You’ve guessed it I’m talking about my toy theatre show Hansel & Gretel again.

Hello, we’ve been busy rehearsing and trying to make sliders successfully out of wire coat hangers and paper clips.  Listening to our lines tape, (an aid to learning our script – I find it the best way to learn lines for me).  We’ve also got a date down for recording a video of the show now which is less than 2 weeks away, so I’d jolly well better make sure it’s finished by then hadn’t I.  The film will be shown locally just after the Vischmarkt Papierentheater festival at the Made In Lancaster Festival on Sat 11th June, all being well.

I discovered, as I suspected that our lovely local print shop in Bentham is by far and away a million times cheaper to do scanning and copying of my watercolours than any of the printing firms I visited.  Admittedly, I only visited 2 but I was appalled by the prices in the first and the second was even more expensive.

The plan is to roughly make up the sets in corrugated plastic, (nearly finished) and then to draw round them to get the shape/size for the painting which I will do actual size on an A2 size paper.  Then I’ll take them to the print shop who will scan them and then do me A3 size prints which will be attached to the corrugated plastic in two halves.

I’m undecided as to whether I will need to use some kind of spray sealant on the prints which will be 100gm paper and I’ve not made up my mind what will be best for sticking it down, possibly Harry Oudekerk’s suggestion of something he uses which sounds like double sided sticky tape in sheet form might be best, but I don’t know if they sell that in this country.  If anybody knows where they sell it and what it is called, please let me know!

I have also, as you’ve probably guessed, been thinking about the curtain.  I am going to use actual fabric attached to corrugated plastic again.  I have been looking at lots of different curtain designs, and I think I have an idea of what I want now.

You may have also noticed two new links on the blogroll.  Both very interesting for anyone who wants to find out about traditional puppetry artforms.  One is a Javanese site which aims to help people identify different traditional Javanese shadow puppet characters from their characteristics.  They are introducing a new shadow puppet each week. Eventually there will be a whole catalogue so that, if you have a puppet of your own in front of you, you can simply choose each physical characteristic at a time (e.g. gold skin, angry face) and eventually the image of the puppet you are looking for should appear.  It explains better on the site itself, so do have a look.

The other site is a travel blog which mentions a type of puppet I have never come across before, Vietnamese water puppets.  This is a very uncomfortable artform for the puppeteers who are submerged in water from the waist down.  They are hidden from the audience’s view behind a curtain and operate the puppets(who “stand” on the surface of the water) through bamboo tubes and strings.  Again, I didn’t see them myself, check out the blog for more accurate and comprehensive details.

Don’t forget folks, we’re still raising money for Hansel & Gretel through Wefund.  Please visit the site and give some money, or if you’re too poor, just share the link with everyone you know.

More news next week!