jabberwocky | Puppet Lady

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.

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.

You’ve doubtless noticed that I have been rather quiet on the blog front for a while so here’s an update on what I’ve been up to!

I had a smashing time doing “Jabberwocky!” at Knaresborough Feva 2013 which was really well organised and had large and enthusiastic audiences. They were so enthusiastic that they were all gathered and waiting for me to begin every time I came out!

CLICK HERE to see photo’s the organisers took on their Facebook page.

We were very pleased to give our mechanical horse an airing at Lakes Alive event “Mintfest” in Kendal. Followers of this blog will know that “Fred Fettler’s “Pony 3000” – The Transport of the Future!” show was commissioned last year for the “My Last CARnival” event in High Bentham. CLICK HERE to see earlier posts showing the making & design process.

Below are photo’s that Tim Austin (who plays Fred Fettler) took at Mintfest, including the fabulous Firework display by Pa Boom on the Sunday evening. This and Richard Dedomenici’s “Redux – Dawn of the Dead” were the only things we got to watch ourselves this year as we were too busy performing! A section from the film Dawn of the Dead was recreated with local people playing Zombies etc. by Richard at the Westmorland Shopping Centre and screened there on the Sunday evening. You can see the video at the bottom this post.

In between we also caught a bit of a fabulous band called “Dublin 2 Delhi” outside the Brewery Arts Centre.