The Puppet Theatre Barge is a unique, fifty-seat

marionette theatre A marionette (; french: marionnette, ) is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a marionettist. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed ...

on a converted barge in London. The theatre presents

puppet shows Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance that involves the manipulation of puppets – wikt:inanimate, inanimate objects, often resembling some type of human or animal figure, that are animated or manipulated by a human called a puppeteer. S ...

for children and adults and is moored in

Little Venice Little Venice is a district in West London, England, around the junction of the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal, the Regent's Canal, and the entrance to Paddington Basin. The junction forms a triangular shape basin. Many of the buildi ...

throughout the year and in

Richmond-upon-Thames The London Borough of Richmond upon Thames () in southwest London forms part of Outer London and is the only London borough on both sides of the River Thames. It was created in 1965 when three smaller council areas amalgamated under the London ...

during the summer. The company produces shows taken from traditional children’s tales such as the

Brer Rabbit Br'er Rabbit (an abbreviation of ''Brother Rabbit'', also spelled Brer Rabbit) is a central figure in an oral tradition passed down by African-Americans of the Southern United States and African descendants in the Caribbean, notably Afro-Baham ...

stories,

Aesop's Fables Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to ...

and original work featuring

Punch Punch commonly refers to: * Punch (combat), a strike made using the hand closed into a fist * Punch (drink), a wide assortment of drinks, non-alcoholic or alcoholic, generally containing fruit or fruit juice Punch may also refer to: Places * Pun ...

, as well as drama by writers such as

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

and

Federico García Lorca Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936), known as Federico García Lorca ( ), was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblemat ...

, and has also commissioned original plays from contemporary published writers, such as

Wendy Cope Wendy Cope (born 21 July 1945) is a contemporary English poet. She read history at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She now lives in Ely, Cambridgeshire, with her husband, the poet Lachlan Mackinnon. Biography Cope was born in Erith in Kent (n ...

Howard Barker Howard Barker (born 28 June 1946) is a British playwright, screenwriter and writer of radio drama, painter, poet, and essayist writing predominantly on playwriting and the theatre. The author of an extensive body of dramatic works since the 197 ...

and

Finuala Dowling Finuala Dowling (born June 1962) is a South African poet and writer. Biography The seventh of eight children born to radio broadcasters Eve van der Byl and Paddy Dowling, Finuala Dowling obtained an MA in English from the University of Cape Tow ...

History

Gren Middleton and Juliet Rogers formed Movingstage Marionette Company in 1979. After a couple of years touring marionette shows, Middleton and Rogers bought an old 80 ft Thames lighter of riveted iron construction, built in the 1930s and converted it into a double-bridge string marionette theatre. The Puppet Theatre Barge was opened to the public on 28 January 1982 at Camden Lock in north London. Its first performance was The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, by

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poe ...

.In 1988, the barge moved to the basin at Little Venice, near Paddington. The first two summer tours, in 1982 and 1983, were undertaken up the

Grand Union Canal The Grand Union Canal in England is part of the British canal system. It is the principal navigable waterway between London and the Midlands. Starting in London, one arm runs to Leicester and another ends in Birmingham, with the latter st ...

, performing at Pitstone Wharf in Buckinghamshire, over the Tring summit. From 1984 until 2008 the barge toured every summer up the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, se ...

, performing daily shows as far upstream as

Sandford-on-Thames Sandford-on-Thames, also referred to as simply Sandford, is a village and Parish Council beside the River Thames in Oxfordshire just south of Oxford. The village is just west of the A4074 road between Oxford and Henley. Early history In 108 ...

, near Oxford. Over the years, the barge staged performances at Abingdon, Wallingford,

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of Letter (alphabet), letters, symbols, etc., especially by Visual perception, sight or Somatosensory system, touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process invo ...

Henley-upon-Thames Henley-on-Thames ( ) is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in Oxfordshire, England, northeast of Reading, west of Maidenhead, southeast of Oxford and west of London (by road), near the tripoint of Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buc ...

, Marlow,

Cliveden Cliveden (pronounced ) is an English country house and estate in the care of the National Trust in Buckinghamshire, on the border with Berkshire. The Italianate mansion, also known as Cliveden House, crowns an outlying ridge of the Chiltern H ...

Windsor Windsor may refer to: Places Australia * Windsor, New South Wales ** Municipality of Windsor, a former local government area * Windsor, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland **Shire of Windsor, a former local government authority around Wi ...

and

Walton-upon-Thames Walton-on-Thames, locally known as Walton, is a market town on the south bank of the Thames in the Elmbridge borough of Surrey, England. Walton forms part of the Greater London built-up area, within the KT postcode and is served by a wide ran ...

. In 1995, Juliet Rogers designed

News Bunny News Bunny was station mascot of the short-lived UK TV Station L!VE TV, under its publicity-seeking boss Kelvin MacKenzie. Role During news bulletins an extra dressed as a giant rabbit would stand behind the news presenter, and mime actions re ...

, the station mascot for the short-lived UK TV Station

LIVE TV Live television is a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. In a secondary meaning, it may refer to streaming television over the Internet when content or programming is played continuously (not on demand) ...

