A Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in St. Helen’s

You may or may not remember a long while back I was ever so proud of myself for tidying up the Rough Magic Theatre storage room – and how, in October 2021, we had our first Alice in Wonderland gig for a very long time. How I repaired and spruced up our Cheshire Cat and White Rabbit’s House scenery and even got myself a wig, as my hair was no longer the correct length.

Then after visiting Tim’s family in Norfolk for Christmas, we got back and on December 28th we heard a peculiar noise and found the mess you see in the pictures.

As you can see a large chunk of the plasterboard ceiling had fallen down because of a leak in the bathroom above. The sodden plasterboard had given up and fallen down with a load of dirty water. This was massively upsetting as we had planned to try and get a few more gigs with the Alice show. This was a major setback.

So, having planned to push the show and get a few more gigs, we instead decided that this was a sign to retire the big Alice show but present the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party as a walkabout show only on the new website, and that we would spruce it up and renew the fabric on the tea table when we got a booking.

When I originally created the fabric for the tea table I used spray glue to attach the cut-out pink ripstop layer to the black ripstop layer beneath. This meant that the black layer where the glue was exposed had been getting a bit dirty and shabby-looking, even before the leak accident, so this was a good excuse to take the tea table apart and attempt to do a better job with some new fabric.

We were asked to bring the Mad Hatter and Alice to St. Helen’s library for a “HAF”(Holiday Activities and Food) event in the Easter holidays and proceeded to source the material we needed for a new tablecloth.

I wasn’t able to find fabric in the same fluorescent pink as the original but I did manage to find two similar shades of bright pink and source a copious amount of bondaweb to join the cut pink layer to the black layer neatly, without any messy glue. An expensive but neat solution.

Removing the teapots so the old fabric could be removed

Removing the teapots so the old fabric could be removed

Plan to incorporate 2 different shades of pink on the tablecloth

Marking out the shapes for cutting on the paper bondaweb backing.

Cutting out

The gig went very well and we are are already planning the “Mad Hatter’s” next outing to a Food and Drink Festival (more details to come soon). Sadly the selfie below is the only picture we got time to take on the performance day and doesn’t show off the fabric at all. I’ll take some more pics the next time we get it out.

In the meantime check out the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party show page by clicking HERE. We have lots of space left in our diary for this year and next year so please do GET IN TOUCH 😊.

Shadow Suitcase Shows at Norton Priory

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Had a lovely time at Norton Priory a few months back for their “Discover Sundays” event.

I had never been there before and discovered that it is an amazing place hidden away behind a housing estate. If you have never been I would definitely recommend it.

Wonderful interactive displays that are great for kids and adults, (including a gigantic St. Christopher statue that appears to be speaking with the familiar booming voice of Brian Blessed).

I took my kids along (figuring that they could busy themselves exploring the museum and gardens with their Dad) while I did my shows and workshops.

However, I found my kids were taking the business of supporting Mummy very seriously and they trotted over to watch every single one of my performances and took part in the shadow puppet making workshop as well!

I performed my “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” shows in the Undercroft area which had wonderful acoustics and was unlike anywhere else I’d performed before (I suppose the closest might be Lancaster Castle or maybe Hall ‘ith Wood in Bolton).

We performed the “Jabberwocky!” show in the Undercroft and the Tudor garden as well and spent a bit of time exploring the grounds before we left.

All in all it was a lovely afternoon and we definitely intend to return at some point to check out all the things we missed.

If you would like to book one of our suitcase shows, a workshop or a different show CLICK HERE to get in touch 🙂 We are available for Light Festivals, Halloween, Christmas events etc.

You can find designs featuring puppets from “Jabberwocky!” and “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” in our new Rough Magic Theatre merch. shop. You can find gift bags and sweatshirts for Halloween or Christmas, plus lots of other great gift ideas, including dog bandanas, baby and maternity wear, teddies, mugs, cushions, stickers, badges, umbrellas etc. Plus for that extra special gift, you can personalise the items too! CLICK HERE to browse 🙂