The Boy and the yellow Bird .... and beyond.

Animations, June/July 1997

Victoria Cannell of Moving Hands Theatre Company reports on the background of this innovative outfit and its current work.

Caroline McDowell founded the company in 1991, since when it has grown, employing a number of freelance puppeteers/performers and artists as well as myself full-time. Together we are particularly interested in combining puppetry with other art forms. We have developed a style of performance using various forms of puppetry, mime, mask, storytelling, live acting and playing with the use of scale. We aim to provide stimulating and accessible visual theatre to children and family audiences addressing issues which are relevant to and from the children's own experiences. Based in Birmingham we tour nationally to a variety of venues, including theatres, art centres, festivals, schools and more recently rural touring schemes. This year we will be touring 'Roller Coaster Runaway' and 'The Boy and the Yellow Bird'.

The performance of 'The Boy and the Yellow Bird' came out of an idea from Ros Bailey and Lynn Broadbent at Bentley West School. Walsall, West Midlands - a mixed junior and infants, with an integrated hearing impaired unit.

The puppet character was created by Caroline and then taken into the school one day a week for a ten week research/project period, Working closely with two deaf consultants Julie Neal and Julie Dobson-Brent we created and presented non-verbal scenarios to a mixed group of hearing and deaf children in Key Stage I. Each day would have a different focus e.g. expressing needs, valuing yourself. The scenarios had Nathan amongst other things, stealing a bag, wetting himself and coping or more precisely not coping with being left.

The wonderful thing about it was that it appealed to both hearing and deaf children. They all became equally involved with Nathan. We were inspired by their immediate responses and how - over the project - the children started to change from seeing moral issues in black and white terms and started to see how circumstances, influence by others etc. needed to be taken into account when talking about acceptable behaviour.

At the end of the project, we went on to develop (with financial support from West Midlands Arts, The Evesome Trust, and Walsall Health Authority), the performance of 'The Boy and the Yellow Bird' with Nathan as the central character.

The story itself is a very simple one which gently explores themes of bullying, peer pressure and self esteem using various forms of puppetry, cut outs and live action in an exciting and colourful way which readily appealed to our audiences. We found that by removing spoken language the children create their own narratives. We often hear or see (through sign language) the children not only commenting on the action, but how the characters were feeling. Allowing them to explore their own understanding. The Boy and the Yellow Bird' has worked equally well in theatre settings and allowed deaf children access to theatre in a way in which they were in no way disadvantaged by their deafness.

This has also had outcomes for children who have been isolated at school due to English being their second language and children with special needs.

'The Boy and the Yellow Bird' has generated a lot of interest in the company. We have received further funding from Walsall Health Authority, Birmingham City Council and A4E. Along with our public touring to theatres and other venues we will be doing a ten week tour to schools, deaf clubs and family centres, offering a performance, workshop and book which includes the scenarios, ideas for drama activities and follow up work.

At the moment we are doing a pilot tour of our new show 'Roller Coaster Runaway' for a week in the West Midlands (financial support from West Midlands Arts, Marks and Spencers Community Involvement and The Evesome Trust) and then straight back into re-rehearsal and a bit of a polish up and throw out session.

The initiative for this came again from our close collaboration with Ros Bailey and Lynn Broadbent and her book of short stories 'Lets Focus on Feeling' from which we have taken the central characters Billy and Jo. Set in a fairground the research for this performance has been lots of visits to the fair and egging each other on to go on all the white knuckle rides.

So far the response has been very good with the children readily identifying with the characters and fuelling us with new ideas and plenty of additions to the script.

We like to think that one of the strengths of Moving Hands is that instead of solely relying on skills from within the company we are able to draw on a wide network of specialist knowledge and skills from other artists. For example original music is written by Gerry Smith, and Andy Blore is an ace set maker and problem solver. We also have continual input on making, performing and workshops from (most notably) Louise Bedford and Sarah Jane Watkinson plus Administration and Bookings by Claire Fisher and Fund Raising from Sabra Khan. Alongside our workshops and large scale performance projects we are developing our animation workshops with Alison Scoff and Andy Philips, who will be working with adult and children's groups.

So what of the future? We have received funding from the Lottery to develop an eight part series with the characters Billy & Jo to accompany the book 'Lets Focus on Feelings'. Ideas are also floating around for an adult show cabaret piece plus a double fingers crossed that all our plans work out for a tour of South Africa - but that's next year. We have plenty to do in the meantime.