Here are more progress puppets for our upcoming show “Fairytales of Wit, Wisdom and Witchcraft” (CLICK HERE to find out more). I have overshot my initial estimate for how long it would take me to make all the puppets, but if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well and taking a little more time, I feel.
We have here now the puppets for “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”, “The Three Billy Goats Gruff”, “Little Red Riding Hood” and a few puppets for “Chicken Licken” or “Chicken Little” as I believe it is better known in America.
As I said in my previous post, (CLICK HERE TO VIEW) I have been using cereal and pizza boxes for environmental reasons and to show how much is possible using recycled materials. The cutting out has been with a combination of scissors, craft knife and Indonesian Shadow Puppet Chisels for some of the cut out details.
Making an articulated Goldilocks puppet that will be able to sit down in chairs…Starting a Baby/Little Bear Puppet…Mother/Middle sized bear started…Finished Little/Baby and Middle sized/Mother BearStarting Big/Father Bear…3 finished Bears togetherBig Billy Goat Gruff…Finished Big Billy goat and starting Middle sized Goat…Middle sized goat and Little Goat startedThe body is good but the head is too small, so a larger one is made3 Billy Goats GruffMiddle sized Goat has finishing cut out touches addedStarting the Troll…Trial of elasticated jaw mech.Drawing a Granny to go with Wolf and Red Riding Hood already complete…Wolf’s head blown up on photocopier to make large articulated wolf’s head for swallowing people whole/talkingfinished head with Granny drawing and puppet making list…Granny roughly cut out with wolf in bed drawing…2nd Wolf Head with Granny’s cap and glasses created by drawing round the first oneSeparate bed and Granny head and bloated snoozing wolf started…Snoozing Wolf on bedSnoozing wolf with articulated tummyTop half of WoodcutterComplete Woodcutter with axe and scissorsWoodcutter and snoozing wolfFox for Chicken LickenFox, Chicken Licken and Acorn
If you have a question or a comment about the puppets do please put it on the post, I always to try to reply 🙂
I am taking bookings for this show and accompanying workshops from August 2025 onwards. It is particularly suitable for schools and libraries and fits in nicely with the light and shadow and traditional tales (fairy tales) topic.
If you need a show or a workshop sooner than this, do get in touch as I have many existing shows and workshops that we can do to meet your needs. Just get in touch and I will be happy to supply quotes and talk to you about your needs/event. We have puppet shows and workshops for indoors and outdoors, festivals, community events, theatres, youth theatres etc. CLICK HERE to contact me 🙂
Theatres or theatre companies please get in touch for puppet commissions, training, residencies, collaborations etc.
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If you want to see Rough Magic Theatre live, our Mad Hatter’s Tea Party show will be coming to Congleton Food Festival again this coming Sunday. More details on the WHERE YOU CAN SEE ME page.
This coming Saturday a long awaited new “Al & Kai’s Faboo News” episode will be premiering on You Tube. Subscribe to channel so you don’t miss it (@faboonews). Visit FabooNews.com to find out more about this fantastic puppet based positive news show for families.
I also brought a variety of different puppet types for them to see and explain how they worked and what countries in the world they came from. As the children had been making glove puppets I mainly showed them some different kinds of glove puppets and we talked about the different hand positions you can use when operating glove/hand puppets and I also brought my Alice Bunraku style puppet to show them as it is probably the most interesting puppet I own. The kids always love seeing how the head goes on and off and has a wig made from my own hair.
The children were all very engaged and had lots of interesting questions. They seemed very inspired by the puppets and loved the music in the “Jabberwocky!” show.
All the teachers were very helpful and welcoming at both schools, so a big THANK-YOU to them.
Later in the year I visited Bishop Rawstorne C of E High School in Croston for their special Chinese cultural day. The Year 7s and 8s were celebrating many different aspects of Chinese culture and there were lots of different people running many different workshops including lion dancing, calligraphy, cookery etc. and I was employed to perform one of my shadow puppet shows and run a Chinese style shadow puppetry workshop.
As time was limited I opted to make simplified versions of traditional Chinese puppets by concentrating just on silhouette style puppets rather then translucent ones with colour.
I made a series of templates for the children to use based on the 12 animals in the Chinese Zodiac story and as there was very little/no time to actually rehearse with the puppets and the school were very keen to have the children perform a show I thought this story would be a good choice as they could parade their puppets from one side of the screen to the other to show the animals crossing the river and everyone who wanted to would get a chance to perform.
Below is the process of me making the prototype for the tiger puppet based on one from the V&A museum collection. The Victoria and Albert Museum have a very large puppet collection and the costume section is definitely worth a visit too, (CLICK HERE for my previous blog post on a visit to the V&A)
I did a lot of research on Chinese puppetry and puppets in preparation and discovered how much more there is to traditional Chinese puppetry than I realised. There is not just one Chinese shadow puppetry tradition but several different ones from different parts of China each with its own artistic style and construction methods. I also found out that Chinese Shadow Puppetry is on the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, (CLICK HERE to find out more).
I searched for pictures of traditional Chinese shadow puppets and recreated my own simplified versions and in the process discovered lots of interesting things about the way the puppets were jointed. I found a picture of a Chinese Lion puppet (I know it’s not a Zodiac animal, but I did extra lions and dragons so that there would be enough puppets for all the children) and when I recreated my own version was astounded at how well it moved and in particular the fact that you could get such a huge variety of movements using just one stick on the lion’s head and one on its tail. It made me realise that when you see a picture of a Chinese shadow puppet, you are only getting a small appreciation of what it is like compared to seeing it perform, because so much of what is brilliant about them comes from the jointing and the way they move.
The traditional puppets were made so that one puppeteer is able to operate several puppets at the same time, sometimes with more than one in each hand!
If you would like me to visit your school for a performance or a workshop CLICK HERE to get in touch. You can find out about the different types of workshops we offer on our website by clicking HERE.
We will be starting to design and sell templates for shadow puppets that you can print out for yourself at home. I was thinking of basing them around traditional fairy tales. If you have any suggestions of templates you would like to see, please reply to this post with your ideas 🙂
Puppet Lady 