Tag Archives: childrens entertainment

“Al & Kai’s Faboo News” Series Premieres Tomorrow!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Tim Austin & I have been working incredibly hard on a new TV series for kids which premieres tomorrow.

As some of you already know, it is a positive news and entertainment show with puppets. Think The Muppets meets Newsround. We have also been inspired by some of the TV shows we used to watch as kids such as Rainbow.

It is an antidote to the majority of news in the mainstream press which is depressing and overwhelming to say the least. The things we watch, read and listen to have a profound effect on our mental health and our experience of day to day life. This show is something positive, silly and fun to sit down and watch with the kids, or on your own or let the kids watch on their own while you grab a sit down and a cup of tea or get a bit of housework done with the knowledge that it is full of wholesome, uplifting stuff.

The series is starting tomorrow and there will be a new episode every Saturday for the next 12 weeks (with a break for Christmas).

We have the next 3 episodes already made and we are looking forward to creating the rest for everyone to enjoy.

We would love for you to watch and share the show with all your friends and anyone you think might be interested.

There is also the opportunity for you to get involved and BE IN THE SHOW by getting in touch with your own Faboo News. Just click “Faboo Yous” on the website to get in touch.

You can watch the show at faboonews.com or on the Youtube channel. Please like, subscribe and follow our socials to find out when new episodes and content are available.

Each episode has a theme and the first three coming up are “Transport”, “Halloween” and “Peace & Quiet”.

As well as puppeteering Kai, I have been designing and making costumes, props and a couple of sock puppet characters, “Tony” and “Ped”; who are socks that live in Al and Kai’s basement and act as the Faboo News production crew.

Tim came up the initial design for these and wanted them to be very mobile and expressive like Kermit the frog, so was at first not keen to let me add a mouthplate. However, he soon found that it was very difficult to operate them without and agreed to let me add one afterwards, (the eagle eyed will spot which episode the mouth-plates were installed and which they were not 🤣).

I am also appearing in the show as “Mom” (Al and Kai’s mum) and Tim (who came up with the entire concept for the show and is currently doing, puppeteering, filming, editing and promo.) is playing “Dad” (Al and Kai’s dad). It’s just your conventional family group (human mum and dad with Anteater and Capybara children/siblings).

“Little Miss Seamstress” did an excellent job of customising Dad’s jacket for us. Check out her Facebook Page HERE.

Mom (amongst other things) will be doing a “Mom makes” segment where Mom will be doing various fun and simple crafts for kids to make (some may require a bit of help from adult helpers depending on the craft and the kids’ age/ability level). We aim to use materials you can easily get hold of and are inexpensive (reusing/recycling as much as possible).

While Tim came up with the initial design for the Al & Kai puppets, the excellent Joe Peek made the puppets in consultation with Tim and we are very happy with how they came out.

The Patreon page is now live and you can access it from faboonews.com. Patrons will be able to access all the episodes a week early and also access exclusive behind the scenes content and other goodies. So, check it out to see how you can support us and what fun rewards you can get!

We are currently putting this together on a shoestring budget and we hope that if you like the show you will help us to make it more sustainable going forward (e.g. paying ourselves properly and being able to afford to bring in others to help with editing etc. so Tim doesn’t have a nervous breakdown trying to do everything himself).

So to recap, things you can do to support us are:

  1. Watch the show!
  2. Tell all your friends and family about it.
  3. Follow us on the social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok and of course Youtube) links are on the website HERE
  4. Become a Patron (access the Patreon page from faboonews.com)
  5. Send us your Faboo News and BE ON THE SHOW!👍😍

(A big thank-you to everyone who already supported our crowdfunder for the show 😊).

A Visit to the Harlequin Puppet Theatre

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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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.

Wikipedia entry