Moving Parts, a new puppetry festival featuring performances and training, comes to Newcastle between 27 March and 1 April 2017. It focuses on puppetry, mask and object manipulation, runs for six days across four venues, and is specially geared towards adults, teenagers, emerging artists and professional practitioners.
The programme includes three large-scale productions at Northern Stage, cabaret and fringe shows at Cobalt Studios, four diverse performance masterclasses at Space Six, a six-day puppet making residency course, puppetry films, talks and networking events and an Education Project with design and drama students from Newcastle College.
It is funded by Arts Council England.
Frustrated by the lack of training opportunities and programming decisions made in the North East in relation to the art form, North East-based William Steele and Kerrin Tatman set up Moving Parts.
Steele is an improviser, mask performer and puppeteer living in Gateshead. Originally trained in Drama and Scriptwriting at Northumbria University, he went on to further training at the Odsherred theatre skole in Denmark and collaborates widely with the improvisation community across Europe and the United States. In 2014, he co-founded Space Six in Newcastle as a home for North East performing artists and 4M puppets; he is still busy developing both projects.
Tatman is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, creative producer and theatre maker with a particular interest in multi-disciplinary collaborations and merging music with the visual arts. He plays and writes with three-piece contemporary-classical band Aether and also works for Circus Central as Musical Director and Funding Manager. In the wider puppetry world, he is the Director's Assistant for Beverley Puppet Festival.
“We hope,” said Steele, “this will create space and place in the North East for more work of this nature to be conceived and developed.”
A key motive for creating the festival is to introduce the world of puppetry and object manipulation to a new audience, which includes motivating a new generation of puppeteers. The 2017 Education Project pairs local puppeteer and artist Alison McGowan with drama and design students at Newcastle College to create a short, original puppet show—including technical theatre, making, performance and sound.
As well as giving these young people new theatrical skills, which can be transferred to many different areas, organisers hope the week-long devising process will inspire some to delve further into the world of puppetry.
Full details of all aspects of the festival, including the performances, can be found on the Moving Parts web site.