PLAYING a crocodile called Miss Lily is all in a day’s work for Spare Parts Puppet Theatre performer Bec Bradley.
“I’ve done quite a bit of vocal training which has helped as she’s quite a dame,” Bradley, of Fremantle, said.
“She’s very dramatic and enormous as she’s a body and rod puppet the size of me; I wear her with a harness that I attach to my body.
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READ NOW“This show is one of the most energetic I’ve done here and it’s like doing a fitness class every time.”
Bradley is in a cast of three presenting Miss Lily’s Fabulous Feather Boa, based on the book by Margaret Wild, during January school holidays.
It is the return season for the 45-minute production, having premiered in 2012 with a different cast.
“It’s set in Miss Lily’s tropical holiday guest house,” Bradley said.
“A family of wombats and a family of koalas come to stay and a lone potoroo arrives who is very shy and feeling quite lonely, believing he is the last potoroo.”
Miss Lily’s feather boa provides the potoroo with a sense of wonder and confidence when she performs a dance for her guests.
“It’s a beautiful story about friendship, self-belief, thinking about your actions and consequences,” Bradley said.
“Although it’s full of Australian animals and themes, it’s a play about the human condition.”
Bradley said Wild had created such vivid and well-portrayed characters in her book through the drawings and narrative that it had been easy to translate them into puppets.
“There is a lot of humour in the show, the other two performers (Shane Adamczack and Nick Pages-Oliver) are very skilled comedians, both perform with The Big HOO-HAA! and their ability to play caricature characters and make the audience laugh is really high,” she said.
“So between the characters we portray and the nature of the story with all the movement, music and lights, the audiences just seem to enjoy it and come out quite energised afterwards.
“It makes it a lot of fun for us to perform.”
THE ESSENTIALS
What: Miss Lily’s Fabulous Feather Boa
Where: Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, Fremantle
When: January 4 to 30
Tickets: www.sppt.asn.au