Oh i do like to be beside the seaside!
Devised, Designed, Made, and Performed by Robin O’Connor Lowe and Evan Stead 2024/25
Seagull Puppeteer - Nico Venables
Tech Support - Geniveve Norridge
Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside’ is a short 20minute comedy performance created by Evan Stead and myself. This cabaret style show includes elements of dance, drag, wearable art and puppetry.
Set in the 1920s at ‘The Great British Seaside’, you meet a myriad of characters including ice cream seller/inventor and his robot wife, very wealthy and influential ladies on a poaching trip, and lots of seagulls. But a terrible crime is afoot, and the detective inspector must solve the mystery.
We sourced the majority of materials from scrap stores, vinted, charity shops and left over materials from other projects.
Performed twice now, at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and Porter’s Theatre
Photography by Perrin Dunn, Isabel Minion Craggs and Alexis Evans
The process
Monsieur Whippy is a French ice cream maker, genius inventor, and a flirt. He was inspired by drag kings and circus performers.
I made his costume using a second hand blazer from vinted which I cropped and added lots of bling. His hat was made by coverving a card structure with felt and ribbon. His ice cream tray was made from card and painted in acrylics.
Monsieur Whippy
Collage, and pencil and digital designs
Mademoiselle Whippy is a robot lady ice cream machine, invented by Monsieur Whippy to dispense ice cream from her teat.
Mademoiselle Whippy
Made from a charity shop bra, and cardboard cones, which I bedazzled and added a working lever, and the ice cream is elasticated fabric pulled out through a hole behind the nipple tassel that pops off.
Oyster Headdress
I cut out two sides of the oyster shell by layering cardboard shapes attached together with wire. Then glued on tissue paper, and painted in thin layers of acrylic and pearlescent paints, and gloss glaze, building the colours. Then draped lots of second hand pearl necklaces and beads.
Design by Evan Stead
Seagulls
The Seagulls were very important to the show and crop up in most scenes. You can see more about ‘Dr Franken-Gull’ by clicking on the button
The dead gull was made from scrap scuba fabric. The wings are quilted to look like feathers. The beak is foam clay, and the legs are foam clay on wire. It needed to be soft as it gets thrown over the audience at us.
The flying gull swarm was made from paper and gum strip, the wings were fabric on wire, painted with acrylics. The birds were stuck on the end of willow sticks.
Past Performances
Our first scratch performances were at Uni. I designed the poster inspired by old 1920s train line posters.
I organised and curated a SOLD OUT! puppet cabaret event at Porters Theatre in Cardiff. Evan and I performed our show alongside others such as BeanPig Puppets, Nico Venables and Chaos Corner Puppets.
I’m hoping to hold more of these events in the near future!