Hamish the Hedgehurst
Note: if any of the cast/crew/staff etc want higher resolution copies of the photos, do email me on mail@nancyfarmer.net and I'll send them... Oh yeah, and most importantly, thanks for being great fun to work with!
Nancy
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Bridgwater Arts Centre's Community Pantomime, 2007
For those of you who haven't noticed yet... I was asked many months ago to do the costumes, and design and paint the scenery for the Arts Centre's pantomime this year. So for some time I have largely abandoned my teeny tiny paintbrushes, to work with a sewing machine, glue, house-painting brushes, and a huge stack of hoarded materials I always knew would come in handy one day...
The story takes it's name from a tale by Duncan Williamson, but appears in the Brothers Grimm fairytales, as well, except that the half-hedgehog boy is called Hans. Predictably it starts with a wish - along the lines of "I wish I had a child, even if it was as ugly as that hedgehog there"... always a mistake, when the Bad Fairies are listening... but it all comes out alright in the end... there's a princess, a wise woman, and the curse gets broken etc, etc...
The Panto was created by Clive Pig and the Cast, the scenery built by Marcus Dearden and painted by me... there was a cave, too, built by Gerry, but sadly I forgot to get a photo of it. Costumes were made by me, or borrowed, or adapted.... except for the Sprites and Sprits masks, and the crowns, which were made by Hazel and Karen.... and I just can't list everyone who did stuff, but loads of people were involved and it was superb fun (though a little scary at times).
The performances were brilliant, but I have very few photos of those since I was backstage. I think I've got almost all the cast in here, but I'm sorry if I didn't manage to get everyone. Also, I cannot find the programme, with the cast list in it, so I apologies for not putting people's names up yet, but I won't manage to get them all right from memory so I'm not even going to start.
Muckelberry Mary, a very convincing mad (wise) woman! Costume made of some of the sewing disasters and hopeful bits of material I have collected over the years...
I was rather pleased with the wedding dress, above - made from little more than about 17 metres of bubblewrap (in 3 layers), and quite a lot of silver glitter
All the good Sprites and bad Sprites.
"Prickle and Feather, friends for ever".
The Cockerel was of course modeled on Hector, who lives in my garden. Here's Hector for comparison (below) - quite a good likeness, I thought... Sadly I could find no hedgehog to model for me, but I think the foam rubber spikes made a pretty good impression.
