Tag Archives: x trax

Bye 2014 – Hello 2015!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Hello again everyone!  The above images are from last year and did not make it into my blogs at the time because my phone whose camera these pictures were taken on died and I only recently managed to successfully retrieve the photo’s.

The first few pictures are from Buxton Puppet Festival where I saw Peter Piper Puppets version of Punch & Judy and Diddley Dee Puppets show “Rabbits to the Rescue”.

You may recall in a previous post that I held forth (at some length) against the “dumbing down” of Mr Punch with misplaced sense of political correctness.  Very soon after that I encountered this performance in which the puppeteer declared in no uncertain terms at the beginning of the show that this was exactly what he WAS planning to do.  Poor Mr. Punch was transformed into a sad and pathetic individual who not only didn’t get to hit anyone with a slapstick but was instead on the receiving end of a giant pencil wielded by a clumsy social worker in the form of Joey the clown, (among other indignities).  This was after Mr. Punch lost the baby after trying to teach the baby to walk.

The audience seemed to enjoy the show and “Peter Piper” rounded off the show by turning the audience into an impromptu band to process to the next outdoor entertainment.

However, in my opinion one of the best parts of the show were Mr Punch’s dog being taken for a walk by the puppeteer prior to the show and “weeing” all over the audience (with the cunning deployment of a not wholly invisible water pistol).  The other fun part was two unconventional “stagehand” characters whose function was to appear and hammer and saw at various parts of the booth and to tell the audience that the show wasn’t ready and hadn’t started yet.

“Rabbits to the Rescue” was obviously intended for an audience younger than myself and I have to admit to finding it a little twee.  For what it was though it was a lot of fun and the children obviously enjoyed it.  It was well performed and the puppets were very charming and nicely constructed.

I also attended Mintfest in Kendal as an X-trax delegate last year and that is where the other photo’s are from.

The previous year’s Mintfest (2013) we had been busy performing all day Saturday and Sunday with our “Fred Fettler’s “Pony 3000″ – The Transport of the Future!” show in the Westmorland Shopping Centre and thus had not had much time to see other people’s shows or to talk to bookers about our work.

“The Table of Thoughts” was an installation which was in an upstairs shop space in the Westmorland Shopping Centre.  I thought this was a very brave and unusual thing to include in a street arts festival but Mintfest are very good at including things that are a bit more challenging and different.  The installation consisted of a dining table with various peculiar “place settings” and foodstuffs.  The audience can sit at any seat at the table and by listening to an audio file from an mp3 player through earphones get a voice-over of the internal thoughts of the person whose place they are sat in.  This monologue is reflected in the appearance of the place setting in front of them as well.  In addition to this there are general ambient, but subdued, sound effects such as cutlery being used and muted unintelligible conversation.  I listened to all of the monologues, each of which was quite unique, and enjoyed them thoroughly.

I also had the opportunity to take part in our good friends at Frolicked’s game called “The Birds”.  We had heard them talking about this project at an X-Trax shorts presentation previously so it was great to get an opportunity to try it out.  We had to find a missing endangered bird, (who I am pictured with above) in teams.  I was with a dad and his little girl and another couple, none of whom I’d met before.  I did wonder if being in a team of other people I didn’t know would be awkward but they were all lovely and the activity was extremely challenging, exciting and fun!  It was obviously meant to be done in a group of mixed adults and children as some of the tasks/clues would be too difficult for small children and the challenges set were hard enough to be totally engaging and exciting for adults.  I am sorry to say that our team did not win though I think we did a touch better than some of the others.  I am saying no more but if you get a chance to take part in this game yourself, I would wholeheartedly recommend it.

One of the other puppetry offerings at Mintfest was Burek the marionette dog – puppeteered by Lucasz Puczko.  He is from Poland and has travelled to lots of different countries with this act.  I have recently found out at the X-trax Northern Street Arts Networking event that Lucasz enjoyed the reactions of the audiences in Kendal so much that he has now moved to England to live and work and is currently based in Bradford.

