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Rough Magic Theatre at Covent Garden May Fayre and Puppet Festival

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Here are some pictures we took while performing at the Covent Garden May Fayre and Puppet Festival on Sunday.

As you can see, we had excellent weather for shadow puppetry as it turned out to be a very sunny day, (that is all using sunlight with no artificial light at all). It is of course possible to do the show in less sunny weather and indeed night time events as I can use my battery powered strip light for that.

I decided to do our “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” show as it is slightly longer than “Jabberwocky!” and thought people would feel they were getting more value for money, I had also already performed “Jabberwocky!” in London and felt like it was worth trying out the other show this time. However, for busking purposes, I can’t help wondering now if the “Jabberwocky!” show would have been better, as with only 8 puppets, the turn around time for performing again would have been faster.

We saw some famous TV puppeteers including Phil Fletcher, Warwick Brownlow-Pike, Ronnie le Drew etc. but missed Harry Hill as we decided to stay with our pitch and didn’t realise that he was the “special event at 3pm.” We also met the incredibly talented ventriloquist/comedian Max Fulham in person for the first time. Max has appeared on TV in Crackerjack amongst other appearances and should definitely be given his own TV show (in my opinion).

Anthony and Miranda really enjoyed themselves and did the whole of the big parade with their Punch and Judy puppets. There was a bit of argument over who should have Mr. Punch, however, and I fear that I might be better off bringing the crocodile instead of Judy if there is a next time. Poor old Judy!

We also brought the Rough Magic flag with us for the parade which was originally made for Glastonbury Festival.

As well as seeing a few old friends we met some new ones. Paul Jackson (our next pitch neighbour) was very friendly and helpful and we also met Cath March of “Invisible Needs” who kindly put us all up at her flat for the weekend, many thanks to both of them.

We also managed to squeeze in a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see the puppets etc. on the Saturday, (see above).

An RTS NW Puppet Showcase at The Lowry

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Tim Austin and I were lucky enough to be invited to the “No Strings Attached” showcase launch event hosted by RTS NW at the Lowry which was a celebration of the new “Furchester Hotel” series on CBeebies and of North West puppetry in general.

Before we went in we had time to look at the Lowry’s exhibition on TV puppetry with many of our personal favourites making an appearance (see pictures above).  It was a real treat to see the original puppets up close and see how they were made.  I was surprised to see that Basil Brush’s front teeth appeared to have been made of wood!

We also had a very brief conversation with Joe Godwin (director of CBBC)!

At the main showcase event,there were two puppeteers from “The Furchester Hotel” (Andrew Spooner – Fergus & Sarah Burgess – Phoebe) with their puppets plus one of the puppetry interns who had been working with them.  Other speakers included Phil Chalk from Factory Transmedia who created “Strange Hill High” (a part rod puppet part CGI tv series) and also a fellah called Ian Mackinnon, who’d worked with Cosgrove Hall back in the day as well as on modern Tim Burton films such as “Corpse Bride” and “Frankenweenie” plus the puppeteers of Hacker (Phil Fletcher) and Dodge T Dog (Warrick Brownlow-Pike) with their puppets.

They were all invited to talk about their work at some length and we were able to watch some clips of them in action on a projection screen and at the end we were invited to ask questions.  Right, right at the end I went up to nosy at the puppets close to and had conversations with the puppeteers as well.

 CLICK HERE for a link to the RTS facebook post about the evening and they have more photo’s there too.