This week has been very exciting and a busy one for myself. I have been able to meet the different members of the 'My Space' team and begin working towards the show. The story is based around the idea of territory, moving and finding relationships in the weirdest of places. There is a conflict between rural and urban spaces. I have tried to reflect this within the design idea. Here is an image of the initial design idea. Picture

I have managed to pick up a lot of work this week. One of the projects I am working on is making a GIANT ASLAN PUPPET! He's going to be for The Narnia Experience in Leeds. After our meeting last week, I decided I would start looking at different lions. How they and their faces move, their bone structures. We also had a discussion about how 'realistic' we could make the puppet on such a tight budget, and whether it might be better to go down a slightly more 'stylistic' look. Therefore I have been looking at African masks and other styles of masks which could be used to base the design for the puppet.I am really looking forward to working with such a great team on this project.

PROJECT THUNDER BUCKET HAD A FULL HOUSE at The Parsonage for The Didsbury Arts Festival!Thank you to everyone who came, it was great fun and we all were able to learn a lot about our performance and what we need to do to improve it!

We began this week a mad rush of  rehearsing for this weeks performance of 'It Begins in a Forest' as part of the Didsbury Arts Festival. The time has flown by so fast!We had our first attempt at manipulating Hansel along with the witch. It was really interesting to look at the different shapes the two puppets make together. Playing with the distance and control between the two characters was really interesting.

Great news this week. We have been selected to perform at On The Verge festival in Liverpool in October. This is really exciting for all of us as we can really focus on getting the production finished with a final deadline! More news to come for that later!As we have finally decided on a full script, we have begun developing our puppetry skills. We spent the day playing with bamboo and string to develop the major and minor relationships between puppeteers, learning to listen to one another through movement and the slightest change. We went one step further and wanted to see the difference of being blindfolded. That was fun too!We then began looking at simple expressions and movements through inner monologues. As the sun was shining and the car park empty, we decided to do this bit outside! Little Charlie the puppet seemed to be obsessed with stones.We all really benefited from this weeks workshop. Brushing up on our skills and totally going back to basics really helps to…

After the feedback from the performance on the 18th April, we have had a huge re-think about the entire performance. Looking at what is essential to tell the story, and what was just a filler. How to make the performance more fluid AND trying to aim the performance fror an older audience. We are going to look closely at the 'quest' story, what we are missing, how the characters actually get from one place to another through movement and gesture as well as the character's journey. I'm excited about the changes we are making and fulling pushing the performance to its full potential.This week we are going to start exploring different puppetry techniques. I'm very much excited about that. 

This week has been exciting for the Project Thunder Bucket Team. We have been incredibly busy. At our rehearsal on Monday, we were introduced to the wicked witch of the forest. Amazingly made by Alex, she was all we dreamed of! My favourite thing about her was the bizarre voice that came out of Alex when puppeteering her.We finally decided on the whole script for the performance and even managed a run through!Thursday was the great unveiling of 'It Begins in a Forest'. A first draft performance with an invited audience to hear their feedback and comments on our ideas. The performance went very well and we received some fantastic advice and ideas on how to solve problems we were struggling with. Next Monday, we are going to go through the ideas raised in the discussion and push the performance even further, and towards the right direction. ONWARDS AND UPWARDS!