Yorkshire Festival of Story includes many new brilliant commissions to celebrate the 150th anniversary of The Ribblehead Viaduct. Lois Conlan created a shadow play film which you can view here. We caught up with Lois to chat about her work.
Q. Tell us a bit about yourself. How did you get into shadow puppetry?
I studied Fine Art at University in London and went on to work at a photographers. I realised that I didn’t enjoy that as much as I had hoped and so was looking for something else to do. It was then that I discovered The Little Angel Theatre (a puppet theatre) was just down the road from my home, so I started volunteering there at weekends. It was from here that I became interested in puppetry. What I love particularly about shadow puppetry is that it can be done cheaply and simply but still be very effective
Q. Do you find that shadow puppetry tells a story differently?
As a story is told only through shadow it allows the viewer to fill in the blanks with their own imagination, evoking a dream like quality and mysticism.
Q. How has it been taking this performance to an online film?
It has had its challenges as I have previously only created shadow puppet shows for live performances and not recorded them. The main difficulty was learning about the technical differences and how light reacted to the camera. But it’s also been lovely to overcome these challenges and learn new skills. What’s also nice about it being recorded is that the piece will be able to reach a larger audience and have a longevity to it.
Q. What are you hoping your audience takes from watching?
It was great to do this project as I learnt so much about the Ribblehead viaduct. I hope that by watching this film the audience will also learn and become acquainted with the rich history of the area too, and perhaps even visit the structure for themselves.
Q. How have you implemented the beautiful landscape of the viaduct?
This was quite hard to do as I created the film during lockdown and so I couldn’t visit the site. Therefore I had to do a lot of Googling of imagery, and make sure I knew the valley from every angle to make sure it was a realistic interpretation. I also watched the ITV series Jericho. This did really help me in understanding the scale of what the navvys and their familes went through.
Q. What can we expect from this performance?
A visually impactful short film which helps to tell the story of the Ribblehead Viaduct – from its creation, to the navvies hard work and sacrifice, all the way to how the viaduct is seen nowadays.
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