Standing Room Only at Skipton

Horse + Bamboo’s Storm in a Teacup

A report by Martin Reeve

There is no doubt that Daniel and Liz Lempen have a success on their hands. This weekend the busy little market town of Skipton in the Yorkshire Dales was host to an explosion of creative talent and a crowd whose hunger for puppetry found satisfaction in a very wide range of styles and stories. Such was the popularity of the event that many shows were sold out and extra performances had to be arranged at the last minute; a challenge to which the organisers rose with professionalism and grace. This was only the second time The Skipton International Puppet Festival has taken place, but it already feels like an established favourite.

The festival hums with a sense of encounter: an encounter between the solid stones of the town and the fleeting movement of the puppets; between the traditional stories and the new ways of telling them, between the object, the puppet, the mask, the machine the puppeteer and the audience. The home-grown and the foreign. Along the canalside, in their own marquee, Upfront Puppet Theatre brought Stan Parker’s traditional marionette’s to life; in the same tent Horse and Bamboo used full head masks and rough rod-puppets to tell the story of a tentative meeting between a lonely lighthouse keeper and the boatman he rescues; just outside the ‘ancient call’ of Professor Chandler’s Mr Punch could be heard drifting across the water. Here, too, could be found a number of ‘Theatre for One’ shows including the Lempen’s ‘Pregnant Man’. The intimate and appropriately named Little Theatre saw ‘The Pied Piper’ told with colour and ingenuity by Professor Popup with his clockwork boxes, glove and finger puppets, and Clydebuilt’s narrative ‘Beowulf’ with rod puppets.

The bigger shows happen in the Town Hall, a venue which despite holding over two hundred, at times had standing-room only. Here, Dan Lempen gave us ‘The am-A-zing thing’, using found objects and rod puppets to give characters from Grimm’s fairy tales a life of their own. Theatre Paka Luka from Germany re-told ‘Peter and the Wolf’ from the Wolf’s point of view, using completely assured and crystal clear shadow-puppetry and a wry tone. A chance to see shadow-puppetry fulfilling its potential. This was followed by an illuminating demonstration of shadow-puppet technique. Perhaps the simplest show of all, but one which held its large audience enthralled, was ‘Handiwork’ from Lejo of the Netherlands. Using only eyes made of wood, some music and a pair of hands, Leo Peterson’s array of characters astonished and delighted with their considerable dexterity. Tof Theatre of Belgium, on the other hand, with their show ‘Bistour’i used an elaborate, clutter-filled tent like something out of M*A*S*H to show us a Bunraku worked figure carrying out a surgical operation on a mysterious creature, using drills, electric meat carvers, an endoscope-complete with TV screen- and a mallet for anaesthetic, to hilarious and nightmarish effect. This was the show’s first appearance in Britain.

Two shows by Southampton’s Hand to Mouth company harness imagination and dexterity with comical and moving results. ‘A Spoonful of Stories’ uses kitchen utensils to retell well-known fairy tales in its quest for a happy ending. It uses table-top and glove-puppet techniques to transform everyday objects into characters to whom we are prepared to give our attention and our feelings. ‘Piggery Jokery’, an outdoor glove- puppet, booth show tells of the passing of the seasons, from birth to death and birth again. It is extraordinarily consistent in tone and played with great wit and charm. A perfect show.

These were just some of the things on offer in a festival which reaches out its skilful hands in a gesture of greeting.

Hand to Mouth’s ‘Piggery Jokery’