Tag Archives: Lakes Alive

Thoughts on Mintfest, Lakes Alive: From Firey Villages to Kendal Mint Cake

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Both myself and fellow Rough Magic Theatre performer Tim Austin attended Mintfest in Kendal as X-Trax Delegates.  This gave us the opportunity to tell lots of very useful people like festival bookers etc. about our work and the shows that we do.  We also got to meet lots of fellow artists and performers and of course to see the shows at the festival.

Sometimes it can be quite hard to get a chance to see fellow performers work if you are always performing at the same festivals and this was a great opportunity to see what other people are doing.

We saw “Frolicked” do their new show “The Alchemist” which is apparently their first static puppetry show.  Up until now they have been concentrating on strolling puppet characters, (and of course their recent foray into interactive performance/gaming “The Birds”).  It was very accessible being largely without spoken words, but relied on the written word for a lot of the plot/jokes, (e.g. identical spray bottles saying respectively “No Fly” and “Grow Big”).  Overall it was very light, charming and gently amusing and of course the puppets were beautifully made.  It seemed quite short to me, but then that can be better for children.  It would have been good to have had more audience reaction to the antics of the rats, (after the style of crocodile stealing Mr. Punch’s sausages)but I don’t know if that was more to do with the audience itself or the style of the performance.

The Fire Village Royale by Der Vurmeesters was the highlight, for me.  This was in spite of the pervasive soaking drizzle on the Friday night when we went to see it.  It was like a sort of medieval, magical, firey village full of various odd characters interacting with fire and fireworks in various ways.  One lady liked to rest her feet in a water trough periodically before manipulating it so that the whole length of the trough burst into flames.  Another fairy like person who was a guardian of a metal gate (which was set on fire)liked to do hula-hooping and (yes, you’ve guessed it) the hula hoop was also on fire!  Between the sort of “set pieces” which were cordoned off, various people wandered backwards and forwards, some on marvellous bicycles and some on foot.  The most spectacular was a man in a mask that sat on top of his head,( so he appeared extra tall).  He was in the habit of setting his head on fire so it was just a firey skull and also had a firey sword.

After being presented with sparklers by an excitable Alchemist looking chap, we were rather alarmed when the firey headed man decided to walk straight at us.  We understandably backed away, but then he presented his sword for us to light our sparklers from.  I don’t think I would have enjoyed it half as much if that hadn’t happened.  It made us feel really part of what was going on, rather than just being a spectator.

There was also a body puppet which was entirely on fire, which I assume was a metal structure with fire rope attached, and this figure was controlled by the walking motion of the operator who was at least a metre behind the burning figure.  You can see it in the video below.  The music and beautiful lanterns also contributed greatly to the magical atmosphere.

As this is meant to be a puppet-centric blog I have mentioned the two main events with puppetry that we saw, not forgetting Squashbox‘s Dinosaur puppet and a cave-man humanette for their “Stones & Bones” show.  A very amusing little show which was remarkable for the amount included in a one man show.  Craig Johnson, the performer coped heroically well with the incredible amount of bad-mannered people who decided that it was okay to try and get past by squeezing their way through his backstage area, (no innuendo intended).  He used the old favourite joke, “It’s just a stage they’re going through”.  Also ironically one elderly lady emerged from the set just as Craig had promised to produce a dinosaur from behind the scenes!

Although I saw an incredible amount of fantastic theatre and enjoyed the festival tremendously, Tim and myself found ourselves getting increasingly frustrated and angry about the behaviour of some of the audience members( both adults and children).  Hardly any parents were exerting any influence on their children to keep them safe and out of the performers way during dangerous acts, or to stop them misbehaving and causing danger to the performers by throwing things into the performance area, or to stop them standing up and moving around constantly and blocking other people’s view.  Then there were the adults, as aforementioned who hadn’t any problems with walking straight through people’s performance spaces while they were actually in the middle of a performance.  It all seemed to indicate a lack of concern for others which was somewhat disheartening to see.  Some parents, (and I have heard from other performers that this is not unusual) were actually encouraging their children to hit Artizani’s giant inflatable lobster which was perambulating about Abbot Hall Park.

One could argue that it was a sign of the success of the festival that it encouraged those not used to the conventions of theatre to experience good quality performance, and maybe this is simply a feature of any street arts festival on this scale.  On the other hand that doesn’t mean that I have to condone this kind of behaviour or to like it.  If you have any opinions or experiences of this kind of behaviour or anything else in the post, please leave a comment 🙂

We now have video footage of our popular Shadow Puppet Suitcase show “Jabberwocky!” on our website, click HERE to take a look!  This show is available for Halloween events this year and we have a variety of other options available for Halloween as well, (please ask!)

Don’t forget you can see us at “That’s the Way to Do It” festival in Redcar, on Sunday doing our “Alice” show and introducing the strange monster that lives in the Rough Magic Theatre shed.  See the WHERE YOU CAN SEE ME page for more details.

