IMMERSIVE PUPPET PERFORMANCE.

bOing! Gulbenkian, Kent University, Canterbury.

In 2018-19 Medway Council commissioned Daisy Farris and I to create a new performance piece that would tour outdoor festivals. Working with puppets for an audience of babies and toddlers was a new departure for our individual practices.

‘In a small hand painted tent the audience follow a life affirming story about the understated love between on old woman and her granddaughter. Set in the long slow months between spring and autumn on a tiny remote island the two puppets spend time together, eating strawberries, listening to the long tailed ducks, watching flying fish from their boat and building a camp fire’.

This magical interactive performance is about adventure, nature and the two female inhabitants love for each other and their island life.

For the research and development period we received mentoring from Peter Morton of Half A String theatre company. During the devising of Summer Island we visited Swingate Primary school to rehearse and receive feedback.

Musical score by Portia Graves.

Photographs by Manu Palomeque

Summer Island’s debut performance Splat!, the Sweeps festival, Rochester, 2019.