Setting up The Boo garden for its annual puppet festival.
I am lucky to live close to 'The Boo', home of the Horse + Bamboo Theatre and have been a regular attender of their puppet festival for years. So I was thrilled to be asked to take part this year and tell stories in their beautiful garden.The festival combines a mixture of free street performance alongside some of the most acclaimed puppetry from around the world in their theatre spaces. One thing was sure, it was the perfect opportunity to get my puppets out!
The sun always shines on the puppet festival and this year was no exception. We all soaked up its friendly rays surrounded by colour, music and theatre. There was something for everyone, fascinating tiny puppets presented by Hungary's Mikropodium in the yurt, surreal street theatre 'Brain Wave' and many shows for one audience member. Not to mention the brilliant Chinese Circus that I had the privilege to share the decking with.
I'll be honest, with so much going on all around I was a little worried about drawing a crowd. But as I always say, if one child wants to hear a story then I'll tell them one. Each session started with a small select group and ended with a crowd. The children were enthusiastic and interacted with me through the stories while their families joined in with audience participation, including the songs.
A Captive Audience!
In fact this was obviously an expert audience who could be anything I asked them to be, pirates, princess and monsters! They were very talented little monsters and had a great time joining in with performance poem 'Ready, Steady, Monsters Roar' by fellow funeverser Maureen Lynas, always always happy to join in with Wylie Ukulele in a sing-a-long.
Wylie Ukulele likes an audience to play to.
I had a wonderful time taking part in the festival this year, and even managed to nip back on the second day to be I the audience of 'Monkey!' written by Michael Rosen. So great thanks to The Boo for hosting me and another wonderful puppet festival. I hope the sun shines on us again next year, I'm sure it will!
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