Royal Armouries Shadow Puppet Workshop for children
After the success of our last shadow puppet production The Big Bad Weed, we were kindly invited to host a trio of shadow puppet workshops at the Royal Armouries as part of their half term events week Eastern Warriors: India. Historic Indian relics of old puppets dating back to 2500 BC show puppetry has been used as a form of entertainment since ancient times. Traditionally, puppets were made using different leathers, commonly depicting gods and goddesses and used to tell stories.
Over three days of February half term, groups of young children came together to get involved in shadow play. Using vibrant Indian culture for inspiration, our workshops enabled groups of children to create their own stories, make puppets and at the end of each day we had a performance for the parents to enjoy. During the story writing stage we considered a range of cultural elements such as animals, deities, colours, patterns, music and of course the world-record breaking Elephant armour held at the Royal Armouries.
To begin with the children spent some time thinking about which characters they might like to feature in the stories and the types of personalities these characters may have. The tales they created were very imaginative; on the first day the group wrote a story about some grizzly bears and monsters who didn’t get along, and some nice children who came to save the day! Everyone was excited to start making their monsters and spent lots of time working on their designs, some used coloured gels to create different effects and many used pins to help give their characters the ability to move different sections at a time.
On day two the children focused more on the Indian deities and created a story about Brahma, Sariswati and Ganesh. We roamed around the jungle with the elephants, lions, butterflies and birds and were troubled by a very cheeky monkey who had made a special potion. The children were excited by the story they had written together and they produced very intricate puppets which looked great on screen.
To conclude our action packed week we spent the final workshop creating a video about the Lion with the very bad breath! The children really enjoyed working together and discussing who might come and help the King of the Jungle to freshen his breath. When a peppermint milkshake and other radical concoctions were unsuccessful it seemed the solution was really very simple…and a little bit cheeky! You’ll have to watch our video to find out what finally resolved the Lion’s bad breath.
It was great to see the parents enjoying the performances and it was clear that everyone had really enjoyed learning about Indian Culture and the fascinating art of shadow puppetry! A huge thanks to the Royal Armouries for having us. Below are the three videos we produced of the final performances… that’s all for now, until next time!
