Tag Archives: nonsense verse

A Whole lot of puppet stuff!!! Pt.2 of 2 – Wolds Words, Central School of Speech & Drama & primary puppets in Middlesbrough

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Apologies for the huge delay on the second installation of “puppet stuff!!!” avid puppetlady readers:

On Saturday 24th of October Tim Austin (my Rough Magic Theatre co-performer and husband) were invited to perform our “Alice in Wonderland” show for the “Wolds Words” festival in the library building in Louth, Lincolnshire.  On the following Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I was due to teach the First Year puppetry students at Royal Central School of speech and drama and the Monday following that I was due to work in a primary school in Middlesbrough making hand and string puppets.

The performance space for “Alice” was upstairs but we had lots of help getting all our props and costumes up to the room from Angela Reynolds (the lady who booked us from Magna Vitae) and her young daughter.  It was a modestly sized but very appreciative audience, all of whom were very reluctant to leave at the end of the show!  We invited them to ask us questions and to see any of the puppets they were interested in more closely which they seemed to enjoy immensely before they left.

So after packing up and eating a well earned meal we went to Norfolk to visit Tim’s relations (which is not too far from Louth) and planned to go on from there to London on the following Tuesday.

I had made contact with Nenagh Watson through Facebook earlier in the year when we had a chat about how my suitcase shadow theatre worked as she was interested in making something similar herself.  She expressed interest in my coming to work with the students at “Central” (I shall use this as a shortened form of “Royal Central School of Speech and Drama” for the rest of the post) but I explained that as I live such a long way from London that if I ever came to work with the students it would ideally need to be a block of work rather than the odd day here and there.  It wasn’t possible to book this in at the time that we spoke about it but Nenagh thought she could probably arrange something later on in the year.  In the meantime she asked me to make a suitcase theatre for her which she used to create a little show for her wedding.  CLICK HERE to see my previous post on the making of this suitcase.

Then when I enquired about doing some work at Central a bit later in the year Nenagh managed to arrange for me to do a block of 3 days with the first year puppetry students.  This also coincided with the “Suspense” puppet festival organised by Little Angel Theatre.  This is a festival that we have never attended previously as we do not produce theatre specifically for adults ourselves and because London is a bit out of the way just for a pleasure jaunt.  Nenagh also kindly arranged for us to stay with a friend of hers who lives in London and we came in a day early (Tuesday) to get settled.  This also allowed us to attend a Devoted & Disgruntled event on the Tuesday evening that was hosted by the Little Angel as part of the Suspense festival.  The discussion question was “Puppetry – Shackled by the Past?”.  If you do not know what a devoted and disgruntled event is CLICK HERE to see more information about these events which are run by “Improbable Theatre Company”.  It was a great event and there were lots of interesting discussions and I was able to meet not only Nenagh herself and some of the students I’d be working with but also several puppeteers who I had only met through social media before, such as Sian Kidd and Penny Francis.

Sian was performing Mirth & Misery’s “Death Puppet Klezma Jam” show as part of the festival but unfortunately this was not on while we were there.  While we were down in London, apart from the D&D event, we managed to see “Ubu & the Truth Commission” by Handspring Puppet Company (of Warhorse fame) and also the official “Suspense” opening event which had lots of time for chatting, munching and mingling and a puppet cabaret which included some snippets of upcoming shows in the festival.  We got to meet Aya Nakamura again, (of whom I am a huge fan) and also her co-performer Mohsen Nouri from Rouge 28 Theatre who I had not met before.  They performed their Mademoiselle Lychee humanette striptease act which I hadn’t seen before either.

For the workshops with the first year puppetry students from Central, I performed both of my Shadow Puppet Suitcase shows for them, (“Edward Lear’s Nonsense” and “Jabberwocky!“) for inspiration and Nenagh also brought the suitcase theatre that I had made for her to show the students and she also showed us the puppets and techniques that she had used for the special puppet show that she’d created for her wedding.  She had used some 3-D shadow puppetry using a scene made out of wire and acetate and did a starry night scene using card with pin-pricks and a torch which was very effective and also did some shadows outside of the suitcase using a white shirt and a light with red heart attached to it, (it’s a bit difficult to describe but the technique showed a glowing red heart through the shirt).

Having had all that inspiration the students had the rest of the three days to create their own short shadow puppet performance which they would perform with the suitcase theatre.  Jemima and Freddy both chose nonsense poems as inspiration and Jo picked a short poem by Robert Louis Stevenson from a book I’d brought to give them ideas, while Seb decided to make a shadow puppet play out of an environmentally themed piece that he had written previously.  They all did excellent work and performed their shows for some of the other students on the Friday, (all of whom seemed very impressed and well entertained).  All of the students helped each other to perform their shows rather than choosing to create shows where they were being entirely self-sufficient.  This gave them greater scope for creativity, more challenging lighting and sound effects.  You can see photo’s of their work below:

Work by Jemima Hand – Jemima created a performance based on “On The Ning Nang Nong” nonsense poem by Spike Milligan

Work by Frederica Hayes – Frederica created a performance based on a short section of “The Hunting of the Snark” by Lewis Carroll (“Fit the Seventh – The Banker’s Fate”)

Work by Sebastian Mayer – Sebastian created a performance based on an environmentally themed story that he had written previously.

