Tag Archives: childrens workshops

Dragons come to Wigan! – Shadow Puppets In Schools & a secret theatre project

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Hi everyone.  Apologies if anyone had got the impression that I’ve dropped off the map for the last 3 weeks.

My excuse is the usual one – I’ve been really busy!

I’ve had a couple of shadow puppet workshops in schools.  The first one was a little performance of “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” by me as well as a little lecture demo. about different kinds of puppets.  This was followed by the kids making their own shadow puppets using Prokofiev’s “Peter & the Wolf” as a theme.

chinese dragon shadow puppet

This one was made by me as an example

The second was with Nursery & Reception classes at a school in Wigan where they were having a “Geography Week” and their group was looking at Asia & China and therefore wanted to do shadow puppets.  So they had a performance from me of “Jabberwocky!” as well as looking at different places in the world shadow puppets come from.  Then we made some Chinese dragon puppets to a design that I’m rather proud of and we did a bit of a dragon dance round the room with the puppets and some music.  The kids were very sweet and gave me many compliments on my show and seemed to enjoy their puppets and the dragon procession a lot.

In between these Tim did Rough Magic Theatre’s Mad Hatter’s Tea Party walkabout for an Art & Literature festival in Stretford, Manchester which I went along to as well.

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I have also been doing a secret shadow puppetry project with another theatre company.  I’ve been asked to keep it under wraps as they want it to be a big surprise for the audience but I will be able to tell you all about it soon.

I’m also doing a Christmas Event in Lancaster coming up soon – which I will put up on the “Where You Can See Me” page as soon as I’ve got more details for you.

Making Toy Theatre Work in the U.K. – Hansel & Gretel at childrens parties and other settings

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Hello everyone, you may have noticed that the last blog I did was a review and that I have not said anything about all the things I got up to before Christmas.  So here’s a post to rectify the situation.

I had been finding it very difficult to sell the Hansel & Gretel Toy Theatre show in this country, despite it going down so well at the Vischmarkt Papierentheater Festival in Harderwijk, The Netherlands.

This was firstly because Toy Theatre is not as well known and popular in this country as it is on the continent.  Secondly, you are limited to a small audience and many people wish to squeeze as many audience members as they can in to a venue when they have booked a show.

I solved the first problem by creating a video trailer for the show.  You can now see this on our website, (CLICK HERE FOR SHOW PAGE).  This means that anyone with no experience of Toy Theatre (and our particular take on it) can now get a good idea of what the show is like.

It appears that the second problem has also been solved simply by using the show in places where a small audience is an advantage.  The show is perfect for small scale venues or smaller groups, such as Children’s parties and Pupil Referral Units, (where children who are struggling in mainstream education for whatever reason are taken out to be taught in smaller groups.  They get more individual attention and staff are trained to deal with their needs and difficulties).

We were booked by a family who we did a Pirate Party for earlier in the year, (for their son Henry) to do something for their daughter’s birthday and the “Hansel & Gretel” show immediately came to mind.  The show kept 15 wriggly energetic kids of a wide variety of ages, (mostly between 4 and 6) absorbed, quiet and still for a full 30 minutes and the adults seemed to really love it too.  We then filled the rest of the time with various musical songs and games.

Similarly spellbound were the children at Bradley PRU, who stayed still throughout, though they did react to and interact with the story.  Afterwards we had lots of unprompted positive feedback both from the children and the staff, as well as a lot of questions about how we made the show and so on.  One of the staff said that it was the quietest they’d ever seen them.  After a brief break, the children made their own individual shoe-box toy theatres like I did for Buxton Puppet Festival in 2011, (CLICK HERE FOR BUXTON POST).  The children did excellent work, were very absorbed by the task and seemed to enjoy themselves very much.

The family who we did the party for mentioned the idea of getting us back again this year for their son’s birthday again.  With this in mind, we need to think of some new party formats.  This year we are going to be updating our main website, (www.roughmagictheatre.co.uk) and one of the things we intend to include is all of the different sorts of parties that we can do.

I have had suggestions already of puppet making parties, but would like more feedback on the sorts of themes and activities that people think would be popular.  Please leave your suggestions in the comments box at the bottom, (you have to click on the title of the blog post for the comments box to appear).

The “where you can see me” page has been updated and will continue to be updated as I get confirmation of more performances so watch this space 🙂