Tag Archives: mad hatters tea party

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.

Lots of fun at Castlefield Carnival!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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It was a real treat to be at Castlefield Arena on Sunday.  The last time I performed there was with “Manchester 5000” which was Tony Watts of the Manchester School of Samba’s attempt to get 5000 samba drummers all playing at the same time.  It is a wonderful venue for street performance as you can see from the photo’s.  I even did one show for a group of blokes on their canal barge, which was fun.

There were a few worries about the weather as rain was forecast for the afternoon but in the end there were just a few specks here and there.  So this meant that all the planned fun such as running races and inflatable slides etc. could go ahead without any trouble.  It was good for us as well of course, though I did have to make a dash under the bridge during just one of the many performances.  It is the first year they have done this particular event and Carol, (one of the organisers) was saying that they were hoping that numbers would continue to grow from year to year through word of mouth etc.  So if you didn’t make this year, do try and come along next time as it was a wonderful family day out with a huge variety of things going on.

Everyone seemed to really enjoy both Tim as the Mad Hatter and myself doing the “Jabberwocky!” suitcase show.  In fact, I was delighted to get a fan email the day after our performance with some photo’s from Caroline Thom.  Below is a copy of her email:

“Subject: Brilliant today @ Castlefield Carnival

Hello,

 

Just had to say I thought your performers were fabulous at Castlefield Carnival today. Me and my son were lucky enough to see the Mad Hatter and the puppet lady do their thing !! My 6 year old son was captivated by the puppet show, I have a few photo’s I wanted to share with you

Taken by Caroline Thom

Taken by Caroline Thom

Taken by Caroline Thom

Taken by Caroline Thom

Caroline also said:

“I thought your performance was so original and fun”

A big, big thank-you to Caroline and her son Leon for that!!