Tag Archives: The Tempest

RMT’s “The Tempest” returns for Shakespeare’s Anniversary year

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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mess1We are delighted to announce that after an absence of 10 years Rough Magic Theatre is re-launching our ever popular production of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest“.  Please CLICK HERE for the main Rough Magic Theatre show page including the history and photo’s of the production.

This year (2016) is the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s death and so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring back Rough Magic Theatre’s first ever production.

Leo Nolan-Evans (a fantastic musician and performer) will be returning to play the leading role of Prospero.

goodpicleoLeo came up with the whole original concept for the production and is therefore responsible for my first puppet making exploits.  Since that first introduction, puppetry has gone on to be something of a personal obsession and I have made puppets and performed in a great many other productions since then.

img025“The Tempest” has gone through a good many versions over the years and I have no doubt that we will be tweaking it once again so that the performance is new, fresh and the best it can be whilst keeping all of the good old stuff too.

We are due to perform the show twice on Saturday the 23rd of July for Historical Hereford Day (for details CLICK HERE).  However the show will be available to book for June 2016 onwards.

The show comes in a shorter 30 minute version for outdoors and a longer hour version for indoor venues such as schools, theatres etc.  Teachers packs will be available for school bookings.  Please CLICK HERE to book the show for your venue/event.db_pic3

“The Interrupted Wedding” Shadow Show goes to Ladybarn Primary School

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Hello again everybody.  Sorry to have gone a bit quiet for a while. This January I have been mostly attending lots of networking meetings, making plans for the year etc.  So I thought I’d wait till I had something a bit more exciting to blog about.

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Last week though I visited Ladybarn Primary School in Manchester.  The Year 2s were doing a project called Puppets & Magic.  The teachers planned to make hand puppets out of felt with the children and wanted them to be inspired by seeing some professionally made puppets. So I performed our Shadow Puppet Show “The Interrupted Wedding” and did a bit of a lecture demonstration looking at different types of puppet from around the world and some of the history etc.  Then I showed the children some performance techniques and then the children played with different types of puppets themselves. “The Interrupted Wedding” is performed using an umbrella for a shadow screen and is a show we use for parties as well as in schools. The show went down extremely well with the children who really enjoyed the story.  This story is an original one written by Rough Magic Theatre’s own Tim Austin.  It is always nice when children tell you they have enjoyed something without being prompted.  In my experience children give very honest reactions compared to adults who might want to be polite and spare your feelings. They also seemed to particularly enjoy seeing some of the puppets from other Rough Magic Theatre productions that I brought in for them to see.  There were 2 rod puppets from our version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, (Stephano and Caliban), the “Pig/Baby” double ended “mouth” puppet  from Alice in Wonderland and the Bunraku style Alice puppet with real hair, (which came off my own head).  The Alice puppet is fun to show how she works as you can see all her insides by lifting up her dress, (kids always find that kind of thing funny) and then of course her head can be removed to show the hand control.  Seeing the Alice puppet’s body without its head is also something children appreciate a lot! The next school we are visiting is in Keighley where we will be doing our “Hansel & Gretel” show and doing a shoe-box toy theatre workshop.  You can read about this workshop in an earlier blog post HERE. If you are interested in booking any of the above shows or workshops please get in contact.  Click HERE to get in touch.