By Rosie Smith, Project Archivist: Forkbeard Fantasy
As you may remember from a previous blog, Forkbeard Fantasy were known for their use of elaborate and unusual props and costumes. After a successful touring exhibition of some of these items, they established the Museum of Forkbeard in North Devon. Visitors to the museum would be given a guided tour by one of the Forkbeards as they were shown the material on display.
When we took in the Forkbeard Fantasy archive, the Theatre Collection wanted to preserve the essence of this museum. As well as making a 3D scan of the museum, we made many hours of oral history videos of Tim, Chris, Penny and Ed talking about the history of Forkbeard.
These videos were an absolute godsend to me when I first started the cataloguing project and needed to learn about Forkbeard. But there was one clip in particular that made me realise that I was going to love this job, and that was Penny talking about one of Forkbeard’s Christmas productions, The Little Match Girl. The six-legged mashed potato had me crying with laughter!
In 1997, Forkbeard were approached by Neil Bartlett of the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith to ask if Forkbeard would be interested in working on their upcoming Christmas production, The Little Match Girl. Penny set to work designing and building the sets and costumes. The set designs for this show are some of the most beautiful items in the archive. Penny went all out to bring the atmosphere of a fairy tale to life, from the cold streets of Victorian London to a massive feast, and ending with a giant Christmas tree surrounded by a staircase.
Meanwhile Tim and Chris took on various comedic roles, including angels, a knife and fork, a giant teddy bear, and many more. For these, they had to be squished into a variety of odd-shaped costumes. The knife and fork costumes required Chris and Tim to be pushed into long tube-shaped outfits that prevented them from moving their arms, before having a large headpiece placed on their heads. Sadly, while we have some great drawings of these costumes, no photographs remain in the archive. Tim also played the giant teddy bear. Here you can hear Penny explaining how the enormous costume worked.
Unfortunately, the play didn’t sell particularly well. It was intended as a show for children, but that didn’t necessarily come across to the public and the audience was mainly adults. The story also had a sad ending, which wasn’t what the audience wanted from a Christmas show. Most importantly, it reminded Forkbeard of a lesson that they had first learnt back in 1985: that they much preferred touring shows and outdoor performances to “festering Greenrooms and 12 hellish weeks stuck in London.” Back on the road they went!
In 2007, Forkbeard were commissioned to provide the “special effects and stuff” for a new adaptation of A Christmas Carol written by Simon Persighetti for the Brewhouse Theatre. Forkbeard kept the correspondence between themselves and Simon relating to this production, and it’s fascinating to see how their ideas developed. The Ghost of Christmas Present was supposed to reflect the overconsumption of food and the increase in food waste at Christmastime. While he started as a “Santa-like human”, he slowly morphed into a puppet sitting in a shopping trolley with a projected face. The knife and fork costumes from The Little Match Girl made a reappearance, as this time dancing across the stage with a giant turkey.
However, it was the Ghost of Christmas Future that was a true Forkbeard special. Using a giant screen, they back projected a film of Scrooge dancing in shadow. They then had an actor behind the screen copy the movements to create a real shadow on the screen. Using Forkbeard’s technique of ‘Breaking the Celluloid Divide’, the actor then emerged through the screen, making it appear as though the ghost had emerged from Scrooge himself. It sounds fascinating and faintly disturbing!
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I’ve mentioned before on this blog, Forkbeard planned their shows in Daler notebooks. These notebooks are a mix of show ideas, script extracts, draft correspondence, funding applications, to do lists, shopping lists, poems and doodles…everything got written in these books! Flicking through them, you can tell when Christmas was approaching, as little doodles and poems of Santa start to appear. There are a series of doodles working out how Santa would deliver presents to an underwater house. There is a satirical cartoon in which the Arts Council attempts to prevent Santa from giving performers presents (that’s their job!). There’s even a drawing of Santa trying on Mrs Claus’ outfit. As far as I’m aware, Santa never actually appeared in any of Forkbeard’s productions. Maybe it was just a matter of time…