![]() They look authentic and I don’t have to worry about a small tear leaking sand everywhere.įirst undocumented innovation: I ran a strip of masking tape horizontally exactly 24″ below the top of the stage and labeled it “Quicksand”. The sandbags are old canvas bank bags turned inside out to hide the lettering and stuffed with 2-liter bottles full of sand duct taped shut. Lord Coinneach Mac an Leigh is a wood wright and made me a pair of portable holes similar to what we use for indoor list ropes. I weigh them down with sandbags to hold them steadier while making it look more authentic. The uprights were originally held in place by slipping them into milk crates and weighing the milk crates down with coffee cans full of sand. ![]() It was my intention to eventually do a shadow puppet show as well and the heavier fabric would better hide the puppeteers. Instead of a second bed sheet to extend it down to the floor, I sewed on a piece of bedspread material that Duchess Dorinda Courtenay gave me. The crossbar and uprights slid into the tubes to keep the sheet upright. I folded the edges of a bed sheet over and sewed it down, forming long tubes on three sides of the sheet. Now, I just drop the crossbar holes over the nails. After the third time the dowels broke off in setting up or taking down the stage, I filled in the holes and drove a large nail into each upright. The crossbar had holes drilled in each end which fit over the dowels. Originally, I drilled a hole in the tops of the uprights and inserted a short wooden dowel. The first version of my stage was simply two uprights with a crossbar. If you’ve seen the first Harry Potter movie, the puppet show lives in Harry’s bedroom under the stairs. People always ask me where I store the puppets in my house, but never think of my car. I live in a Victorian-era 140-year-old farmhouse, with lots of nooks and crannies (for all the crooks and nannies?). I wanted my puppet stage to look as medieval as possible, but more importantly, it had to break down to fit in a compact car. In the second picture, the towers jut forward from the stage with puppets on them which would not leave room for a puppeteer beneath and the stage between them is also embattled in front of the central puppets. In the first picture, the towers are on stage with the puppets and the stage between them is flat. Both have crenellated towers to either side with a rainbow arch connecting them over the puppets. ![]() Both have tall white fabric draping down to hide the puppeteers with a stage above for rod puppet performances.
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