It was very refreshing, after hearing a bit of doom and gloom from a lot of people on the state of the industry in this country and the amount of work/money/opportunities available, that someone would actively seek out England as a place to work because of the friendliness of the people and the audiences.  Jeremy Shine was very keen to promote Lucasz’s act on the basis of it developing a hitherto untapped audience – dogs!

A lot of dogs seemed keen to interact with Burek but most seemed a bit disturbed by something that looked and moved like a dog but obviously did not smell like one!

I have heard a lot of people say that the best way to keep new year’s resolutions is to put them down publicly on a blog like this.

Last year was a good one for us in many ways with a lot of firsts.  We produced a new show “Clueless & Wuffles” for Glastonbury, (which we were attending for the first time).  I performed at Morecambe Variety Festival and also did workshops and performances for a number of Primary Schools that I hadn’t visited before.

Tim and I performed in Skelmersdale with our Mad Hatter’s Tea Party walkabout show, (somewhere I have never visited or performed before).  Together with Rough Magic Theatre founder member Leo Nolan I created a French Nursery Rhymes for beginners show: “Nursery Rhymes with Monsieur le Fou” for Wakefield Grammar School Foundation on European Languages Day.

And to crown the year off I created a new light up costume for another event I hadn’t been involved with previously the “Light Up Lancaster” illuminations event.

We were also invited back to what is becoming a regular event the CARnival Bentham.  My ever popular Shadow Puppet Suitcase shows had a lot of airings as did the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and the Hansel & Gretel and “The Interrupted Wedding” shows made a couple of appearances too.

My resolution always tends to be to get more work.  I have been doing well with my aim to get more work doing “light and shadow” workshops in schools in Spring, Autumn and Winter but more schools work would be welcome, (please get in touch if you’d like a workshop/show or both in your school).  I shall be visiting a school in Hartlepool on Monday and I shall let you know how we get on next week.

I would also like to get more work with our main hour long indoor show “Alice in Wonderland” as last year was a quiet year for this show whilst being a popular one for the show’s offshoot Mad Hatter’s Tea Party walkabout show.  Please get in touch if you are interested in booking either of these for your school, theatre, literature festival, book day etc.

In order to get more done I am also resolving to get up earlier rather than hearing the alarm go off and falling back asleep again.  I also therefore have to go to bed on time and I am also trying to build more exercise into my schedule.

It would also be great (time permitting) to finally finish of the new version of the Rough Magic Theatre Website that has been ongoing for a couple of years now.  I also resolve to be more disciplined about doing the old social media regularly rather than the rather hap-hazard approach that I’ve been taking recently.

It would be really great to hear what your New Year’s Resolutions are too.  Please leave a reply on this post, (business or personal goals or both) 🙂

Thoughts on Mintfest, Lakes Alive: From Firey Villages to Kendal Mint Cake

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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Both myself and fellow Rough Magic Theatre performer Tim Austin attended Mintfest in Kendal as X-Trax Delegates.  This gave us the opportunity to tell lots of very useful people like festival bookers etc. about our work and the shows that we do.  We also got to meet lots of fellow artists and performers and of course to see the shows at the festival.

Sometimes it can be quite hard to get a chance to see fellow performers work if you are always performing at the same festivals and this was a great opportunity to see what other people are doing.

We saw “Frolicked” do their new show “The Alchemist” which is apparently their first static puppetry show.  Up until now they have been concentrating on strolling puppet characters, (and of course their recent foray into interactive performance/gaming “The Birds”).  It was very accessible being largely without spoken words, but relied on the written word for a lot of the plot/jokes, (e.g. identical spray bottles saying respectively “No Fly” and “Grow Big”).  Overall it was very light, charming and gently amusing and of course the puppets were beautifully made.  It seemed quite short to me, but then that can be better for children.  It would have been good to have had more audience reaction to the antics of the rats, (after the style of crocodile stealing Mr. Punch’s sausages)but I don’t know if that was more to do with the audience itself or the style of the performance.

