Curious George - Derby
Curious George is the Derby Champion, and he has had an exciting year, being the first of the Champions to set up a Facebook profile.
George appeared at the Derby Carnival on 18th July where he danced for approximately 10, 000 people, and was captured on film for the BBC local news website. He has made a big impact in the community, especially on the young people who operate him.
Peter Bid, a young person in Derby, says:
“Before working with George the Derby champion, my perceptions of puppetry were very stereotypical. I associated puppetry with dolls on strings like I had seen as a kid so when I saw George for the first time and operated him, I was very astonished at the sheer levels of complexities that puppetry had. Operating George was very interesting from a technical side when looking at ways of movement. Whilst operating George I found that puppetry linked to sport. This is as I found to get the most realistic technique and movement from George the team of operators has to consider not just the movement of the specific body part but also how the rest of body parts move in correlation to the one that is being moved. This is very similar to what I have to consider when I play football in Sunday league to improve the techniques of my dribbling and shooting. So working with George helped me build a greater understanding of movement, which I have since used in sport.
Working with George also improved my understandings of movement in drama. It allowed me to see that if a scene is to appear natural then there must always be a movement even a slight movement to display realism to the audience. Also whilst working in the carnival with George I learnt not to get distracted by the audience and to remain focused on my performance. This was very helpful as although I have performed in front of audiences in sport and music I had never performed in front of an audience for a drama performance and I had certainly never done anything in front of an audience as big as the one of the carnival in my life.
Most importantly though I found working with a George the Derby Champion a fun and very enjoyable experience. I also take pride in the fact that I was able to perform at the carnival with him. I would certainly love to work with him in the future.”
