Iron Man primary school residency

In February I had an intense week in a primary school making two puppets based on characters from Ted Hughes' children's book, Iron Man. Having little experience of working with primary school age groups it was a steep learning curve. What unbridled creativity. What quick, furiously sure-minded assertions of preference and choice! What brevity of concentration spans and constant thirst for new creative challenges!
When I had finally learnt how to harness these qualities to fruitful ends, we developed a hub of puppet-making productivity with our 2D hinged dragon puppet and hulking 3D iron man. It was a tricky but deeply rewarding challenge to figure out how to engage groups of 10 children simultaneously in the puppet-making process, but soon we were marvelling at the unique dragon scales and elaborately decorated dragon tassles being created.

Cardboard, without a shadow of a doubt, remains my most faithful companion.

Large scale Imbolc puppet

In the deep chill of february this year I made a large scale puppet of the pagan goddess Brigid, for the Wood Sisters Winter Storytelling Festival in Totnes. My first foray into a solo large scale puppet-making project, it was a plunge into the unknown, gently guided by Radio 4's Woman's Hour and assisted by a very handy gentleman with a power drill.

On the main night of the festival, as icy, sleety rain fell from the blackened sky, Brigid danced to the haunting sounds of Breton musicians The Humdrazz and led the crowd to a huge fire spitting red embers into the darkness.

She looks forward to taking on a new guise and joining new puppet friends at the Westcountry Storytelling Fesitval in August, 2012.

Surrealist puppet-making experiments

My dear PGCE tutor allowed me to run a puppet-making workshop for my fellow education students this spring. It gave me the opportunity to delve ever deeper into the issue which consumes my thoughts more than any other...how much guidance does a creative process actually require? Being tempted, for a while, to let my students create their puppets in any way they chose fit, providing the materials and basic techniques, I eventually opted for a different route.
The puppet makers wrote the initials of their name on a sheet of paper, and broke these down into single lines: straight or curved. With the initials JTH I, for example, ended up with one curved line and six straight lines.
These straight or curved lines became the puppet makers' carving 'allowance'. They could use each of these lines once in order to carve their puppet head, but no more. In this way, our puppets left familiar territory and meandered down interesting paths indeed....

Toy Theatre in schools

Rainy monday lunchbreak.
A team of dedicated 11 year olds have gathered to create and animate miniature theatres made of cardboard. I provide materials and, when requested, assistance, and watch the creations unfold....

The Kids create Stories

It's time to pick up the threads from as far back as July, when I had the brilliant opportunity to act as "puppeteer in residence", working alongside storyteller Xanthe Gresham on a Puppetry and Storytelling workshop in a London secondary school.
Our sessions began with stories from around the world, told by Xanthe in her firey and very interactive way. We then introduced my puppets, and let the pupils loose with an array of puppet-making materials with the aim of creating their own stories.



Watching this process was fascinating. Plastacine, felt and feathers coming together to form beings and creatures, around which stories were constructed which gave funny and moving glimpses into the childrens' diverse backgrounds, interests, dreams and experiences. We hardly offered any facilitation at all - the children became genius puppet makers and storytellers, and we were enthralled by the performances they created.



This memorable experience took place at a very poignant time for me, as I finish my BA (hons) degree in Puppetry and figure out what place puppets and story are to have in the life that now unravels before me.



http://www.xanthegresham.co.uk/

School of Myth Crankie

A pilgrim makes his rites-of-passage journey into the wilderness, and back. A cassette box crankie made for Martin Shaw and the School of Myth to offer thanks for a year of utmost inspiration and creative fuel.

http://www.theschoolofmyth.blogspot.com/

The Boy in the Dress school residency

Interesting developments are happening in my work as I take my ideas ever more into the field of education. At the end of June, only a few days after the final hand-in for my Puppetry degree, I accompanied some Drama and Theatre in Education students to a primary school in Brighton to add a puppetry element to their devised performance based on David Walliam's absolutely adorable new children's book, The Boy in the Dress.
At the same time as constructing a hyuuuuuuuuge toy theatre-style puppet mounted on a bamboo rod, I ran some arts sessions with the kids to explore what they would wear in order to be as different from normal as possible (Walliam's book dealing with a boy who decides he wants to wear a dress). The quite wonderful drawings produced by the children then became part of the puppet's dress fabric.
The puppet was showcased in the children's performance, and a lovely performance it was too.