We’re excited to announce our new forthcoming shadow theatre production!

Gaby Gulliver’s Travels is due to premiere in Hull later this Spring so watch this space. The new show will be touring so we’d love to hear from theatres, venues and festivals.

A family shadow theatre show, Gaby Gulliver’s Travels tells the story of an eight-year-old child, who finds herself in another universe, a weird but wonderful world… then another, and another, as she travels on a magical journey through time and space. Along the way, regardless of where she is, the problems seem the same as at home. Gaby’s journey into these parallel universes is one of survival and enlightenment, in this contemporary reimagining of Gulliver’s Travels by Indigo Moon Theatre.

• Directed by Steve Tiplady with Haviel Perdana.
• Written by Frances Allison & the creative team.
• Performed by Anna Ingleby with Haviel Perdana / Frances Allison.
• Character designs by Susanna Samanek.
• Original music by Haviel Perdana.
• Scenery / props  by Haviel Perdana & Anna Ingleby.
• Producer Darren Walter.

Thanks to our local partners / supporters for being on board, Hull City Arts, Hull Culture and Leisure, Hull Library Services, Back to Ours, and the first receiving venues (more to follow on that later!). 

In memory of Les Credland.

Interested in booking a performance for your venue, theatre, festival or school?
Simply get in touch to find out more about touring performances.

Workshops available with this production.. either a Courtroom Drama workshop, or shadow puppet-making.

See our What’s On page to discover which shows are happening when.

For bookings or more information:

Anna Ingleby
Telephone: +44 (0)7855 328552

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Returning to 2023, one of our highlights was finally being able to announce our involvement in the spooky shadow theatre elements of Sir Kenneth Branagh’s latest film, A Haunting in Venice, filmed in 2022.  The film launched on 15^th September and we were all pretty starry eyed seeing our names in the credits.  Anna was the puppeteer, and assisted in making scenery, which was otherwise mainly designed and made by Haviel Perdana, while Susanna Samanek designed all the characters. It was a pleasure for us to have been able to join Sir Kenneth’s appreciative team in Twickenham.

In late Summer into September, our same team enabled TV presenter Hannah Fry to use shadow puppetry to demonstrate Elisha Otis’ invention of the safety brake in passenger lifts, for an episode of BBC2’s, Secret Genius of Modern Life.

Aside from our recorded media commissions, 2023 was a steady year for live touring, with SeedHeart continuing to visit diverse venues around the country. Our little puppet, Grey travelled to Barnes,  Oldham’s Illuminate Festival,  Worcester, Ulverston, The Scottish Mask & Puppet Centre in Glasgow, Up Front Puppet Theatre near Penrith, Newcastle Puppetry Festival, Bedford, Thetford, Brighton Fringe, Portsmouth, Keswick, Harold Hill, Beverley Minster Eco-Fair, and market hubs in Blackburn and  Darwen. Phew! Our interactive shadow installation also accompanied SeedHeart to the Oldham Illuminate Festival, facilitated by Thomas Byrne who joined us that day.

2023 also saw us bid farewell to Cecil2 the Citroen, who like Cecil1 the Citroen (both named after Anna’s 2 grandfathers), served us well for 10 years. We were very lucky to welcome Flossie the Ford in March 2023, who despite being slightly lower can still fit three shows inside. Unfortunately, Flossie suffered a hit and run incident on Christmas Eve while parked – which caused an inordinate amount of not immediately obvious damage via the rear corner but can still be driven and will be receiving full repair treatment in April 2024. Our tip to anyone purchasing vehicle insurance is that an, “uninsured driver promise” may not include hit and run!

Indigo Moon Theatre’s first ever act, Saraswati, returned to dance again at the Oriental Museum’s Diwali celebrations in Durham, and Anna attempted her first ever PowerPoint presentation when invited to talk at a Beverley Heritage Open Day, alongside artists John and Philippa Naylor, to celebrate arts and culture in Beverley.

Anna’s continued work as co-artistic director of Beverley Puppet Festival involved her in facilitating Beverley Puppet Festival’s interim year activities. This saw Animated Objects of Scarborough and puppeteer, Liz Dorton of Hull – with colleague Graham Johnson, deliver residencies in two Beverley schools. The residencies resulted in giant puppets, which will appear at the next Beverley Puppet Festival in July. Anna and her co-artistic director (of Beverley Puppet Festival) Kerrin Tatman, also submitted another successful funding bid for Beverley Puppet Festival 2024.

