Delighting audiences for over three decades, The Puppet Theatre Barge have truly ignited imaginations with their magical marionette productions. Having performed thousands of shows in their history, Movingstage trailblaze by keeping the tradition of string marionette puppetry alive. The company talk to Theatrefullstop about their upcoming production, A Christmas Carol.
Movingstage Theatre will be performing A Christmas Carol from Saturday 3rd December. How are rehearsals going for the show?
Rehearsals are going very well. We generally rehearse productions that have already been devised some time in the past and are part of our repertoire for a period of two weeks. This is now week two and we have three puppeteers working on this production.
A Christmas Carol is a well known Christmas classic. Why choose this story in particular to perform?
We decided to adapt A Christmas Carol for the marionette stage not only to have a production that has themes relevant to the Christmas season, but also because the story has elements that work perfectly in the marionette stage. The Puppet Theatre Barge specialises in a rare form of puppetry which uses long string marionettes, meaning that the puppeteers are out of view. By using long string marionettes, a world with no visible human presence is created and the audience’s imagination is captured and stimulated by the puppets – which become the main focus of the show. This form of staging allows us to create a sense of perspective and depth through the use of sophisticated lighting and scenery.
This type of staging has a lot of potential in the representation of the otherworldly characters present in the story, e.g. the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. Characters, some of them with little human resemblance, may appear and disappear in magical ways, fly on stage, spin out.