I recently did a poll to find out what sort of content people would be most interested in if I was to start a subscription service on my blog.

The top two results were shadow puppet shows and “meet the puppet” videos.

The “meet the puppet” videos will be about puppets from my existing shows (how I made them, where the ideas came from etc).

The big news is that we’re going to be jumping in with both feet into the world of online shadow-puppet serials! (Is that a thing? If not,… It is now!!)

We plan to make a series of episodes with a continuing story and characters so people keep coming back for more.

After much discussion, we have decided to create a brand new story and characters using a script written by Rough Magic Theatre’s Tim Austin.  We did discuss adapting some of Tim’s existing material for a shadow puppetry series but needed to consider both what would be most popular as a setting and what is practical for myself and Tim to do in terms of voices/accents.  We considered a period setting in America initially, but this would involve a lot of research to get costumes and settings accurate to the time and place.

We are instead going to look at a murder mystery set in the future in a steampunk style.  Electricity and the internet will have gone and society will have fractured into lots of clans with different ideals, appearances and ways of life.  The central character who will be solving the mysteries will be a librarian, (knowledge from books becomes of key importance to all the different groups who are trying to rebuild society through rediscovering skills from the past.)

We will also be creating content on the making process for the series at the same time.  We will be attempting to make shadow puppetry that will be designed for the internet and a filmed medium rather than simply recording a live puppetry performance, so we will be experimenting with new techniques and ways of doing things. The show will be very different from our usual way of working/style of performance!

We are aiming for a long running serial with around 12 10-minute episodes.

So tell all your friends and watch this space,………..!