Thingumajig Theatre loves folk festivals! Without fail, they seem to attract the best, most open audiences and, when you’re not working, we get to listen to some excellent music. And this year, we hit the mother lode!
Sidmouth Folk Week, now in its 60th year is a week-long event filled with workshops, concerts, buskers and more Morris dancers than you can shake a stick at. Plus, it has the advantage of being on a gorgeous beach so you can always go for a walk or dip if you need to step away.
Ray and Bev Langton who we’ve worked with at Big Session and Towersey Festival asked us to lead a week-long workshop to create a lantern section as part of the big Torchlight Parade finale. We held 5 days of lantern workshops where we made jelly fish and some water spirit costumes.
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- Lantern workshops!
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- Our fab volunteer crew Ezra and Georgie
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- Lanterns drying
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- Our guest assistant from California!
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- Martin and Eliza Carthy–great show!
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- Never seen so many Morris dancers
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- Lining up for the parade–we made about 40 lanterns
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- The big 3 jelly fish ready to go
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- The Torchlight Parade!
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- It wasn’t all work at Sidmouth…
We also recycled some materials from last year’s parade make (a giant snake) to make 3 giant jellyfish.
We had some great families and a great crew of volunteer helpers. We also had an assistant artist all the way from Los Angeles: Ezra Behnin-Peterson, son of puppeteer Beth Peterson and musician Severin Behnin who we’ve worked with for many years together with In the Heart of the Beast Theatre.
It was a lovely project which was received well and we had a chance to hear some great music and Andrew even took some workshops in playing the Bones!