Puppets will be popping up in some unexpected places as part of a number of new features included in Ripon Theatre Festival’s expanded programme.

Organisers have added a series of pop-up mini events throughout Ripon, working with shops, cafés and city attractions to bring puppet shows and storytelling to unusual and intimate surroundings.

This includes Puppets for Breakfast at Wetherspoon’s Unicorn Hotel, a suitcase puppet show The Hare and the Moon in the Cabmen’s shelter in the Market Place and the GreenHouse shop on North Street, and Beached, an immersive puppet show at Ripon Cathedral, where performers and audience members wear headphones for the experience.

St Wilfrid’s Crypt in the Cathedral will see Fell-Foss Theatre’s rolling performance of The Wanderer and expert storyteller Gav Cross will bring Twisted Tales for Terrible Children to the somewhat spooky Curzon Cinema Cellar and the Courthouse Museum.

The second Ripon Theatre Festival will take place from Wednesday, June 7 to Sunday, June 11, featuring four days and five nights crammed with performances and activity.

Drama highlights include visits from up-and-coming theatre companies performing in Ripon Arts Hub, a return visit from open-air specialists Illyria with their family show Robin Hood at Fountains Abbey, and a production of Sense and Sensibility in the garden at The Old Deanery.

The festival will also be welcoming BBC Radio 4 favourite and gentle Northern activist Kate Fox, and Liz Grand with her one-woman show Where’s Mrs Christie?.

Rhubarb Theatre’s A Wonderland of Games will feature as part of the free family fun in Spa Gardens on Sunday June 11.

There are many festival events for children and families. In addition to shows at Ripon Library on Thursday and Friday , there will be street theatre, walkabout acts and pop-up performances throughout the weekend.

Circus, street theatre and community combine on Saturday at two performance zones, the Market Place and Minster Gardens (adjacent to Ripon Cathedral). Featured entertainment includes a comic escapology show from The Maniax and Dizzy O’Dare’s award-winning Giant Balloon Show.

Spa Gardens will be the focus of free family-friendly theatre and puppetry on Sunday June 11. The festival promises a “boredom-free zone” with visits from Hoglets Theatre, Rhubarb Theatre, Frolicked and Strange-Twig Theatre, alongside music and dance from community performers. A highlight of day will be performances of A La Puppet Carte when three electric tricycles open up to reveal three heart-warming puppet shows from Thingumajig Theatre.

Festival characters and performers will also visit Sunday’s Little Bird Artisan Market, adding additional colour and fun in the Market Place.

Thanks to the support of local businesses and key funders, much of the Festival is totally free to enjoy and ticketed events are low-cost.

Festival director Katie Scott said:

“We are delighted that this year we are offering many performances as ‘pay what you can’ events. We know that families in particular are feeling the financial crunch and this allows ticket purchasers to select their chosen amount or to opt for a free ticket. This is also a way of encouraging people to come to multiple performances by spreading their budget and trying different shows in different venues.”

The Ripon Theatre Festival programme also includes Overblown! a community-led evening of sketches and music, a premiere performance of work by local poet Ian Gouge, a musical travelogue for Sunday brunch from Steve Bonham, and Bread is Life – a lunchtime meze event where both Syrian stories and food will be shared. The festival opens on Wednesday, June 7 with dystopian comedy Happy Place at Ripon Arts Hub.

Red Ladder’s production of The Damned United, about Brian Clough’s tempestuous time at Leeds United – made famous by the 2009 film starring Michael Sheen – is among the highlights at the first Ripon Theatre Festival.

The radical Leeds-based theatre company captures the feeling of incredulity, dismay, anger and disgust felt in 1974 and beyond, by Leeds fans and players alike, after Clough – who described the team as cheats – was surprisingly appointed manager.

He only lasted 44 days at Elland Road, but went on to greater things at Nottingham Forest, winning the European Cup in 1979 and 1980.

Tickets for a number of events at the festival, which takes place at indoor and outdoor venues around the city from June 23 to 26, are now on sale.

Lempen Puppet Theatre are among the family-friendly performers at the festival.

Other highlights include open-air theatre specialists Illyria, whose production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, will be staged in the cloisters at Fountains Abbey.

Ripon’s refurbished Arts Hub, with its newly-installed wheelchair lift, will play host to visits from two North Yorkshire-based touring companies, Fell-Foss Theatre and Pyramus & Thisbe Productions.

Fell-Foss will present Crusoe’s Island – described as “one man’s story of shipwreck, solitude and salvation”  as the festival’s opening night show.

A scene from Fell Foss Theatre’s production of Crusoe’s Island

Pyramus and Thisbe will be reviving their Holmes and Watson The Farewell Tour as a comic Sunday lunchtime treat.

Family-focused entertainment

Children and families will be spoilt for choice across the whole weekend.

Ripon Library will welcome back Hoglets Theatre with a twilight show for children, who are invited to come dressed for bed and to enjoy a gentle bed-time adventure with The Sleep Pirates show.

