Last weekend when we picked D and S up from Magic Lantern I picked up a leaflet about a puppet show at the theatre as part of the Adur Festival. It’s a two week festival for the very local area we live in and the reason for the various library events I’ve been working at, attending and ranting about over the last couple of weeks. I’d missed this event in the programme but managed to book tickets for Davies, Scarlett and I and we went along to it this morning.
We went to a puppet show as part of the festival a couple of years ago (just dug out the blogpost and smiled at the similarities) but this was way better. There was some faffing around while they kept us in the foyer to get all the schoolchildren settled first which was annoying but worth it as they all had to sit cross legged on the floor while we got to sit behind them on chairs with an excellent view :). We spent the wait looking at some of the artwork and sculptures on display and reading about turtles on the marine display table set up there.
The show was done by Liz Lempen from Lempen Puppet Theatre and was just magical. It was a one woman show and she managed to integrate music, shadows, puppets, storytelling and using her small but very beautiful set and puppets to draw the whole audience in. It was both simple and complex and put me in mind of the childrens’ TV shows I loved as a child like Fingerbobs and the presenters on shows like Playschool who clearly loved children and paused frequently just to smile at the camera. I was entranced, as were Davies and Scarlett.
The show was very educational and I’d happily go and see it again as it weaved a beautiful story. At the end she brought out several puppets to show how they were made and operated and talked a little about the show. We actually went up to her to ask a couple more questions and I would have happily stayed chatting longer but she was preparing for the next show. I have emailed her to say how much we enjoyed the show.
After that we headed to Tesco for a few bits before coming home for lunch. Davies is very keen to finish the end of the xbox game he is playing so he spent some time on that and then we headed up to the allotment. I had planned to take some sausages and marshmallows and make an evening of it, cooking them on the washing machine drum we have up there as our new fire basket but having spoken to Ady on the phone who assured me there was a 100% chance of rain I didn’t bother and we spent 90 minutes up there weeding until I got bored. It’s a bit weedtastic up there actually so we’ve planned (weather permitting) to go up again tomorrow evening and do some more.
Davies spent the time creating an invention to water things based on a seesaw over his mini-pond using the ballcock idea from the rainwater harvesting system we saw at Open Farm Sunday last week. Scarlett helped me pull some more garlic and did some mud sculpting :).
Back home again Scarlett picked me some lavender and I made some more lavendoodles and the kids tea (Davies had salmon and new potatoes, Scarlett had freshly laid eggs and toast and Davies’ unwanted baby sweetcorn!) while they did some more xboxing. I do find baking very theraputic, lots of thinking time, busy hands, clean mess and delicious smells with the added bonus of baked goods at the end of it :).
Ady came home while I was still in the kitchen so we chatted out there while the kids had their tea. There is all sorts of politics happening in the chicken run at the moment so in an effort to sort that out and stop them from eating all the plants on the patio Ady made their roaming area a bit smaller. The kids spent some time out there with them until I called them in for pjs and storytime.
A bit more Charlie Small and a bit of WWLT – both of them were Turtle related thanks to the puppet show – Davies’ was the word chelonian which was in the show and he’d made a point of going and asking her to repeat for him. Scarlett’s was about Lonesome George, also mentioned during the show and we looked up more information about him when we got home. Davies also reminded me about having learnt about grids and OS maps and coordinates yesterday as we were walking towards the geocache and I was explaining about how the GPS worked.
I think we saw that turtle show – it was fab. 🙂
Comment by Jan — 15 June 2009 @ 11:50 pm