In Autumn 2023, thanks to funding from Arts Council England, and the support of our producer Darren Walter, Indigo Moon Theatre was able to remount two of our classic shows – The Lost Forest (originally made in 2005) and Jungle Book (originally made in 2013). We welcomed Hal Neumann to the team, who experienced our performance process and helped Susanna Samanek greatly with laser cutting while upgrading the puppets and making them more robust. He was followed by Malik Morgan-Murphy who continues to tour The Lost Forest and Jungle Book, having learnt Haviel’s performance role in both these shows. This enables them to be performed even if Haviel is unavailable.  We are grateful too to: Steve Stevenson for helping us capture film footage of this process; Bev Richmond who joined the team for the marketing of this project and continues to support with social media in 2024; Tam Gilbert for her consultancy on accessibility; Manju Gregory for her work on our resource activities and Satish Pujji for our re-designed print.

 After the Autumn rehearsal period, in 2023 Jungle Book toured to Ulverston, Thetford, Norwich Puppet Theatre, St. Albans, and Bedford, and The Lost Forest went to Malvern Festival of Storytelling, Applecart Arts in London, and Westacre Theatre in King’s Lynn…… with both shows continuing to tour into 2024.

Anna completed the year by working for a fifth Christmas season performing outdoor nighttime lanterns for Wild Rumpus – this time not at Chester Zoo but instead at Tatton Park – where she operated the yule goat most of her evenings, seeing out the year in festive spirit.

Wishing everyone a much belated Happy New Year 2024 – and a happy Springtime, with continued hope for a more peaceful, humane and understanding world.

Anna Ingleby, March 2024

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And… it feels like puppets versus climate change as we blend traditional performance with digital technologies to widen audience access to our environmentally themed shows.

A mesmerising performance for young children, The Lost Forest takes vital concerns around climate change and weaves a fun and dynamic show. Integrating the age-old tradition of Wayang Golek (colourful rod puppets from West Java, Indonesia), stunning rainforest projections, shadow theatre and an original musical score, the show highlights the issues around deforestation and loss of animal habitats.

Inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s classic book, Jungle Book (originally directed by Steve Tiplady) is a vibrant adaptation exploring themes of love, identity, and the natural world. Brought to life through shadow puppet theatre, original music and colourful digital projections; the show follows the life of Mowgli the ‘man-cub’ as he fearlessly faces danger whilst finding fun and friendships along the way.

Indigo Moon Theatre’s two key aims were to refresh the way the shows address issues around climate change and sustainability, and to be more ambitious in our approach to accessibility.

Our performances, workshop programme and e-resources will use puppetry as a stimulus to engage young people with issues around climate change and enable audiences to see how they can make a difference. To help us achieve this we are taking advice and support from experts on Google Classroom, sustainability and accessibility.

With funding from Arts Council England, we are estimated to reach over 2,000 live audience members and more than 3,000 by integrating Google Classroom resources and online content, accessible via our social media profiles.

We aim to entertain, inspire and raise awareness and in this day and age there’s no reason anyone should miss out!

That’s why we are working with the various venues, accessibility groups, schools and community groups to bring both shows to as wide an audience as possible. The key age group is children aged 4 to 11 years but we hope the global message behind our shows will be appreciated by all ages.

If you are interested to know more and / or to book a performance Contact Us

For tour dates, see What’s On

The image above shows: L-R front, Indigo Moon Theatre’s Anna Ingleby and Haviel Perdana with L-R back, Steve Stevenson (filming), Susanna Samanek (puppet designs) and Hal Neumann (new IMT trainee creative technician).

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As founder (and still co-director) of Beverley Puppet Festival, (along with other festival co-director Kerrin Tatman and the team), Anna was kept very busy for large chunks of 2022 in the run up to this festival in July, as well as its aftermath. It was the biggest edition yet – involving 41 companies in just one weekend! – however Indigo Moon Theatre did manage to perform SeedHeart at the festival too, and, as a local company, was one of those involved in the festival’s largest ever Outreach project. In our case we took SeedHeart and workshops to four local East Riding of Yorkshire schools, which brought the festival to audiences who may otherwise have missed out. We were delighted that in November the festival was awarded a Remarkable Hull and East Yorkshire tourism award for the second time – as best small tourism event, reaching over 10,000 people!

Meanwhile Indigo Moon Theatre received funding from Arts Council England and Hull City Council for phase two of SeedHeart – to refine the show with Steve Tiplady and Haviel Perdana and to develop it while reaching local audiences. This meant that we were able to deliver the show and associated workshops to 20 local schools and libraries, mainly in Hull, between March and November, and to develop future marketing strategies with the support of Darren Walter and Pablo Colella.   SeedHeart also featured at the Big Malarkey festival in Hull, but before that went to London in January (Enfield and Poplar), later followed by the Puppet Animation Festival in Scotland in April ( Dumfries, Aberdeen, Cumbernauld and New Galloway), followed by Wath-upon Dearne (near Rotherham) and later Scunthorpe, Hemel Hempstead, Knaresborough Wellness Festival and Great Malvern Festival of Stories – not forgetting Anna’s first solo performance outside the UK in October – when SeedHeart attended an international festival of theatre for young people, in Iasi (pronounced Yash), Romania.

