Tag Archives: Skipton Puppet Festival

Skipton Puppet Festival 2013!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
Reply

The weekend before last I had the lovely experience of attending Skipton Puppet Festival as a visitor rather than a performer.  As I had performed at the previous 2 Skipton Puppet Festivals Liz Lempen thought (quite rightly) that it was time to give some other people a go.

DSC_1733

Automaton of “Shakeys Grand Day Out” by Keith Newstead in Skipton Museum where the PUK AGM was held – Click to see “making of” Blog entries by Keith

DSC00335I also attended the Puppeteers UK AGM at the Town Hall on the Friday.  If you are not aware of this wonderful group, it is a collection of different puppetry groups such as BrUNIMA, B.P.M.T.G. Punch & Judy Fellowship etc. and has various useful benefits such as a directory of members and an extremely useful weekly newsletter which pools up to the minute puppetry info. in one place.  Members even flag up job opportunities to each other as well as being an opportunity to advertise performances that you are doing currently.  I have found it very useful indeed becoming a member and would recommend it to anyone.

I got the opportunity to finally meet the editor of the newsletter Peter Macdonald with whom I have had many email discussions over the 2 years I’ve been a member.  I also got to put a face to the name of Pauline Venables a lady from Doncaster who is very active in the toy theatre scene.

DSC_1765

Via Via

DSC_1762

Via Via

Tim and I saw two excellent shows “Via Via” by a Dutch gentleman and “Do Fish Drink Tea?” by Garlic Theatre.

“Via Via” was very excellent physical theatre and clowning combined with very skilful, intelligent and funny puppet manipulation, but not really one for the kids as a lot of the nuances would go over their heads.  Though the more obvious slapstick elements would obviously appeal to anyone.

"Do Fish Drink Tea?"

“Do Fish Drink Tea?”

"Do Fish Drink Tea?"

“Do Fish Drink Tea?”

“Do Fish Drink Tea?” was very professional and skilfully performed.  I particularly liked the live music and sound effects.  It did not have a strong narrative but was very surreal, fun and playful.

I returned on Saturday with some friends and family and made a point of seeing Ronnie Le Drew’s bag show.  I had missed this when he did it in the LSP tent 2 years ago and had been very disappointed.  I was not disappointed this year.  Among a host of charming puppet characters the highlight had to be seeing 2 of the original Sooty and Sweep puppets that Ronnie had inherited from Matthew Corbett.  Matthew was the host of the Sooty and Sweep show that I watched as a child.

Other highlights of the day included the Pulcinella show which was a slapstick masterpiece and it was fabulous to see the Italian roots of our British Punch & Judy tradition.  The Italian language was no barrier at all to understanding what was going on.

I also finally got to see “Plain Bob” by Noisy Oyster.  I have been at numerous puppet festivals where this show was on and didn’t have time to watch because I was performing!  It was absolutely charming and I still do not know how Bob managed to move on his own without the puppeteer laying a finger on him while he was sat on his little chair.  There was something extremely clever going on there all right!

Below are some videos of the festival that I have found made by Melvyn Rawlinson and Andrew of Puppet Vision fame.

Pirate Parties and the Joy of Ukuleles!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
1

After buying a ukulele each from our local Sue Ryder, my husband Tim and I have been taking the opportunity to learn how to play them.

Tim was keen to use his at Rough Magic Theatre’s latest Pirate Party gig last week for the musical statues game.  It was his first use of the ukulele in a professional context.  Luckily, we discovered that “What shall we do with a drunken sailor?” only has two chords!

I was not convinced that ukuleles are a particularly piratical instrument, so I made him a skull and cross-bones out of white gaffa tape so that it would look more the part.

The children and the parents all seemed to really like it and I think it definitely added a little extra something to the proceedings.

This could well mean more music in Rough Magic Theatre shows from now on, as up until this point I have been the main musician.  I did wonder whether it would be very difficult to learn ukulele because I play guitar already, but actually, it has been an advantage so far and I have not got too confused by having two separate lots of chords in my head.

The party of course had comedy antics from Rodger a parrot hand puppet and our original shadow puppet show “The Interrupted Wedding” which always goes down very well.  I am particularly proud of the shadow puppets I made for this show which were influenced by Tim Burton’s visual style.  The show also uses a white umbrella for the shadow screen which can be rotated for different scenes.

The party was for a four year old’s birthday party and they went to a lot of trouble to get into the pirate theme as they had pirate cake, balloons, bunting, and even paper plates and cups!  The event was rounded off with a treasure hunt and most importantly the birthday boy really enjoyed himself.

I was interested to discover that the parents found us due to their interest in the Skipton Puppet Festival.  They looked us up on the Puppeteers UK site, which is very nice to know as we have joined only recently.

We are in the process of doing a total overhaul of the Rough Magic Theatre website and hope to include a variety of new puppet party options for people to choose from.  One request we have had is for shadow puppet making parties.  If anyone has any other suggestions or requests for types of puppet parties, please leave a comment on the bottom of this post.

Don’t forget, I shall be at Beverley Puppet Festival soon doing both the “Jabberwocky!” and “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” shadow puppet suitcase shows.  Why not come and see me?  More details on the “Where You Can See Me” page.  You will also notice that my performance day for the “Masquepony” event has changed.