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