The Puppeteers of Baba Shakespeare
The production of Baba Shakespeare requires two monkey marionettes to perform alongside the Monkey Wallah to bring this unique element of Indian culture to life. A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings. Catherine Thomas (an independent puppeteer and puppetmaker) is designing and carving these monkeys and, along with Emma Reade-Davies, will operate the puppets during the show. Since starting work for Baba Shakespeare, Catherine has been creating a really exciting blog covering her puppet progress - take a look at evolvingmonkeys.blogspot.com.

We also highly recommend a visit to the Puppet Theatre Barge in   Little Venice, London W9 2PF. Run and owned by Juliet Rogers and Gren Middleton, the Puppet Barge is one of the leading centres in the world for marionette and rod puppetry. A member of our Baba team who recently attended a performance there stated "It was a really unique experience and I would encourage others to give it a look - especially if any have young children, as there were a lot of kids at this show". The team of Baba Shakespeare is particularly grateful to Juliet and Gren for agreeing to give us the benefit of their support and guidance for the show.

Part two ...
On October 25th we had an open script reading of Baba Shakespeare at the St. Bride Tavern. There was a lot of interest and a wonderful turn out and we'd like to thank everybody who came along for helping to bring the script to life, including members of Aks a young Asian drama group based in the City of London (see below for more details).
The reading was followed by a lively and constructive feedback session which offered insight into the writing process as well as audience impressions.

The Baba team is growing!

The production will now also benefit from the involvement of Shobna Gulati as Choreographer and Chris Davies as Composer. Read all about their backgrounds and their previous work on our Production Team page.

Barbara Mathews is Puppet Co-ordinator for the show. As well as attending performances at The Puppet Theatre Barge, Rosemary Branch etc as part of the Suspense Festival she has taken part workshops organized at the Central School of Drama and The Little Angel Puppet Theatre.

Aks
RSC Open Stages is partly about encouraging collaboration so we have formed a partnership with Aks Performing Arts. The vision of Aks is to bring people from all walks of life together in a shared space where reality and utopia constantly collide to create art. It was wonderful to hear the Hindi lines as they are meant to be pronounced and we are very much looking forward to carrying on our collaboration throughout this project. Their Creative Director Neha Jain will be acting as Dance Coordinator throughout rehearsals and performances.

Part one ...
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) launched a new project earlier this year - "RSC Open Stages" - which aims to celebrate amateur theatre throughout the UK. This year and next, RSC, alongside various regional theatres, is running workshops, events and partner showcases, and a select number of amateur companies have had their proposals accepted to produce and perform their own RSC-branded Shakespeare-themed production. The Tower's proposal of Baba Shakespeare was accepted earlier in the year. We hope to be one of the small number of theatres to be selected to perform over three weekends in July 2012 in Stratford-upon-Avon, as part of the World Shakespeare Festival. Over 260 amateur companies have signed up to produce RSC Open Stages productions across the UK, to be performed in a wide range of venues all over the country.

Here begins the Story and Diary of the Tower's show : Baba Shakespeare ...

Last Winter, the Tower Theatre's artistic team put out an announcement for submissions to be put forward for the RSC Open Stages project. Tower Member Emmeline Winterbotham had previously had an idea to adapt the script of a film called Shakespeare Wallah so she decided to approach Merchant Ivory (producers of the film) with the idea of producing this as part of the RSC Open Stages project. Merchant Ivory accepted and loved the idea so Emmeline submitted a proposal to the Tower and her pitch was chosen!
Shakespeare Wallah is set in India in 1963. It is based on the real lives of Felicity Kendal's family - a travelling theatre group of British actors, who had spent much of their lives performing plays by Shakespeare across India. However, post-Independence, the fervour for all things British was now turning towards the successful and growing Bombay film industry. The film also follows the growing relationship between Lizzie Kendal and Sanju Kapoor, an Indian playboy, hindered by cultural differences and loyalties.
The name chosen for the stage adaptation will be Baba Shakespeare. 'Baba' is an affectionate term for an endearing, old wise man or father figure.

The members of our growing team are as follows :
The Writer and Director is Emmeline Winterbotham
The Producer is Lisa Rost-Welling
The Set Designers are Catherine Morgan and Daniel Vincze (new members of the Tower Theatre)
The Publicity Team is Sue Brodie, (myself) Caroline Kelly and John Morton
The Workshop Coordinator is Sheila Burbidge

On a rare sunny day in June, we met with our new producer Lisa to introduce ourselves and get acquainted. We discussed how Emmeline was getting on with the enormous challenge of writing the script, and talked about how to kick-start the publicity campaign and keep the momentum going in these early stages.
Our project is growing each day. We are currently looking at the possibility of screening the original film later in the year, as well as organising an open reading of the final script. We'll keep you up-to-date with these activities and with all the goings-on over the coming weeks and months.

If you would like to register your interest in being part of Baba Shakespeare development team in some way, please contact Lisa Rost-Welling by email.