. Since 2009, the barge has put on shows in Little Venice from October to June and spent the summer months, between mid-July and mid-October moored at

. Three generations of the Middleton family are involved in running the theatre. In 2017, theatre critic Darren Luke Mawdsley visited the Puppet Theatre Barge to watch The Flight of Babuscha Baboon. He described his visit as, '...a pleasure; an example of the rich and diverse arts offering that our fabulous city has to offer.' On 17 October 2020, the Puppet Theatre Barge received a grant of £52,352 from the

Culture Recovery Fund The Culture Recovery Fund is a grants programme issued by the UK Government as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The fund aims to financially support cultural organisations in England (such as theatres, museums, and music venues) which had bec ...

to support a staged reopening following its closure during the

Covid-19 Pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

Repertoire

*''

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'' is a late 14th-century chivalric romance in Middle English. The author is unknown; the title was given centuries later. It is one of the best-known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of f ...

'' (1979) *'' Bottom’s Dream'' (1980) *''The Birdman'' (1981) *'' The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner'' (1982) *''

Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby The Tar-Baby is the second of the Uncle Remus stories published in 1881; it is about a doll made of tar and turpentine used by the villainous Br'er Fox to entrap Br'er Rabbit. The more that Br'er Rabbit fights the Tar-Baby, the more entangl ...

'' (1982) *''The Magic Box'' (1983) *''

Thomas the Rhymer Sir Thomas de Ercildoun, better remembered as Thomas the Rhymer (fl. c. 1220 – 1298), also known as Thomas Learmont or True Thomas, was a Scottish laird and reputed prophet from Earlston (then called "Erceldoune") in the Borders. Thomas ...

'' (1984) *'' The Butterfly’s Spell'' (1985) *'' The Tempest'' (1987) *''The Flight of Babuscha Baboon'' (1988) *'' The River Girl'' (1989) *'' Tales from Aesop'' (1990) *'' A Shipful of Verse'' (1992) *'' All He Fears'' (1993) *''The Picture Stick'' (1995) *''

Red Riding Hood "Little Red Riding Hood" is a European fairy tale about a young girl and a sly wolf. Its origins can be traced back to several pre-17th century European folk tales. The two best known versions were written by Charles Perrault and the Brothe ...

'' (1996) *'' Brer Rabbit visits Africa'' (1997) *''Captain Grimey and the

Three Little Pigs "The Three Little Pigs" is a fable about three pigs who build three houses of different materials. A Big Bad Wolf blows down the first two pigs' houses which made of straw and sticks respectively, but is unable to destroy the third pig's house ...

'' (1998) *''

Macbeth ''Macbeth'' (, full title ''The Tragedie of Macbeth'') is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those w ...

'' (1999) Voice by

Toby Stephens Toby Stephens (born 21 April 1969) is an English actor who has appeared in films in the UK, US and India. He is known for the roles of Bond villain Gustav Graves in the 2002 James Bond film ''Die Another Day'' (for which he was nominated for the ...

Music by

Andrew Ranken The Pogues were an English or Anglo-Irish Celtic punk band fronted by Shane MacGowan and others, founded in Kings Cross, London in 1982, as "Pogue Mahone" – the anglicisation of the Irish Gaelic ''póg mo thóin'', meaning "kiss my arse". ...

*'' Millennium Mischief – Joey’s Fireworks'' (2000) *'' The Swing at Night'' (2001) *''

Manfred ''Manfred: A dramatic poem'' is a closet drama written in 1816–1817 by Lord Byron. It contains supernatural elements, in keeping with the popularity of the ghost story in England at the time. It is a typical example of a Gothic fiction. Byr ...

'' (2002) *''

The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse" is one of Aesop's Fables. It is number 352 in the Perry Index and type 112 in Aarne–Thompson's folk tale index. Like several other elements in Aesop's fables, 'town mouse and country mouse' has become a ...

'' (2003) *'' Out of the Heart of Darkness'' (2005) *''Footprints in the Wilderness'' (2008), inspired by

Ian Player Ian Cedric Audley Player DMS (15 March 1927 – 30 November 2014) was a South African international conservationist. Biography Born in Johannesburg, Player was educated at St. John's College, Johannesburg, Union of South Africa and serve ...

*''

A Christmas Carol ''A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas'', commonly known as ''A Christmas Carol'', is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. ''A Christmas C ...

'' (2008) *''The Money Game'' (2011) *''Fowl Play'' (2013) *''End Games'' (2015), based on

's poetry *''

The Red Balloon ''The Red Balloon'' (french: Le ballon rouge) is a 1956 French fantasy comedy-drama featurette written, produced, and directed by Albert Lamorisse. The thirty-four-minute short, which follows the adventures of a young boy who one day finds a se ...

'' (2022) * ''The Hare and the Tortoise'' (2022)

References

External links

Official website: Puppet Barge

Suspense London Puppetry Festival
* Patron: Michael Palin {{LB Richmond 1982 establishments in England Barges Puppet theaters Theatres in the City of Westminster Theatres in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames Maida Vale