Story Craft Theatre from York also take over the library for an afternoon of crafty tales around the Heading into Space theme.

Puppetry and theatre for families feature heavily on Festival Saturday with back-to-back entertainment both indoors and outdoors across the city.

Skipton-based and internationally-respected Lempen Puppet Theatre take part in an entire day of indoor and outdoor shows and workshops in the Arts Hub, Library and at pop-up open-air locations.

Two more theatre companies with family-focused productions will be in residence in Ripon Spa Gardens for Festival Saturday – Badapple Theatre Company present their Tales from the Great Wood, followed by Strange Twig Theatre Company with Winnie and Warwick’s Magical Menagerie,

These shows sit alongside Punch and Judy puppet shows from Richmond-based Ron Wood and the day kicks off in Spa Gardens with an interactive Musical Bear Hunt for young children.

Festival director Ian Holloway said:

“We are delighted that businesses, local councils and trusts have got behind the festival to a degree that has enabled us to book a wide range of street theatre and “walkabout” acts, helping create a vibe throughout the day.”

Sunday events include pop-up dance theatre from Leeds-based ACCA ColLab to be performed in two café locations and the culmination of a Jubilee-themed living history project at the Ripon Workhouse Museum, before the Festival Finale at Fountains Abbey.

The Ripon Theatre Festival programme also includes pop-up indoor drama, spoken-word and illustrated talk events at the Curzon Cinema, The Little Ripon Bookshop and Ripon Library.

There’s also a puppet-led family trail game around the city centre and on Saturday night, a community revue of sketches and music from local writers and musicians.

The Festival opens on Thursday morning, June 23, with folk fables for grown-ups from “a unique force in storytelling”, Leeds-based Ursula Holden Gill.

A programme of free and affordable events

Sponsorship and local support means that many festival performances are free to watch and prices for ticketed shows have been kept low to encourage residents and visitors to attend multiple events across the weekend.

Ripon Theatre Festival is being organised by a team of community volunteers under its parent charity, The Ripon City Festival Trust.

In addition to main sponsor Wolseley, financial support has been provided by the Ripon BID, Specsavers, Ripon, Elstob & Elstob, MKM, F E Metcalfe along with North Yorkshire County Council, Ripon City Council and the Liz & Terry Bramall Foundation.

Support has also been provided by community groups, including  Ripon Rowels Rotary Club, the Charity Pantomime Group and the Ripon Recycling Fund.

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Arts and community groups from across the city, are coming together to play a role in the new Ripon Theatre Festival

Taking place from June 23 to 26, the festival aims to brighten the open spaces and venues in the city with professional and community performances.

Plans include puppetry, dance, drama, street theatre, storytelling, children’s activities and family shows.

Festival director Ian Holloway and representatives from the organisations that make up the festival team, introduced themselves to an audience of 40 potential participants, volunteers and supporters at a meeting held in Ripon Arts Hub last week.

Festival team members, from the left: Ian Holloway, Tina Salden, Simon Hewitt, Katie Scott and Julia Whitham

The event is being made possible with funding from a growing number of businesses and organisations, including main sponsor Wolseley, which has been a leading employer in the Ripon area for more than half a century.

Family shows are planned for Ripon’s Spa Gardens

Volunteer Co-ordinator, Tina Salden, said:

“There are many roles for volunteers to help out as stewards and marshals or to serve refreshments, look after visiting artists or direct visitors and audiences.

Help is also needed ahead of the Festival with publicity around the region to ensure that the events are enjoyed by as many people as possible.” Anyone who missed the meeting, but who wants to get involved can contact info@ripontheatrefestival.org.

The Harrogate Competitive Festival for Music, Speech and Drama is set to return this year after a break due to covid.

The festival, which featured nearly 2,000 competitors when it was last held in full in 2019, will run over three weekends in March. The deadline for submitting entries is this Saturday.

Previous winners have gone on to perform in West End shows and compete in BBC Young Musician and BBC Radio 2 Chorister of the Year.

This year, young champions of music, speech and drama have the added incentive of a £250 prize and an invitation to a residential course in their respective disciplines.

The competition was cut short in 2020 by the first national lockdown and was cancelled in 2021.

With nearly 200 different categories to enter, festival chairman Paul Dutton hopes there is something for everyone this year:

“We have missed being part of Harrogate’s cultural legacy, it is one of the most prestigious arts events in Harrogate but, this year we are back with a bang. We really don’t want people to miss this opportunity to be part of our amazing festival.”

Paul Dutton

The festival began in 1936 as a music competition run by the borough council and a voluntary committee. Since then, the categories have expanded into speech and drama and the festival is now run entirely by volunteers as a registered charity.

The festival will take place at Harrogate High School over the first three weekends of March.

Further information is available here and hard copies of the syllabus can be found at local music shops and libraries.