In In the era of COVID-19 everyone has to stay inside as much as possible, even a Jack in the Box.
That’s the clever premise of Lockdown Jack, a fun puppet short that was written and performed by Iestyn Evans, and directed by fellow puppeteer Andy Heath of Talk to the Hand Puppets (see previous post). They produced it as they were separately isolating during the U.K.’s COVID-19 lockdown.
For a month and a half, my partner at Talk to the Hand, Andy Heath, and I had been isolating, and not seeing each other at the workshop every day as we normally would. He was in Brighton, and I was in London. We’d been talking about filming something at this time before lockdown. When the measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 were introduced, it seemed like any hope of collaborating would have to go on hold indefinitely. Little did we know that the circumstances would actually inspire our next project.
Iestyn Evans
The idea for Lockdown Jack came in a flash. I was writing an email, and
wrote the expression “think outside the box” and immediately thought, “well under lockdown, we should really be thinking inside the box”. And that was it.
I especially love all the little touches in this short, from the Jack puppet itself (a rod puppet built Andy built in three days that is performed using a simple rocking mechanism) to the way the box crank is puppeteered in the beginning, to all the little touches in the box set, which was constructed by hand. That attention to detail shouldn’t be surprising. Talk to the Hand is known for their work on the much loved BBC3 puppet series Mongrels and several outstanding ad campaigns. Visit their web site at TalkToTheHandPuppets.com and subscribe to their YouTube Channel to see more of their work.
Special thanks to Iestyn for sending this in!
