Tag Archives: street entertainment

“Tempest” Rehearsals and Carnival Plans

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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tempest posterWe have started rehearsals for “The Tempest” and considering it has been over 10 years since our last performances of this show, it is surprising how quickly everything is coming back to us.

We have been experimenting with some slightly different instruments from those which we had used previously, including ukulele and a talking drum.

2016Tempest Rehearsal Pic

Leo practices the music on his ukulele

We have also made some alterations and improvements to the script to make it more topical.  I won’t give too many details away as we don’t want to spoil it for everyone!

We are in the process of taking bookings for schools, street festivals, theatre and other indoor spaces.  We have both a 30 minute outdoor version and the full hour length version for indoors so if you’d like to find out if the show is suitable for your venue or event CLICK HERE to get in touch.

Plans for Carnival Bentham 2016 continue to develop also.  There will be a raffle to raise money on Easter Saturday morning in High Bentham Town centre so come along and show your support.  If anyone has a prize they’d like to donate CLICK HERE to go to the Facebook page and let them know.

As it is an umbrella themed carnival this year Rough Magic Theatre are booked to do our famous “Interrupted Wedding” Shadow Puppet show which uses an umbrella for the screen.  Please CLICK HERE to see one of my previous posts all about one of this show’s visits to a primary school including lots of photo’s.

We are also in discussion about Rough Magic Theatre’s Tim Austin making a return visit as official Bentham storyteller.  Watch this space…….!!!

Rough Magic Theatre’s New Edward Lear Picture Book

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Edward Lear Books at Bentham Christmas ShoppingSome time ago I was lucky enough to receive a visit from Meg Amsden  of Nutmeg Puppet Company (who was chair of BrUNIMA at the time).

Meg is a good friend of Ali Clough of Pioneer Projects who, like myself, is a resident of High Bentham and I had invited her to come and see my new Shadow Suitcase show “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” while she was up here visiting Ali.  Meg was also keen to see our Liquorice toy theatre and Hansel & Gretel set/characters and to hear more about Harry Oudekerk’s Vischmarkt Papierentheater Festival in the Netherlands: a festival that we recently attended.  You can see lots of previous blog posts about the making of the Hansel & Gretel show if you search through (click HERE for earliest H&G post).

Meg made lots of lovely comments on the Edward Lear show and also suggested that the puppets could be used to make an accompanying picture book that I could sell.  This idea has been at the back of my mind as a project for “when I get round to it” and finally at the end of last year I did it.

book cover

I made about 10 books of Edward Lear’s poem “The New Vestments” and scanned the shadow puppets to create the illustrations for the book.  I did not use the name of the poem for the title of the show because “vestments” is an old fashioned and confusing word that we tend not to use much these days.  The idea was that I would be able to sell the books to people when I am performing the show but I decided to try selling them at one of Bentham’s late night Christmas Shopping events (organised by We Are Bentham ).  I brought the shadow theatre along with me just for display purposes to explain where the illustrations had come from.  I am happy to say that for this trial run I sold every single copy and my display copy as well!  Thank-you Bentham folks!

If you would like to book my “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” shadow puppet show or “Hansel & Gretel” Toy theatre show don’t hesitate to get in touch.  CLICK HERE to contact me.