts and families) to visit the Harlequin Puppet Theatre (once he is back up and running) and see a show if you’re in the area to be thoroughly entertained by a master performer!
Click the link to the Wikipedia entry below for more information about the theatre.
Puppet Lady 