Puppets

Lockdown Puppets

During lockdown in 2020, our two foster children helped us to entertain a family from Spain, who lived across the road, with puppet shows. The Spanish family also put on some amazing puppet shows and dance routines. Between us we covered everything from the Ugly Duckling to the Yellow Submarine and the Battle of Trafalgar which involved half the neighbourhood, local students and real streamer canons. Apologies again, Nick and Nicky, for the streamers that got stuck around your satellite dish! Viktor and Laura from Madrid will always remain in our memories for their enthusiasm, brilliant dancing and excellent shadow puppet shows. Here are a few of the puppets we created/modified.

 

Earlier Puppets

About 9 years ago, when we were relatively new to fostering and completely naive, we thought it would be a good idea to invite a load of foster kids around and create a puppet show. It didn’t exactly work. We didn’t realise just how difficult it would be to manage that number of young people who all had their own unique challenges.

We spent more time monitoring where they all were and what they were up to! But we did make some good friends and some puppets did get made and we learnt! Puppets can be great for young people with challenges in their lives because they can act as a safe filter through which the young people can express themselves a bit more freely.

MucBiff

Based on the story of MacBeth, this was a puppet production I created with my friend Helen about 30 years ago. We had to learn most of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, build a puppet theatre (with a lot of help from Helen’s dad), make most of the puppets and also re-write the whole play to fit into an hour.

Our very own Richard the Bear played Lady MucBiff and, as you can see, he enjoyed wearing lots of exotic gowns in the role!