Work by Joanna Wheele – Joanna created a performance based on the poem “Windy Nights” by Robert Louis Stevenson

When I finally got up to our base in North Yorkshire I had to make the journey to Middlesbrough for my primary school workshop through all of the very foggy weather we had at the time.  An early start at quarter to five ensured that I reached the school in good time but unfortunately my sat-nav took me on the worst possible route back again through the Yorkshire Dales, (which can be misty at the best of times).  Luckily I got back in one piece but it was very low visibility and made for hairy driving conditions!  I did hand and string puppet making using the same technique that I had used previously at a school in Bridlington (CLICK HERE for pictures and more details).  I wasn’t able to take any pictures at the Middlesbrough school unfortunately.

I have crammed an awful lot into this one post so if anyone wants to ask for more information about anything I have written then please ask 🙂

Oh I do like to be beside the Sea-side…..at Morecambe Variety Festival!!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Greetings Blog readers!  Here’s a quick post about the Morecambe Variety Festival from the weekend before last.

This was an event organised by the lovely Neil Kendall and was at the Winter Gardens in Morecambe.  They had done this event before in 2012 but this is the first time we at Rough Magic Theatre have been involved.

Those of you who are local will know that for many years the Winter Gardens was left empty and was in a very poor state of repair.  However volunteers and the Friends of the Winter Gardens have been painstakingly working away to conserve and renovate the space.

Now it is possible to see what an amazing space it is, was and could be in the future given more money and more love.  Below is a video showing some of what the volunteers have been up to:

 

The festival attracted a lot of local people who hadn’t seen inside the building before and although there is still a lot to do they are very proud to have toilets and a cafe now which help to make the building a more usable and practical space.

Also the fellow performers I was sharing a dressing room with explained that I was lucky as when they had been involved with the festival in 2012 there had been no heating in the dressing rooms.  I am told that there are plans to install heating in the rest of the building which will be a massive leap forward as it will not only mean that the space can be used in the winter time but should also help minimise further deterioration of the plaster, paintwork etc. due to damp.

All that aside, you can see from the photo’s that even in its present state of slightly delapidated grandeur it was a wonderful setting for a quirky vintage style variety festival like this.

During the day, there were a lot of different performances going on, both outside the entrance of the building and on the main stage and around the edges of the downstairs auditorium and I with my Shadow Puppet Suitcase shows performed in the main auditorium area as well as the entrance hall and outside the building too as was appropriate.  You can see Neil’s photo of my “Jabberwocky!” show by clicking HERE.

There was also a showing Georges Melies’s “A Trip to the Moon” film with a specially composed musical score in one of the downstairs bar areas and also other things in spaces upstairs too.  I have only recently discovered Georges Melies but since I have, he seems to be popping up everywhere.  Below is a video of the film which has been restored and uses the hand-coloured version of the film:

 

 

After I had finished my shows on Sunday we saw the “Empty Theatre Tour” which had characters from the different eras of the theatre’s history conducting a tour of the building in character and contrived to convey an idea of being haunted by the history of the building, (in a nice way).

I had half a day performing on both the Saturday and the Sunday and since we were planning to attend the evening “Around the World in 80 Days” Cabaret Fancy Dress Ball event on the Friday night we booked into a Morecambe Guest House for convenience sake.

The evening entertainment was a combination of quirky variety and circus acts and burlesque performances, with the majority of the performers doing 2 separate performances.  These were linked together by a “flashman” M.C. and his put upon lackey touring the globe looking for the fabulous pink diamond of Limpopo!

In addition there was a fancy dress competition which was won by a lady who had made an ingenious outfit out of the pages of the “Morecambe Visitor”.

Speaking of marvellous local events.  We’ll be appearing at Bentham CARnival again this year at the end of the month, (to find out more about the event click HERE).  It will be a part of the Yorkshire Festival this year and is celebrating the opening of the “Way of the Roses” Passing Place Artwork in particular.  To find out more about this there is another page for CARnival Bentham by Bike that you can visit by clicking HERE.

The artwork is a giant pair of Queen Victoria’s bloomers made out of wire mesh to commemorate the fact that the silk for Queen Victoria’s bloomers was woven at the Bentham Silk Mill.  So bloomers are one of the themes this year as well as fish and fat sheep on bicycles.

I’ll be doing my Edward Lear’s Nonsense show which feature a pair of bloomers/”drawers” made of rabbit skins amongst other things and Tim will be the Mad Hatter who on this occasion will be doing a spot of fishing out of his teapots and kettles!