Photo: Supplied
The adventurous Spike Milligan tale has been elevated to classic status across generations and this year Badjelly the Witch turns 50. It took six months of back and forth with Playmarket and Milligan’s estate to secure the rights to take Badjelly to stage.
Creative Director of The Glow Show, Sarah Burren handmade all the stage costumes and developed an original blend of music, puppetry, science and darkness to 30 venues across Aotearoa throughout the July and October school holidays.
The large crew has the pack down polished, folding away large two and three-dimensional glowing puppets and all of the stage gear into a two tonne truck that travels extensively across the country.
Having the right puppeteers to take this New Zealand production to the stage is essential.
“First of all they are artists and athletes, they are brilliant voice artists. You wouldn't believe the other characters Badjelly does, because Hamish Davies is so good at voice work. Which they all are, but it's trickery because half the time there are two people operating one puppet.
Glow Show Badjelly the Witch Photo: LK Creative
Burren hopes to inspire young people to come into the theatre world by showing them the magic that is created when theatre transforms imaginations. She wants to scale-up the production and get more funding to grow the show into a feat not dissimilar to Cirque Du Soleil.
The Glow Show Company are on tour throughout the North Island in July and the South Island in October.
