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Puppets Through Time - The Show Must Go On!
By: Esther Clifford and Kayleigh Rousell
The Foundry was once again motionless and wintry when we arrived for the second day. There was a puppet show workshop being held here today with a final performance for the parents.
The actors of the show were four children; their names were Harriet, George, Rachael and Amy. Pat and Alex were the tutors who organized and put together the production.
The children designed their own puppets, with the help of Alex who is a designer, over the first three weeks. The performance had been worked on for the next three weeks and the young actors were getting rather excited.
We managed to observe one of the rehearsals. The story is where four children are playing in a field and go and take shelter in a cave.
The owners of some items, ( e.g wooden spoon ), dropped them in the cave but years went by and the four children found these things buried under grass, soil and moss.
The children fall asleep and have dreams about the adventures of the previous owners of the objects unearthed.
After seeing this imaginative piece, called The Chatham Cave of Darland Blakes, being performed, we managed to catch up with the stars of the show.
Firstly we spoke to George. He has acting in mind for a future career and enjoys the themes very much; he spends most of his spare time doing productions and acting.
He said "I just went for the try out and I really enjoyed the play and would like to perform in Shows”
Rachel also said “I liked performing in the play and would like to become an actress”.
The other children, however, do not want to take acting as a job but do the projects for the enjoyment side of things.
Through all the chaos and commotion, we finally managed to question Pat and Alex. Pat has been working with children for over 30 years but has been doing the acting courses for 8 weeks. It may be tiring, but to the full-grown, it’s great. Alex has only started working with the children for a short time. Prior to this workshop he was a designer.
We had to be quick; more rehearsals had to be done. Pat gave us a run through of the characters before the play. Amy was the Black Cat. Harriet was Mrs. Baker. Rachael was the Bride. George was the soldier called Troy the Troll and Pat was the narrator.
The show must go on. To our surprise, despite all the chaos, it was a great success. The children learnt about the layers on earth and how things get buried over millions of years under the ground. As Alex admitted, the tutors acquired some knowledge from the children themselves too. All in all, it was a day crowned with success and we both really enjoyed it.
Watch the Puppet Show Video!
To watch this edited version of the puppet show click on a link below that suits your internet connection type.
As this is just over 5 minutes long the file sizes are still quite big so would suit the broadband user best. The video will start to play while the file is still streaming towards you and can be played repeatedly once downloaded.
All of the files are downloadable on any speed of connection and can be saved to your desktop. Click on the arrow at the end of the control strip and select 'Save as Quictime Movie'.
Modem (5.2mb)
ISDN (10.5mb)
Broadband (19.8mb)
To view the video requires Quicktime: Download free from Apple.
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