Tag Archives: British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild

A Marionette Masterclass at The Harlequin Puppet Theatre

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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This door was affected by fire damage from an arson attack and had been replaced when I last visited but hadn’t been repainted yet. This decoration was recreated by Tim Sykes based on photographs of the original door.

The British Puppet Guild put on this special day long event as part of their Centenary Year celebrations.

I had visited the theatre previously when Chris Somerville was still alive. He gifted ownership of the theatre to Mike Dixon in his will. You can see my previous post about the theatre by clicking on the link below:

A visit to the Harlequin Puppet Theatre

The format of the day was really good including hands on practicing with the vintage marionettes at the theatre under the watchful eye of expert marionettist Ronnie le Drew as well as demonstrations of the long string marionettes and demonstrations of the cabaret marionettes by Ian Denny and Glenn Holden.

We also had some interesting talks from Mike about the history of the building including its creation by Eric Bramall and Chris’s subsequent employment by him and the latter days when Chris was running everything as a one man show.

News for the future of the theatre, if you were not already aware, is that Mike (together with other skilled puppeteers) is putting on performances for the public again now. The first one of which is “A Christmas Carol” this December and I understand is already sold out!

Mike, and his partner Jo Slater, are currently in the middle of upgrading the lighting and sound equipment in the building. When Mike took it on, all of the original electrics and equipment were still in place and in working order, but not up to modern standards in terms of quality, safety and energy efficiency.

As well as directing and giving pointers on our technique, Ronnie treated us all to a wealth of reminiscences about his career and early days at The Little Angel Theatre and the people he worked with there. The puppets at the Harlequin and those made by John Wright of The Little Angel both use an upright style of control which (according to my research) is often referred to as a “British” or “English” upright control and features a separate leg bar.

Below are some of the photos Mike kindly shared from the day as well:

We were practicing with a set of puppets that had been made to perform as a set of Music Hall acts and after one rehearsal put on a little show taking into account the feedback we were given. My puppet was performing the song “Henry the Eighth I am” which was great because I know that song quite well. There was a pre-recorded backing track that we had to move the puppets in sync with and the patter of the M.C. character and the links between the tracks were hilarious (in my opinion anyway). I was reminded very strongly of Henry Gordon Jago from the Tom Baker Dr. Who story “The Talons of Weng Chiang”. Big congratulations to Tom on his recent MBE.

Below is a video which takes a tour of the Harlequin Puppet Theatre by The UK Theatre Tour which gives a lot of the history and also shows the Music Hall Puppets that we used:

The Harlequin Puppet Theatre Website is also an excellent resource containing lots of pointers on making, performance and materials for making and stringing puppets Harlequin Puppet Theatre style! CLICK HERE for the site.

Skipton International Puppetry Symposium

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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  • “Jabberwocky!” Suitcase show
  • Halloween Shadow Puppet Workshop Pics

I attended the first ever Skipton International Puppetry Symposium this last weekend.

It was hosted by Skipton Town Hall who did an excellent job. The talks and networking opportunities were great. It was really lovely to see old friends and people who I’ve only encountered online before plus making new contacts.

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In the first panel discussion at the Symposium was posing the question “Where are we Now” in terms of the puppetry community. The panelists were Mike Dixon from the British Puppet Guild, Cariad Astles from BrUNIMA, Malcolm Knight from PuppeteersUK, Hugh Purves from The Puppet Centre (which is just getting back up and running again after a gap) and Clive Chandler from the PJF. Malcolm also brought his experiences from The Scottish Mask & Puppet Centre to the discussion as well.

David Micklem introduced the discussion and talked about how he felt that in the 90s puppetry was on the fringes but with productions such as “War Horse” and giant puppets by Royale de Luxe arriving on the scene puppetry arrived, (in terms of recognition of the artform).

It was acknowledged that things were difficult now in terms of getting work and funding and that we are in fact down to just one puppetry National Portfolio Organisation getting regularly funded by the Arts Council (Theatre-Rites). Clive also mentioned the lack of support for the arts from local councils now (Birmingham’s arts budget has completely gone and the Cannock Chase museum that Clive has been performing in regularly for years has also gone).

John Parkinson of Upfront Puppet Theatre in Cumbria had a more positive report that their theatre is now receiving a share of the arts funding from their local council for the first time after many years of running their business without any outside support. You can find my other posts about Upfront here: (Snow Queen, Stanelli’s Super Circus, Pied Piper, Commedia dell’Arte masks, Jack & the Beanstalk).

The speakers talked a bit about the organisations they were representing and then questions were taken from the floor including the discussion of the fact that there is not a tick box for puppetry as an art form on the Arts Council England grant forms when even relatively niche art forms like mime are represented. There was a lot of discussion about how we can start working together as a cohesive group to advocate for puppetry as an art form. PuppeteersUK was originally set up to do this job of bringing the puppetry community together in the modest form of a listings directory on a website and sending out a weekly newsletter. Nowadays anyone can make their own website very easily so the monetary support for PUK has been dwindling.

On the second day of the Symposium I attended the Devoted & Disgruntled session (CLICK HERE for my previous D&D at Leeds Playhouse post, CLICK HERE for D&D at The Little Angel Theatre post) at which one of the breakout sessions was discussing how PUK needed to change to address the new issues affecting the puppetry community and what new form it needed to take. This session segwayed into a different session that was thinking in a very freeform creative sort of way about an app for puppeteers that would be more like a game so that people (and younger people in particular) would want to engage with it something like Club Penguin. This was described as Puppet Utopia and was structured as a village with various areas to do different things e.g. a bank to talk about/access funding, a school for accessing puppetry training, a garden where new ideas can grow etc. etc.

I also formed my own session about how puppeteers can get paid a fair wage when the funding climate is so difficult and looked in on a session about the UK puppet festivals working together and maybe forming some sort of network and perhaps co-commissioning new work (something like WithoutWalls does).

You can also read about the discussion of Other Sectors & Wider Networks by clicking the link HERE

You can access the reports from all the Open Space discussions that have ever been held on the Devoted & Disgruntled website and search for whatever topics are relevant to you (including puppetry) in the drop down menus. I notice that not all the break out sessions have uploaded a report, so if this is you, please take a moment to upload a report of your group to the site, as this is a great resource for the puppetry community to be able to access.

You can see at the top some photos from the Halloween Shadow Puppetry Drop-In Workshop that I ran on the Sunday and below is a little video snippit from one of my audience members at my “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” show.

Do please leave a comment if you have anything to add about the Symposium and don’t forget, you can subscribe to this blog, if you would like to receive regular updates.

If you would like to book one of my suitcase shows or a workshop, you can Contact Me Here 😊.