final riot!

Our final riots at the castle turned out really well the audience really enjoyed our piece. The final performance came together in the end and we came up with quite a jokey performance which went really well against the mood of the other pieces. We found that the audience were willing to put the votes in the boxes and they were quite enthusiastic, they really liked the difference in scale and we were surprised at some of the audience reaction we hadn't realised that it would be a genuine surprise when the puppet popped out the box.

finishing touches

The complete design is starting to come together we have most of the main parts finished, the box is decorated the puppet is made and clothed and the face has started to be painted. The little theatre that we are having at the front has been painted and the puppets drawn. There are a few jobs that we still need to do that will bring it all together, also a few repairs to do after testing it outside.

costume and head

We started to build up on the head by applying paper mache and j-cloth layers to strengthen the head and to allow it to be easier to be painted. I also started to look at the puppets costume, we wanted it to look like a clown but not an obvious clown so I started looking at Pierrot clowns because I felt this gave it the look that we were going for. The main body was just a rectangle of material that i cut to fit over the body and then attached the sleeves to that. The sleeves were also just simple shapes that made the ends by the hands larger to make it look over sized.

puppet hands!

Starting to work on the puppet firstly making the hands and the head was beginning to be carved, we also worked on the mechanism of the box that would allow the little hanging figures to pop out at the same time as the main puppet. We did this by making the main lid into a sort of pocket and added an extra flap that would hold the people and would fall beside the box when opened. The hands were just thick wire bent into the required shape.

building the box

We started in the workshop by building the ballot box, this was made from six flats that were joined and strengthened to make the correct size box. The lid was made in the same way, we used the wall saw to cut the flats and an air tacker to put the pieces together. The lid was cut into two to create the opening that we would want to allow our puppet to pop out easily.

little people

an idea for the little people that we are going to have around the box, we could have them made from wicker or sticks because it goes with the fact that the rioters found as much stuff that they could to be able to burn, so it symbolizes being able to burn them because we probably wont be able to actually set them on fire.

They would be very simple versions of something like this, just be the basic shape of a person and we can positions them and give them the 'weapons' that the rioters may have had.

box CAD

This is the CAD drawing of the box that will be on the cart with the flaps and lid open. also has the frame.

jack in the box!

Developing the idea we liked the idea of the clown/jester in the box, however we decided that instead of the puppet leaving the box we would have it stay in the box and make it like a jack in the box that would pop out after the handle (possibly not actually doing anything) is turned. We also liked the idea of the box being like a ballot box because the idea of why the rioters stormed to the castle was because they couldn't vote.

We also want it to be smaller than the cart so that we can add things to the cart and have a frame to make it easier to control the puppet. the reference of the ballot box shown is actually from a later time than the riots but this is similar to how we imagine the box to look.

The clown shows how we thought about the puppet to look but we want him to be more padded and the hands to be over sized, this is because we want the audience to interact with the box before the puppet comes out then once he has popped out he will throw the votes of out the box and almost perform a little show of the riots but we want it to be clumsy and over actioned.

This is a rough model of what we want the overall thing to look like, we want the box to able to flip open and there to be little people that represent the crowds to be hanging from the box, on the flaps we want to be able to have a little side show to be able to perform the riots via small puppets made from card.

initial idea

After being put in to our group the general consensuses from the group was that we wanted to do something that demonstrated the atmosphere of the riot and the goose fair that would have going on at the time. We like the idea of having a large puppet that would be involved in gathering people and mocking the idea of the vote and mainly being part of the goose fair.

initially we wanted a large puppet in a box that would be the size of the cart that would then pop out when the crowd had gathered, this would then slowly emerge from the box and interact with the audience. The puppet would be rather like a joker/clown that would have over sized features so making its movement clumsy.

The picture is of a rough costume idea we had that the puppet could be wearing similar to a picture that we had come across of a clown from the time.

riot project

For this terms project we will building a cart that will be shown at the castle in celebration of the riots that took place in 1831. The castle at the time was owned by the Duke of Newcastle and the rioters burnt the castle in protest of the fact that they had not been given the vote. The cart needs to be something demonstrates part if the riot or is an object that can be used to demonstrate attack on the castle.