The Fire Village Royale by Der Vurmeesters was the highlight, for me.  This was in spite of the pervasive soaking drizzle on the Friday night when we went to see it.  It was like a sort of medieval, magical, firey village full of various odd characters interacting with fire and fireworks in various ways.  One lady liked to rest her feet in a water trough periodically before manipulating it so that the whole length of the trough burst into flames.  Another fairy like person who was a guardian of a metal gate (which was set on fire)liked to do hula-hooping and (yes, you’ve guessed it) the hula hoop was also on fire!  Between the sort of “set pieces” which were cordoned off, various people wandered backwards and forwards, some on marvellous bicycles and some on foot.  The most spectacular was a man in a mask that sat on top of his head,( so he appeared extra tall).  He was in the habit of setting his head on fire so it was just a firey skull and also had a firey sword.

After being presented with sparklers by an excitable Alchemist looking chap, we were rather alarmed when the firey headed man decided to walk straight at us.  We understandably backed away, but then he presented his sword for us to light our sparklers from.  I don’t think I would have enjoyed it half as much if that hadn’t happened.  It made us feel really part of what was going on, rather than just being a spectator.

There was also a body puppet which was entirely on fire, which I assume was a metal structure with fire rope attached, and this figure was controlled by the walking motion of the operator who was at least a metre behind the burning figure.  You can see it in the video below.  The music and beautiful lanterns also contributed greatly to the magical atmosphere.

As this is meant to be a puppet-centric blog I have mentioned the two main events with puppetry that we saw, not forgetting Squashbox‘s Dinosaur puppet and a cave-man humanette for their “Stones & Bones” show.  A very amusing little show which was remarkable for the amount included in a one man show.  Craig Johnson, the performer coped heroically well with the incredible amount of bad-mannered people who decided that it was okay to try and get past by squeezing their way through his backstage area, (no innuendo intended).  He used the old favourite joke, “It’s just a stage they’re going through”.  Also ironically one elderly lady emerged from the set just as Craig had promised to produce a dinosaur from behind the scenes!

Although I saw an incredible amount of fantastic theatre and enjoyed the festival tremendously, Tim and myself found ourselves getting increasingly frustrated and angry about the behaviour of some of the audience members( both adults and children).  Hardly any parents were exerting any influence on their children to keep them safe and out of the performers way during dangerous acts, or to stop them misbehaving and causing danger to the performers by throwing things into the performance area, or to stop them standing up and moving around constantly and blocking other people’s view.  Then there were the adults, as aforementioned who hadn’t any problems with walking straight through people’s performance spaces while they were actually in the middle of a performance.  It all seemed to indicate a lack of concern for others which was somewhat disheartening to see.  Some parents, (and I have heard from other performers that this is not unusual) were actually encouraging their children to hit Artizani’s giant inflatable lobster which was perambulating about Abbot Hall Park.

One could argue that it was a sign of the success of the festival that it encouraged those not used to the conventions of theatre to experience good quality performance, and maybe this is simply a feature of any street arts festival on this scale.  On the other hand that doesn’t mean that I have to condone this kind of behaviour or to like it.  If you have any opinions or experiences of this kind of behaviour or anything else in the post, please leave a comment 🙂

We now have video footage of our popular Shadow Puppet Suitcase show “Jabberwocky!” on our website, click HERE to take a look!  This show is available for Halloween events this year and we have a variety of other options available for Halloween as well, (please ask!)

Don’t forget you can see us at “That’s the Way to Do It” festival in Redcar, on Sunday doing our “Alice” show and introducing the strange monster that lives in the Rough Magic Theatre shed.  See the WHERE YOU CAN SEE ME page for more details.

If you’ve noticed I haven’t mentioned the Kendal Mint Cake, take a look here to see more about Richard Dedomenici’s attempts at building a full sized Kendal Mint Cake igloo.