Mermarella also swam again, (with Frances Allison) at the Isle of Wight Children’s Festival and at the Memo Arts Centre in Barry, Wales. We also shared our shadow theatre skills in our first ever self-hosted shadow theatre masterclass at our production base at Hull Scrapstore in February, and in August at Goole Junction Haviel and Anna led two weeks of summer shadow theatre residencies for children – as part  of the healthy food programme in the East Riding of Yorkshire.

Just as we thought we were going to take a rest; a very exciting commission came in and kept us busy between August – October, involving Anna Ingleby, Haviel Perdana and Susanna Samanek. We hope that we will be able to disclose what this was by this time next year!?

In November and December, Anna was delighted to join the team for Wild Rumpus again in delivering the Lanterns at Chester Zoo (for her fourth season, this time with team wolf, mainly operating a wolf cub, created by the artful Alison Duddle :). She took leave early however, to deliver a five-day residency at Wentworth Castle Gardens for the National Trust and Barnsley Council  just before Christmas, with SeedHeart performed twice daily –  while Manju Gregory braved the cold outside the conservatory and engaged many families with our interactive shadow theatre gazebo. Lots of people enjoyed pulling strings, changing scenery and discovering exciting shadows with weird and wonderful shadow creatures!

2022 has felt like a momentously busy year!

We thank all our audiences, partners, friends, funders and associates for all your support and wish you a very happy new year in 2023  – and here’s hoping our paths converge again soon!

Anna Ingleby, January 2023

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Find out where Grey will be – What’s On

A bit about Indigo Moon Theatre:

Indigo Moon Theatre productions bring to life marionettes, rod puppets, shadow theatre along with acting and live music to share stories with the audience. Our colourful and immersive productions stand alone for entertainment value and also tackle subjects such as the environment, tolerance and international understanding.

As well as creating productions, Indigo Moon Theatre offers insightful and unique workshops for both children and adults. From puppet making and shadow theatre techniques to specialist training sessions for teachers, our experienced company members help enhance curriculum targets and bring a truly unique experience into school.

We’ve taken our productions around theatres, festivals and schools around the UK and overseas and continue to do so to this day. We also love collaborating with other companies and take commissions or offer consultancy for special events, film, media & TV.

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Beverley has long been a town of sanctuary since the Middle Ages. Famous sanctuary stones stand at its edges and a towering Minster at its heart, marking an ancient boundary line where fugitives could seek shelter from the law. Today, Beverley remains a town of sanctuary but of a different kind – as a safe place to live and work; as a place to escape away to on holiday; as a place of creative sanctuary – a town filled with arts and culture.

For the online Beverley Puppet Festival in 2020, we created a pilot outreach project with care home & sheltered housing residents in Beverley. This consisted of a mini shadow theatre kit being left with a staff member for residents in each home – complete with lamp, torch, puppets, reflective items & scenery. Remote advice was offered, and an online tutorial, but due to lockdown it was really the proactive staff member in each place who made the project happen. Photos and video clips were sent back to Beverley Puppet Festival, which can be viewed in the Beverley Puppet Festival Participant Gallery.

In 2021, in partnership with Beverley Minster, this project developed into “Sanctuary in Creativity” – reaching not only the care homes but also partnering up with local primary schools to form intergenerational friendships and develop stories, using the Minster’s Sanctuary films as conversation starters. These films were re-enactments of the stories of mediaeval fugitives who came to Beverley. With some help from Ali Bodley, Beverley Minster’s Outreach officer of that time, three schools were engaged who were paired up with four residential homes. We created six mini shadow theatre kits to extend on the successful model of the 2020 remote Education project – and extra puppets were added to the existing kits of two care homes who took part again. The pre-made puppets served as examples to show how further ones could be made.

Residents at Figham House, (under the guidance of Elaine Ablett), exchanged letters with year 5 children at Swanland Primary School, (thanks to Lisa Martin), and their memories inspired the children’s puppet show.

Year 2 children at Keldmarsh Primary School (under the guidance of Kellee Osborne) performed a story about knights and dragons which New House (under the guidance of Amber Sutcliffe) then developed with their own local twist.

