Tag Archives: shadow puppets

Beverley Puppet Festival 4 Weeks away and lots of progress on new show

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Sadly we have been far too busy cracking on with things to post before now.

We decided to cobble together our costumes from what we already have plus some charity shop and ebay purchases in true Rough Magic Theatre style.

I did a lot of research online and on YouTube and made myself a bum roll out of repurposed fabric (old jeans). If you don’t know what a bum roll is, it is what ordinary women in the eighteenth century wore under their skirts to make their bums and hips larger but is considerably less cumbersome than panniers which well off ladies wore and which could only really be worn by someone who doesn’t have to do any work.

We visited More Music and experimented with various lights and clothes line props and white sheets etc. etc. and decided that we could actually make use of our old booth frame but with the legs fully extended (so it would be taller than how we used it previously) and to use screen fabric over the entire width rather than having a smaller frame in the middle. We used a black tarp. to mask off the bottom section. We decided not to use our old floodlight as this only provides crisp shadows when puppets are right up against the screen. We thought we would use a combination of our OHP and some handheld led lights instead.

In our more recent rehearsals, having found that the fabric I bought reaches all the way to the floor as well we decided that we are going to use the screen all the way down instead of masking off the bottom. This means we will need to use a different approach to hiding the puppeteers (if we wish to hide them) so it will be interesting to work this out in rehearsal.

We are also intending to use some 3D shadow puppets and body shadows, and the full length screen will allow full length body shadows to be used.

I probably won’t post again for a while as we will be busy cracking on, but I hope these little snippets will whet your appetite and look forward to seeing everyone at Beverley Puppet Festival. See our WHERE YOU CAN SEE ME page for more details.

Another big thankyou to More Music in Morecambe for the use of their space by the way.

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).