Welcome To The Fools Puppet Theatre
Early puppetry for your delight. Book us for your special event, historical re-creation, party, museum, fete, school, WI, festival.
We follow the tradition of a transportable booth as used by street performers through the ages. We have a large authentic tent which provides shelter for small audiences and room to play games of chance and perform magic tricks and dancing. All the shows are performed to live music played on the Wheel Fiddle (Hurdy Gurdy) by the story teller.
Our puppets and equipment are made by ourselves. The materials we use are as close as we can get to being authentic to the periods in which we perform. Garments are wool, felt or linen. Heads are wooden, clay or linen masse.
Our stories are based on ancient themes. Some of the stories are our own and others were collected from storytellers and used with their permission. All of our stories which do not have a seasonal theme are based around love and folklore. They also feature food and trickery which were important facets of life in those times.
The tales can be adapted to suit the occasion and the audience before us.
We attempt a world record at Harlequin
Harlequin Fayre is held each year at the same site as Folk In A Field near Castle Acre in Norfolk. Set up like the traditional Albion Fayres of yester year it is a mix of old and new. There's so much to see and not enough time to see it all. Woodland crafts, Lots of music, story telling, Morris Dancing (from Big Jigs), the amazing Experimental Sonic Machines, dad dancing and so so much more. There is a mindfulness glade with healing, yoga and tai chi to help you recover after a heavy night and a huge children's area where we are!! Find them online at www.harlequinfayre.co.uk and come next year.
The World's Fastest Puppet Show
In truth we have been doing this for a few years as a spoof. But this year the puppeteer, Harold, said 'why not do it for real?' We made contact with the World Records people in Madrid and found out what we had to do to claim a record and followed that. We had three witnesses recruited at the event. One timekeeper and someone on camera. We were interviewed by Ima Smallbottom from Harlequin Radio (I bet they don't even know they have one!). The whole story is: "Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess. One day an evil witch came along and cast a spell on her making her ugly. Along came a handsome prince and kissed her making her beautiful again. And they all lived happily ever after. The End." Using 4 puppets (look for the trick one) with two people. The record now stands at 7.34 seconds. Watch the whole thing here. Now beat that! A group of children at the event say they will beat it next year. We look forward to that. Note that the record has to be ratified and when it is we'll let you know.
Video credit: Ezra Tungate
A word about some lovely music recently released by friends of ours:
'Dancing Up The Sun' a May Day morning celebration by three friends of ours called From The Warren on Bandcamp. Free to listen to for three times and then a small price to buy.
https://fromthewarren1.bandcamp.com/track/dancing-the-sun-up
The border between Norfolk and Suffolk is marked by the river Waveney and after a May day morning dance-out at The Locks Inn, Geldeston, Paul Wisdom was inspired to write the song Dancing the Sun Up to the tune Maid and the Palmer, while across the country in Cumbria, Ilse Pedler dancing with Crook Morris on Scout Scar was similarly inspired and wrote the poem Dancing Up The Sun.
Two people on different sides of the country, one almost at sea level, one high on a Cumbrian fell rising before dawn and being joined by Morris dancers all over the land in between for the same reason.
In this combining of Paul and Ilse’s words, fellow Bunnies from Hell Morris dancer Lucy Simmonds has interwoven her beautiful violin playing.