Year 6 children at Cavendish Primary School (with Karen Richardson) and residents of Claremont House (with Megan Furniss), and Town View (with Sarah Van Rijn) all participated too.

Due to the current circumstances, Indigo Moon Theatre were unable to visit like in pre-pandemic times, (other from assisting with filming at Cavendish school’s final session), so all the credit for this work must go to the participants and their proactive staff members. A massive thank you to all who overcame obstacles of illness, hospital operations, staff shortages, difficult visitor rotas, quarantines and lockdown restrictions – constantly shifting sand, etc!).

The month-long display at Beverley Minster showed some of the participants’ own puppets, along with video clips and photos. During that month Beverley Minster received 5,996 visitors.

We also exhibited an example shadow theatre kit as used in the schools and care homes, this proved to be particularly popular with visitors.

The display was launched with a socially distanced family activity morning attended by 54 people –who made shadow puppets and acetate projected backgrounds. It was a carefully regimented but joyful event – as maximum six families per half hour were socially distanced, provided with the materials they needed at each table, then watched the videos and tried out their creations behind a screen.

Due to the shifting sands of the pandemic restrictions, it was a very difficult time to engage more than a small handful of schools and care homes in this project. Schools were suffering from whole class bubbles being suddenly sent home at any time, and care homes had staffing shortages due to many self-isolating – also because the reintroduction of family member visits under very strict rules meant much reduced activity time for any staff members involved. Nevertheless, we found this work to be extremely valuable at this time in lighting up people’s lives. Those who were able to participate thoroughly enjoyed it and gained confidence through it.

It was frustrating as an artist to not be able to go in and deliver in the same way as would have been possible in person, because at the end of the day artistic expertise shared in person can never really be properly replaced – only touched upon. However, this project enabled existing relationships to be developed and new ones to be forged.

The remote shadow theatre kits are still in the possession of the schools and care homes as an ongoing resource for future participants to continue enjoying. All the teachers have expressed an interest in doing this, and, subject to staffing issues, we are hoping the residential homes may do so too.

Links are still on the Beverley Puppet Festival website for any of these schools and residential homes to continue sharing their creations should they want to – and on the same page a link to the original tutorial video from 2020 remains available for anyone – including any new staff using the kits of both 2020 and 2021.

Many thanks to our funders Arts Council England and Beverley Town Council and to our partners Beverley Minster and all of the schools and care homes for making this project possible!

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Recently we teamed up with renowned UK jazz singer Beverley Beirne to help create a very special music video for her single, Winter Moon, a track on her album Dream Dancer (released July 2021).

Creating this music video for Winter Moon was an amazing process; created during lockdown in Autumn 2020, Indigo Moon Theatre founder Anna Ingleby single-handedly filmed and performed the full music video with character puppets by Susanna Samanek, and the video later edited by Kerrin Atman. Using shadow theatre we tell the story of a lady remembering and missing her lover from the summer. And the landscapes and environments are inspired by the Yorkshire Moors!

In July 2021, Winter Moon was featured as part of Shadows Across the Globe festival! Shadows Across The Globe is San Diego’s first online international shadow puppetry festival and we were honoured to be featured as part of the festival line up with other amazing shadow theatre makers from around the world!

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Interested in working with us on a bespoke project? Simply get in touch!

MUSIC CREDITS: 

Voice: Beverley Beirne

Piano: Sam Watts

Bass: Flo Moore

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Take That Live (also known as the III Tour) opened in Glasgow at the SSE Hydro and continued to tour the UK and Europe through 2015. We were excited to be part of this amazing stage show providing shadow theatre consultancy for this huge performance!

SHOW CREDITS: 

Shadow Theatre Consultancy: Indigo Moon Theatre

Creative Director: Kim Gavin

Production Director: Chris Vaughan

Lighting Designer: Tim Routledge

Set Designer: Misty Buckley

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Interested in working with us on an event or large scale performance? Simply get in touch!

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One of our exciting television opportunities was with BBC’s hit British period crime drama television, Peaky Blinders, you can see our work at the beginning of season 2, episode 3!

SHOW CREDITS:

Written & Created: Steven Knight

Directed: Colm McCarthy

Shadow Theatre Consultancy: Indigo Moon Theatre

Starring: Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Sam Neil

Production Design: Grant Montgomery

Photograph & Lighting: Simon Dennis

Additionally, Anna has contributed to other film and TV work from as far back as 1995 for various production companies both large and small including Storymakers for CBBC, BBC Knowledge and Cosprop. Haviel has a long track record of high profile film and TV work in Indonesia from the early 80s prior to joining Indigo Moon Theatre.

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Interested in working with us on a film or TV production? Simply get in touch!

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