If you’ve noticed I haven’t mentioned the Kendal Mint Cake, take a look here to see more about Richard Dedomenici’s attempts at building a full sized Kendal Mint Cake igloo.

Camping & Capers at Masquepony in Cartmel

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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As you may or may not know, the dates of Lakes Alive’s camping street arts festival “Masquepony” were moved so that we would be camping on my birthday, (Friday 17th of August) and performing my “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” Shadow Puppet Suitcase walkabout on the Saturday.

Well having finally loaded up the van with everything we needed for both the camping and the performance we were treated to torrential rain as we drove down the A65 towards Cartmel.  Were we deterred? No!!!  I didn’t mind it raining on the Friday so long as the weather cleared up for my performances on the Saturday(as the weather forecast had predicted).

Having arrived in an extremely congested Cartmel town centre we fortuitously bumped into Jeremy Shine who pointed us towards the camping area without us even needing to phone him up.

With remarkably little fraying of tempers we succeeded in pitching the tent whilst the weather was temporarily cloudy rather than actually raining.  Due to our haste, the tent had one or two wrinkles in the outer skin which I was rather worried might cause a leak in rainy weather, but there was nothing to be done about it.  I was extremely glad, due to the sodden nature of the ground that I had bought an extra groundsheet and my wellies with me.

With all the time that this took, we missed the street shows in the afternoon.  We did, however have just enough time for tea and scones before the “Festival Circus” performance.  I was very excited as this was only the third proper circus performance I’d seen, (the others being “Quidam” by Cirque du Soleil and the Tower Circus in Blackpool Tower).

It turned out to be a touring Circus School with professionals and trainees performing alongside each other.  Though it wasn’t as artistic and polished as Cirque du Soleil it did have an immediacy and a sense of real peril that was missing from “Quidam” simply because the performers were so much nearer to the audience.  The tiny circus tent meant that a girl who did a trapeze act was literally bumping into the canvas roof when she was at the top of her swing.  The contortionist, clown and juggler (who I think were professionals) were definitely highlights.  The trainees were very entertaining too and it was great to see young people learning the circus trade.

We saw two excellent bands, (“Tongues of Fire” and “The Coal Porters”) in the evening.  I was particularly keen to watch the technique of the trombone players in “Tongues of Fire”.  I have been learning the trombone on and off for some years now but have recently let it lapse.

We managed to successfully keep the dirt and wet only in the porch and not in the inner of the tent when we went to bed.  Despite my fears, the inside had stayed dry regardless of the wrinkles in the outer skin.  We were careful to avoid touching the outer walls as we slept, however.

It was a lot easier to do this than when we borrowed my brother’s pop-up tent for camping in the Netherlands.  This had only one skin and was really only designed for one person.  Our new one is better ventilated and doesn’t have a hole in the groundsheet, (yay!!).

In the morning the rain did not stop immediately but got gradually better, to the extent that we could use my new cook set with meths burner.  We had tea and fried egg butties :).  A large number of dog walkers came past and the dogs wanted to come and investigate us in spite of what their owners told them.  One even came and had a lick of our frying pan, (which had luckily cooled down by then).  My husband Tim discovered that while Cartmel is excellent if you wish to purchase Sticky Toffee Pudding or expensive souvenirs it is less easy to locate washing up liquid when you’ve forgotten to pack it.

We had a good mooch about the shops and looked at all the nice things we couldn’t afford to buy and went to see the circus again.

Then I took myself up to the performance area where yummy food had generously been provided for the artists. It was a great chance to speak to the other performers too; including Frolicked,( with an updated version of Grandma and Grandpa from when I saw them at Blackpool Puppet Festival some time ago) and Gacko or Gary Bridgens who I had been in contact with on Facebook.

The Dressing Room for the performers was the one normally used by the jockies in the grandstand at Cartmel Racecourse so was an interesting environment to be in.

My “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” performances went well and I had the interesting experience of using sun for my light for the early performances and switching to my battery operated fluorescent tube for the later performances as it got darker.

Rather than striving to attract a large crowd all at once I was catering to small static audiences who were eating their picnic “banquets” at the tables and chairs that had been set out.  I even did a performance for people queuing up for food at one point.

I also ended up performing for Tom Lloyd and his family, who I only recognised afterwards as being the man who had created a shadow puppet animated film with the children from Ingleton primary school just up the road from where we live.  This was part of the “My Last CARnival” event that we created the horse automaton show for.

I was very flattered to be asked for my autograph by a girl who had seen my show.

I got a chance to see Fairly Famous Family’s Cheesy Rider act in one of my breaks, which included a memorable and highly impressive juggling striptease routine.

After the shows were over I could relax.  It was a real treat to be able to have a drink at the bar afterwards as I didn’t have to drive home. It was good to chat to all the different people and hear their anecdotes about performing.  I had a lengthy conversation about ways I could encourage myself to practice the trombone more often with Robert, (one of the trombonists from Tongues of Fire).  It’s not happened yet, but I shall practice at some point soon, I hope.