Tag Archives: shadow films

Sustainable Outdoor Arts

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Me in hero pose picking up my new car

I recently attended an online sustainability symposium hosted by Wild Rumpus which was looking at all the things that we are, could and should be doing to make our work as outdoor artists more sustainable.

At the beginning of the year we made a big step as a household and as a theatre company towards greater sustainability by swapping our vauxhall zafira for a second hand Nissan leaf.

The zafira was a swap from a Vauxhall Combo van without rear passenger seats so that we would have somewhere to put child car seats following the birth of our first child in 2017. It was a good choice for a compromise between personal and business use as the seats fold down to provide a very large amount of space for carting puppets/sets /workshop materials etc.

Then came the announcement about all new cars being electric from 2035, (more recently they are considering bringing this forward to 2030). In addition to this my car had turned 5 years old and I had just had to get it seen to for its first major repair job (while in my ownership). I felt like the longer I kept it the less it would be worth and the more repairs it would be likely to need.

Tim (my co-performer in RMT and husband) had already started using an electric vehicle (a Renault Zoe) as a second car for our household. So, I felt relatively comfortable with the idea of switching to an electric vehicle of my own as I had already had experience of driving his.

One of the main differences is that it has no gears so those people who have driven automatic cars would find the swap to an electric vehicle quite an easy one.

I decided to get a second hand vehicle as I would be able to buy this using a hire purchase arrangement and at the end of 5 years I will own it outright and have something to show for my investment. At the time, Tim had a PCP on his Zoe and has now switched to a new lease (and a newer Zoe) without the option to buy. I wanted a car at the end of my payments.

So I got a Nissan Leaf which, while nothing like as big as the Zafira, has a fairly roomy boot and the ability to fold the rear seats flat for extra storage space. It is bigger than the Zoe but has a smaller battery (30 kwh) which gives a range of 120 miles with a fully charged battery in ideal conditions (it does not perform as well in the cold).

Before lock down we had the delightful plan of visiting the Covent Garden May Fayre and Puppet Festival for the first time in my new car. This happens every year and commemorates the first documented sighting of Mr. Punch by Samuel Pepys in his famous diary (so it is the official birthday of Mr. Punch).

We were going to take the children too and make it a sort of bus man’s holiday and stay overnight the night before. We had not been previously as the travel costs for us from North Yorkshire to London for an unpaid gig are very expensive but with an electric car we felt the trip would be within our means. We also felt it was worth trying as an experiment to see how practical it would be to use the car to transport the shadow puppet suitcase show to London in this car.

It was going to take a long time to get there compared with a vehicle with a bigger range (hence the need for an overnight stay) but it was going to be an epic electric car adventure.

Then lock down happened, the live event was cancelled and the May Fayre moved online instead.

So the only business journey I actually have done in the new car was to ‘For The Love of It‘ a street arts networking event in Manchester which happened immediately before lock down. The car performed well. The inbuilt sat nav got me to the venue (Cobden Street Works the new base of Walk the Plank) which I had never visited before without a hitch. I navigated to a nearby Instavolt charger at a garage and put on enough charge to enable me to complete the return journey and that was that.

One major change I have had to take on is the use of a smartphone which I inherited from my husband when he upgraded his. A lot of electric chargers require the use of a mobile app for that particular network (and there are lots of different charging networks). Instavolt, however, is one of the networks that allow you to charge using a contactless debit / credit card and the charger had lots of simple easy to read buttons that light up in order to tell you what to do.

I have since discovered that I was fortunate in my choice of first charger experience as Instavolt are very reliable and easy to use compared to some other networks. Some charging points can be broken when you turn up or the charging point works but the app doesn’t.

Another problem for some electric charging points is that they can be ‘Iced’ (the parking space is taken up by an internal combustion engine vehicle) which stops electric vehicles from using them.

The solution to a lot of these problems is Zap Map. This is an app which let’s you plan your journey. You input the range of your vehicle, where you want to go and it suggests charging points you might want to use to get there.

You can see if anyone is using the charging points, whether any are broken and users can report issues they have had with the chargers and upload pictures of the charging station so you can see what it looks like and find them more easily. So if you are planning a long journey and can see a particular charging point is having technical problems over and over again then you can simply choose a different charging point for your route. I think it eliminates what they call ‘range anxiety’ pretty much altogether. If you have plenty of money that is not such an issue any more anyway as most new electric cars have enough range to complete most journeys without the need to charge away from home (in the UK anyway as nowhere is very far away from anywhere else compared to America for example).

