Sadly we have been far too busy cracking on with things to post before now.

We decided to cobble together our costumes from what we already have plus some charity shop and ebay purchases in true Rough Magic Theatre style.

I did a lot of research online and on YouTube and made myself a bum roll out of repurposed fabric (old jeans). If you don’t know what a bum roll is, it is what ordinary women in the eighteenth century wore under their skirts to make their bums and hips larger but is considerably less cumbersome than panniers which well off ladies wore and which could only really be worn by someone who doesn’t have to do any work.

We visited More Music and experimented with various lights and clothes line props and white sheets etc. etc. and decided that we could actually make use of our old booth frame but with the legs fully extended (so it would be taller than how we used it previously) and to use screen fabric over the entire width rather than having a smaller frame in the middle. We used a black tarp. to mask off the bottom section. We decided not to use our old floodlight as this only provides crisp shadows when puppets are right up against the screen. We thought we would use a combination of our OHP and some handheld led lights instead.

In our more recent rehearsals, having found that the fabric I bought reaches all the way to the floor as well we decided that we are going to use the screen all the way down instead of masking off the bottom. This means we will need to use a different approach to hiding the puppeteers (if we wish to hide them) so it will be interesting to work this out in rehearsal.

We are also intending to use some 3D shadow puppets and body shadows, and the full length screen will allow full length body shadows to be used.

I probably won’t post again for a while as we will be busy cracking on, but I hope these little snippets will whet your appetite and look forward to seeing everyone at Beverley Puppet Festival. See our WHERE YOU CAN SEE ME page for more details.

Another big thankyou to More Music in Morecambe for the use of their space by the way.