The first ever "Liverpool Improvisation Festival" organised by Wing It Impro at The Unity Theatre
Puppets conceived and created by Alice Rowbottom for "Talk to the Hand" & Wing it Impro
Rehearsals for "Talk to the Hand" at LJMU for the Liverpool Improvisation Festival. Puppeteers Aisling Leyne & Lisa Chae
Reading up on the rules of Improv before the big show. Puppeteers Aisling Leyne and Chris Murray
Getting in the zone. Puppeteered by Aisling Leyne and Chris Murray
Purple wins the Puppet-Off to star in the live show. Puppeteers from L-R Lisa Chae, Trev Fleming, Chris Murray & Aisling Leyne
The Interview to set the story during the live show: Interviewer Trev Fleming. Jo puppeteered by Alice Rowbottom & Lisa Chae.
Fast Puppets. All the bits to make characters during the live show as ideas come from the interview and the unfolding story
Aisling Leyne & Chris Murray create the opening scene, inspired by the interview, with Claire (R) and her downtrodden suitor (L)
Our protagonist, Jo the water mover of Atlantis (R), arrives. Puppeteered by Alice Rowbottom. Moving water by Trev Fleming
Enter the villains: Tory land lovers hoping to profit by freezing Atlantis. Scene by Aisling Leyne & Trev Fleming
The onland fridge shop. Scene by Lisa Chae (L) Trev Flaming (M) & Aisling Leyne (R)
The overworked onland fridge mover. Puppeteered by Aisling Leyne
Scene by Trev Fleming (L) Aisling Leyne (M) and Lisa Chae (R)
Alice Rowbottom, Aisling Leyne & Chris Murray finish the story with Jo (L) Claire (M) & the president of Atlantis (R)
And finally back to Jo & the interview to end the show. Puppeteered by Alice Rowbottom and Lisa Chae
Visual Minutes of "Talk to the Hand" company preparing for the live premiere at Unity Two. Visual minutes by Jason Kelly
Director Mark Smith from Wing It Impro and Jo relax after the show. Puppeteered by Lisa Chae & Alice Rowbottom
Talk to the Hand was a collaboration with Wing It Impro to experiment with puppet improv & to share our findings, in show form, for the first ever Liverpool Improvisation Festival.
The show brought together seasoned improvisers Mark Smith and Trev Fleming with puppeteers Myself, Alice Rowbottom, Chris Murray and Lisa Chae.
In rehearsals we worked out some rules of play based on both improv and puppet techniques and performed for a packed live audience at The Unity Theatre in April 2023.
Our director, Mark Smith, asked the audience for a location, a problem and a character flaw for our tabletop puppet protagonist Jo.
With these suggestions in hand Jo was interviewed in order to lay out key story points from which we would go back and see how events unfolded.
Story glove puppets were created on the spot from a collection of gloves, eyeballs, hair and costume bits, allowing us to create characters fast according to the situations unfolding.
The tale that unfolded was one of water, political scheming, love, sneezing & fridges, finishing back at the interview with our puppet protagonist Jo.
Photographs by Andrew AB Photography | Show photographs by Andrew Ness Photographer
Robin Winter for "The Reviews Hub" (★★★★) said:
Talk to the Hand is great fun, highly skilled and very funny. It had real moments of horror as one character was torn from limb to limb and seeing a set of eyeballs floating to the bottom of the sea will live long in the memory. The work is not something I have seen before, and this makes a refreshing change. It wasn’t flawless as there were moments where the action briefly stalled as puppets were being dressed between scenes, but this is a minor note. I highly recommend that you catch this show if you can. As Smith stated in the introduction this was an experiment and as such it works extremely well. Talk to the Hand is playful puppetry with an improv twist and this marriage of artforms works brilliantly
