The Box of Delights 2019

After providing puppets for the Buxton Drama League‘s productions of Season’s Greetings and Dracula over the past few years, they once more had puppet requirements for their autumn production this year ‘Box of Delights’.

Their’s was the first amateur production ever of John Masefield’s 1935 children’s fantasy novel! And there’s a reason for that….it’s very prop-heavy – over 100 of them are required, many of which spend very little time on stage. In fact, it hadn’t been attempted by a professional outfit until 2017.

We were asked to provide some rod and marionette puppets as an answer to flashbacks and miniaturising magic.

We created the heads, shoulders and left arms of two “young men from the Middle East” as rod puppets and a small version of the main character, a young boy called Kay, as a one-string marionnette. He had to be dressed as the main character so the BDL made his costume and we made the head and body structure.

It was a great to reason to delve into our kit store and make use of some of our materials.