We are going to have a different epic electric car journey soon as we are going to Cornwall for 2 weeks. We are planning to use the Zoe as it has the greater range (particularly as we are now in Winter) and we need to get to YHA Eden project (where we are staying) by 10pm at the latest. This gives the different challenge of fitting everything for the holiday into the smaller bootspace This will include clothes for a 3 and a half year old and a 19 month old plus everything else they need and stuff for me and Tim. 

So I shall also be taking a holiday from blog writing for 2 weeks so there will be more on the progress of our Secret Keeper Shadow Puppet Murder Mystery Series then. Till then Very Best Wishes and stay safe to you all my lovely readers.

Monsters in Redcar, Woven Grass and Mrs. Santa

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Horse + Bamboo’s Angus Mcphee

You have probably noticed that I have gone a bit quiet for a few weeks, but that is not because there’s been nothing going on.

We had a lovely time performing at the “That’s the Way to Do It” puppet festival at Kirkleatham Museum in Redcar.  Our giant Jabberwocky monster enjoyed getting out of the Rough Magic Theatre shed and menacing people.

Unfortunately as is often the case, both Tim and myself were performing at the same time so we could not take any decent photo’s.  There are however a couple of quite good shots in a slideshow at the bottom of the page in this local newspaper,  (click here to look).

We did struggle a little with the glass roof in the performance space for “Alice” which both let in a bit too much light for the best viewing of the shadow puppets and also leaked water onto us when there was a sudden downpour.  But I am told that they are looking to replace the roof next year and they are looking forward to it being a much improved performance space as a result.

On Sunday, as you’ve probably guessed from the picture, we went to see one of the extremely few performances in England of Horse + Bamboo’s Angus Mcphee – Weaver of Grass.  There is a link to Bob Frith’s blog about the show on my blogroll.

I have been a very big fan of Horse + Bamboo’s work for many years.  I first I saw them perform “Harvest of Ghosts” at Streets Ahead in Manchester some years back.  I liked that show because it combined powerful imagery, atmospheric music and a deeply affecting moral message.  I had also been impressed with the dark humour and the way the story was expressed so clearly with such minimal use of words.  Indeed, spoken words were entirely absent but there was some use of written signs to express meaning.

Angus Mcphee had a very different atmosphere to that particular production though it had some of the same hallmarks.  It was a biography of a real man, Angus Mcphee, a crofter.  It covered his childhood in a very joyful, energetic and funny way.  It made good use of a variety of different types of puppet as well as masks, including glove puppets, some lovely horses and a cow with an udder made from a red rubber glove.

They used something which I think is a relatively recent innovation for them, which was shadow puppet film.  It was beautifully done and achieved effects that would have been impossible to do live, but I think they lacked the life and immediacy of live shadow puppetry.

They dealt with the darker areas of Angus’s history very well too and I was particularly impressed by the way they portrayed Angus’s treatment in the mental institution.

I ended the play being intensely interested in the real Angus Mcphee and although his story was sad I was not swept away emotionally.  This was partly because, as a puppeteer and theatre practitioner, I was busy dissecting the techniques they were using and working out how things were done.  The other part though, was that I think the show achieved perfect Brechtian alienation through the use of masks, puppets, puppeteers and singers on view, non-realistic scenery, projections etc.  I don’t know if this was the same for everyone who watched the piece, but I felt entertained and instructed but not swept away by emotional empathy, (Brecht would be proud).

I am also back working with the infamous Leo Nolan, (Rough Magic Theatre’s former artistic director).  After a break doing other things he is returning in the charming guise of the hilariously inept Ralph the Elf.  Together with Mrs. Santa, (yours truly) they decide to put up a Christmas tree, just as they do every year.  What could possibly go wrong?  Stuffed to the brim with slapstick, this is a cheery little show for younger children.  You can see more information on this, and other shows and workshops for Christmas on the new Christmas Events page, (CLICK HERE).

Don’t forget we have a page with shows and workshops for Halloween events too, (CLICK HERE).