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The Adventures of Bo Peep
The Adventures of Bo Peep
Assembly George Square Studios
August 4 -16, 10.20am
Straight from selling out London venues and her national tour, Bo Peep is bringing her flock to the Edinburgh Fringe! Counting sheep always sends Bo Peep off to sleep by bedtime, but with no sign of them yet she'll be up all night searching. Bo Peep needs your help to save her little lambkins from danger!
A perfect theatre introduction for 2-6 year-olds from Knuckle and Joint, with an interactive story and sensory learning. Look out for a flock of enchanting puppetry, singalongs and sheep-themed silliness.
Gareth K Vile: What is it about puppetry that encourages you to use it to make performance?
Rebecca O’Brien, Artistic Director Knuckle and Joint: Using puppetry in theatre for early years opens many opportunities to bring the wonderful and eccentric characters of nursery rhymes to life!
In The Adventures of Bo Peep we have 6 sheep puppets, and we know that there is very little possibility of ever having 6 real sheep on stage but with puppets suddenly we can bring animals and characters into a theatre setting without causing chaos!
Puppetry opens the door to creating impossible moments and igniting the imagination of our young audiences from their first time at the theatre.
Do you see your work in any kind of tradition, or are there artists that you would call peers (or have influenced you)?
In many of our shows, the lead puppet is heavily influenced by Japanese Bunraku puppetry design and movement. We love the life-like movement that we're able to achieve with it!
We also love to include object theatre and the puppetry of bringing inanimate objects to life, such as apples and hay bales in Bo Peep. This helps us to create playful, silly and nonsense-ful theatre that is fantastic for a young child's budding imagination!
What kind of response do you get from audiences for the puppets?
Usually it is - "I completely forgot the puppeteer was even there!". At Knuckle and Joint, we don't hide the puppeteer out of sight, we like puppeteers to be on show and a part of the performance but of course not taking any attention away from the puppet!
Our sheep puppets are made with real sheep's wool and designed to be sensory puppets that audiences can touch and smell. Each sheep smells of a different part of the British countryside. Our young audiences love to touch, stroke and play with the sheep puppets!
