Thingumajig Theatre were invited once again to create a giant puppet puppet for the Manchester Day Parade. This year, we were asked to work with Manchester Fire and Rescue. They are about to introduce a new uniform so they asked us to create a parade giant puppet of an Asian woman firefighter who would be wearing the new costume.
They also asked us to work with a group of Princes’ Trust youths to create an ensemble to interact with the firefighter.
It was a great little ensemble: the youths formed groups of flame flags which the firefighter chased and tried to put out with an extinguisher.
-
- Design
-
- With actual fire fighters
-
- Photo by Alex Flahive
-
- Photo by Alex Flahive
-
- Firefighter with the Prince’s Trust youths
The mechanism was a slight variation on our usual mechanism as seen here in Kelda. As one arm was fixed, we created a system which only required one hand to operated.
It was also great to make a giant with high vis fabric–you could certainly see this puppet coming from a long way away!
The puppet now belongs to Manchester Fire and Rescue and was also part of the Manchester Pride Parade.
This was our fourth commission for Manchester Day Parade, previous parade puppets were Jimmy the Footballer, the Sweeper and last year’s Garden City.
See more photos and a short video.