Frankie Moon

Before the moon sang

The moon was made in Athens during lockdown. Well, at least this moon of mine was. Made from willow, wet-strength tissue paper and a little paint.

Originally made as a transition prop for interludes of three short puppet shows. I successfully got a commission to perform a live stream, ‘scratch show’ for Beverley Puppet Festival in the summer of 2020, when live events had moved online. I was living in Athens in an apartment with a large room that we transformed into a puppet theatre. One show wasn’t enough; I had to do three: ‘The Owl And The Pussy Cat‘ by Edward Lear, performed with friends; ‘The Woodcock and the Goldcrest’, a story I wrote and performed with Andrianna Avdi and a shadow puppet adaptation of ‘The Clever Fox’ by Aesop.

The following year, I participated in a Virtual Puppet Residency: A fabulous, six-week course of critique and discussion with a live-stream performance. My show was ‘Eddie The Elf‘ based on a true childhood memory performed in a teapot. This also featured my moon.

Times passed and I moved back to Sheffield. The moon sadly stayed behind in Athens and all I had was a photo.

Big it up!

Helping my friend Steve Pool with his large projections got me thinking and I had the idea of projecting my moon. 

Jon Harrison’s an animator. A brilliant one. (See here: www.jonharrison.com) We’d worked together on ‘Residue Dolls‘ and he’d brought my puppets to life with his animation wizardry. I asked Jon if he could take a look at my moon, make it blink, wink and smile. He did, and he said he could also get it to sing! What a thrill, a singing moon! But the video didn’t have any music, so I talked to my friend Jo Veal.

Jo plays the clarinet and can improvise to just about anything, including Frank Sinatra’s ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ And with this, I did my first projection! As always, with a little help from my friends.

Here’s a short video of the moon projection

In the deep Mid-Winter

Where I live, we have an annual Mid-Winter Window Trail. It’s a bit like an advent calendar but on people’s windows at home. Jo and myself ran workshops at Abbeyfield House for three days, time enough to decorate the big window there. (This was our fourth year). We completed it on 22nd December and celebrated by projecting the moon and a few other short videos I’ve made on the side of the building, with Jo playing along with her clarinet and folk singing along. What a delight!

It was pretty cold that evening, but a few people came, which was lovely. 

I’ll try this again sometime and invite more people along. I also want to incorporate live shadow puppetry so it’s more interactive and engaging. Always new things to try!